Body, you are not me - Oliver Doe at Abject 2 Gallery, Breeze Creatives as part of Curious 2018

Body, you are not me
Oliver Doe
Abject 2 Gallery
2nd Floor, Breeze Creatives

Exhibition open 3rd - 7th July, 11am - 5pm

'Newcastle based transmedia artist Oliver Doe presents an exhibition of new and recent works, accompanied by a limited mini-publication, as part of Curious Festival 2018's visual art programme.

Since 2014, Oliver's research and practice has been centred around queer visibility and representations of queer bodies, and he has previously partnered with organisations such as Northern Pride and The Albert Kennedy Trust. His work has been developed from personal experience of queer identity and the intersections between body and identity that lie in between binaries. Oliver's work takes transmedia forms, using painting, text, sculpture, and the found object (as well as the less well-defined spaces in between those) to explore ideas around the queer potential of abstraction. Reduced and abstracted bodily forms explore the changing boundaries of queer bodies and the possibility to recognise the body as a site of queer sexuality.

The accompanying mini-publication includes a selection of Oliver's new poems, which provide context for the paintings and objects.'

More info can be found online: http://www.oliverdoe.com

BITTER/SWEET Install - Day 3

On arrival at the gallery, I was delighted to see that the second coat of paint that I had applied last night to 3 of the colours had really made a difference in terms of the depth of the colours. 

Emily started to paint the areas on the left side of the wall with teal while Liam and I masked out the rest of the design on the right side of the wall.

The taping of the design is very time consuming, and one needs to plan and be systematic in the order of painting so as not to paint two colours that are directly next to each other.

With two coats of paint on the vast majority of the wall on which the lettering was to go over, we made a start on mapping out the text, first using the thicker tape, and then completing each letter with the thinner tape. 

As I left for my return train back to Newcastle in the evening, I was really pleased with the work, but disappointed that I had run out of time to complete everything. There are a few elements that still need to be done. I feel very fortunate that the curators, Liam and Emily are going to follow my instructions to finish the work. As they have been assisting with the execution of the wall painting over the three day install, I am confident that they know what they are doing and will do a remarkable job at the final touches.

I will post more images once the exhibition has opened but I do not want to reveal too much now, and spoil the surprise for those who are able to visit the exhibition. 

BITTER/SWEET Install - Day 2

On my second day of install for BITTER/SWEET, the forthcoming group exhibition at Assembly House, Leeds I was fortunate enough to have assistance from both the curators, Liam McCabe and Emily Garvey.

As Liam and I aligned the projector so that the left half of the design fitted with the right half of the design, Emily cracked on with applying the next colour of paint; powder grey.

Once the projection was aligned, Liam and I marked out the right side of the design on the wall using masking tape.

Frustratingly, we could not completely match the design to the wall, and so I made a few adjustments to the design .

Once the vast majority of the straight edged shapes had been masked and were being painted, I turned my focus to the curved shapes in the design. I found the curved parts around the oval shape particularly challenging because of the large scale and the fact that this area of the design is near the top of the wall, and so involved me working at height and at a difficult angle.

By the time I had completed the curves, some of the other areas of paint had dried and so in the evening I painted a second coat on these areas.

BITTER/SWEET Install Day 1

I left snowy Newcastle this morning and made my way by train down to Leeds where I was met at the station by Liam McCabe, the co-curator of BITTER/SWEET, the forthcoming group exhibition at Assembly House that I am exhibiting in (see http://helenshaddock.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/invitation-to-bittersweet-exhibition.html for more details).

We then caught the train to Burley Park and walked to Assembly House near Armley Mills. 



After a quick tour of the open plan studios we began to set up in the gallery space. Our first task was to project the design of the wall painting onto the wall to be painted. 



The wall that I am using is over 8 metres long, and unfortunately the projector could not get far enough away from the wall to be able to fit all the design on the wall, so we had to split it in half and ensure that they joined up correctly.

We met our first problem when we switched on the projector and it would not connect to the computer. After a lot of fiddling, Liam decided that the only option was for him to go back to his house and pick up some alternative cables. Thankfully the replacement cables did the trick and we began to mask out the design on the wall.



The rest of the day was spent painting and trying to keep relatively warm by working in close proximity to the heater!

Testing design on gallery walls

Having finished the to-scale design for my wall painting, I sent it to Liam McCabe who, along with Emily Garvey, is curating Bittersweet, the group exhibition that will take place at Assembly House, Leeds in March. Liam had gained access to the gallery and set up a projector in the space to check that my image did indeed fit the wall. 

Liam had imagined situating my wall painting on the wall facing the entrance, but this wall turned out to be brick and this uneven surface may pose problems when using the tape to create the lettering and also to mask out the areas for painting. He has now suggested another wall, of the same dimensions, with flat walls. The projection worked very well, with the design clear, and fitting the wall well. 

I'd be giving too much away to show you the full design, but below is a sneak preview.

Unfortunately it was not possible to get the projected image to fit the wall as it was not possible to get the projector far enough away from the wall. However, it may be possible to split the image in two halves and use a couple of projectors to form the full design. 

Preparing mock ups

For my next exhibition (Bitter-sweet group show at Assembly House, Leeds) I am going to be doing a wall painting. I have completed the design and I will project this onto the wall to use as a guide for masking out the areas to be painted. The text within the design is in a font that I have created, and this will be in fluorescent gaffer tape. I've spent the past few days making a mock up of each of the letters so as to calculate the amount of tape that I need to buy.

Here is a sneak preview 

Ideas for Kielder Project exhibition in the XL Gallery

The artists who are participating in the Kielder project have been given the opportunity to hold an exhibition in the XL Gallery at Newcastle University next week. The exhibition in the XL Gallery should relate to the work that is going to be located at Kielder, but it does not need to be a version of the work that will be displayed in Kielder.

Pipi and I want to use the exhibition to present a work that exists separately from TRIGGER, our audio installation that will be sited at Kielder this Summer. We are producing TRIGGER especially for the site, and do not think it would be appropriate to locate it in the gallery. 

The structure in which the audio will be played from is going to be patterned using fluorescent paint and hi-vis tape. We thought that the exhibition in the XL Gallery could be used to test out patterns with the paint and tape.

We created a number of designs, and rather than choosing one of them, we incorporated the different aspects we liked from each design to form a final design.