ANY AND OR [PHOTOS]

Here are some officialish photos of the exhibition!

Layla Rose Cowan

Tatiana Der Parthogh

Helen Hardman

Ana Hine

 

Sekai Machache

Katy Meehan

HELEN HARDMAN at THE WEST HOUSE

Those of you whom have looked at my PROJECTS page recently may have noticed something exciting…

Indeed I am very excited to announce that I will be having a solo exhibition!  The West House, Dundee will play host to my prints as of next week.  This is also the first exhibition as part of Any. And. Or.  

Kicking off Degree Show season in style the PREVIEW will be on Thursday 16th May 2013, at approx 7pm (TBC).

Continues Friday 17th May 2013 Mon-Fri 8am-midnight, Sat-Sun 9am-midnight.

All are welcome to attend!

Event FACEBOOK

This exhibition culminates a year of planning (on my part): On a degree show high I first suggested a show of my prints at TWH last summer, recently after they opened.  Since they were still too new at the time and the paint was barely dry on the walls we didn’t proceed with anything until I was introduced to Andy Rice whilst working with Paul at the VRC.  After hearing my tale he agreed that exhibitions of new and local artists’ work was the plan all along, and several months later here we are!

Since The West House will be looking for new work to hang after my show closes, this would be an excellent opportunity for any soon to be graduates, local Dundee artists and budding curators.

Hope to see you there!

Artist and fellow graduate of DJCAD Sylvia Law posted a link to this article on facebook.  It pretty much summarises some of the ideas from my dissertation On The Subjectivity of Space.

IN SEARCH OF SACRED PLACES

Fallen Tree, Nature Reserve near Ashkirk

“Finding relevance, even a kind of sacredness, in public space captivates Marriage. ‘It might not be universality,’ she said in answer to Mehrotra. ‘But it’s still that transformation to something else…'”

WEB

Apologies for the silence.  Since returning from Brighton I haven’t had much time to settle down with a computer and get down to blogging.  I’ve been a little out of the art loop in Dundee and this is requiring a little catching up.  However!  I would like to show you this:

I have no idea who this is by, other than they are at DJCAD and possibly on the general foundation course.  I think it is stunning.

Over the next few days prospective first year art students are dropping off their portfolios at DJCAD and I am there to answer any questions about admissions and whatnot.    Naturally the art school wants to put a good foot forward so they have put up an exhibition of students work – it’s well worth a look!

Hello again after a busy week!  Since I last posted I have been to North-east Wales, Dundee, Ayr, Penicuik, Ampleforth and back up to Dundee.  Tomorrow I set off at 8:30am for the south coast for another five days of UCAS fairs and train-hopping.  Hopefully it will be less tiring (it’s more of a big circle than zig-zagging across the UK).

Last night Chris showed me something cool that he had found (not sure how/why) on SNAP! magazine’s website…

This is the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi, meaning “to repair with gold or silver and is generally associated with the reparation of broken pottery.  Gold or silver lacquer is used to join the broken pieces together and the resulting item looks more beautiful than the original; more beautiful for having been broken.

It’s a poetic metaphor for life …”

Photo Source

There is something incredibly poignant about gluing something fragile back together with precious metal and Chris was right to think that this was something that I would like: much of the work that I made in the third year of my degree focused on celebrating such natural progression, renewal and embellishment.

Though not as ornamental, the blind embossed prints I was creating aimed to celebrate the miniscule imperfections in our everyday surroundings.  The need to do this first made itself apparent to me within the first week of moving into studio 519 in third year.  Perhaps non-art students won’t have the same visual understanding of this process, so here it is: between the end of the previous years degree show and the start of the new semester the studios are split up using black wooden boards to allow more students to work in the space.  Desks are placed against the walls, and that is it.

And that is how we begin every year.  It takes a while to adjust to your new surroundings.  In the meantime I found it so interesting to watch how people around me reacted differently to their spaces.  Those who were in the studio regularly seemed to surround themselves with stuff, plastering drawings, posters, photocopies, postcards – anything, it seemed – up their walls.  I always considered it an evasion tactic, as if the unspoken pressure that an expansive blank canvas inevitably conveys was too daunting.  (In hindsight, it was perhaps just a means of personalising the environment.  Either way there was some great work created in that studio).

But I, on the other hand, spent my time staring at the walls, enjoying the terrifyingly clean, minimalist, white expanse.  And in staring I started to see patterns and shapes: blobs of plaster that hadn’t been sanded down properly; pencil marks; brushstrokes; painted gumstrip.  Perhaps the most odd was the charcoal fingerprints on the ceiling (but the attempt to capture and produce from those failed miserably [the only time I’ve ever attempted to work with solar plates myself]). I decided to make something of these imperfections that everyone else was seemingly ignoring, and the result was a series of deeply etched steel plates which when put through the press with no ink created perfectly embossed replicas of the marks on the walls.

One of the artists I was looking at during the period that these prints were made is Susan Collis, whose use of seemingly mundane, everyday objects is very much an alternative use of kintsukuroi.  To the untrained eye, her exhibition spaces – such as that at Ingleby Gallery in 2008 – are unremarkable.

But upon closer inspection the flecks of paint on an old, well used broom are in fact precious metals and stones.  Screw heads sticking out of the wall are solid gold.  “The age-old trick of trompe l’oeil is not usually employed for such humble things, and the witty poetry in Collis’ work lies in the intense labour expended over many months to craft these precious and beautiful, but ultimately useless objects.”

There is a whole host of deeper philosophical meanings to all this.  But perhaps the simpler one is the better; that in all cases – and certainly the ones I have noted here – it is a joy to celebrate the little things in life, that we generally drift over and do not stop to take the time to consider.

Links: SNAP!  Susan Collis SEVENTEEN.  Susan Collis Ingleby.  Leaf and Twig.

I am spending the next week on the south coast (Cornwall, Exeter, Portsmouth), the weekend between Sunderland and Dundee, and then I’m off to Manchester on Monday.  Please bear with me on the blog front!

PRINT PREVIEW

A few highlights from the Printed Matter:::::/Print Process exhibition preview on Thursday.

A print focused exhibition was always an incredibly exciting prospect, but to see it for real truly made the point of how varied and free the print medium can be.  No two pieces were the same, and with a range of ancient and modern techniques on show this exhibition was as interesting as it was educational.  Not to mention beautifully executed!  Sean and Ellis worked a miracle and transformed the Bradshaw space from ordinary animation corridor to professional gallery.  All in all a great evening.

Printed Matter:::::/Print Process is open in the Bradshaw Gallery at DJCAD Mon-Fri 9am-5pm and Sat 10:30am-4:30pm until 16/3/13.  I know I am biased but if you manage to see any student curated exhibition in the next few weeks then this should be it: different, professional, traditional.

PITCH AND STRIKE

If you are free tomorrow (Sunday 24th) and fancy a wander down Perth Road be sure to pop into Pitch and Strike!  This pop up shop will be selling all manner of artistic delights for one day only at Drouthy’s Basement.  Not to be missed – starts at 1pm!

Pitch and Strike BLOG
Pitch and Strike FACEBOOK

Roll up, roll up!  Today is the day to come to DJCAD and see a myriad of wonderful prints!

Printed Mater:::::/Print Process opens for preview tonight: 5pm, Bradshaw Space, DJCAD.

On display for your visual delight will be these bad boys:

But as I did mention they look far better in real life.

And among others: Russell Frost Letterpress, Alexander Stevenson Linocut, Morgan Cahn Silkscreens…

If you are unsure of where to go…enter DJCAD through the big new entrance on Perth Road.  Go upstairs to level 4/library.  Come out of the lift and turn left, or come to the top of the stairs and turn right, go through the double doors, across the bridge and turn right.  Go downstairs until you get to the old entrance and the Bradshaw Space will be through the double doors directly opposite the stairs.  Or the Cooper Gallery Project Space doors might be open at the front of the Crawford Building.  Who knows!

See you there!  In the meantime check out the FACEBOOK event and the Print and Process BLOG

This has been a most exciting week in many ways!  Not only do we see Printed Matter:::::/Print Process previewing on Thursday (21st February, 5pm, Bradshaw Gallery @ DJCAD) but yesterday I had the grand opportunity to be involved in the professional printing of Calum Colvin’s image for the D’Arcy Thompson portfolio.

It was an exhilarating process on many levels: to first be complimented by the print technicians at DJCAD Pete and Mark in their invitation to be involved; for Pete to hand the reigns over to me and let me do the printing (I did 5 of the 25 to be printed); to take responsibility for the professional outcome of such an esteemed artist’s work; to do it successfully.  And it was different to the work I was doing at the VRC. Although the finishing process of a print is so important, the task of actually printing the thing is on a whole different level.

In reality I should have had reserves about being involved in the printing of Calum’s image.  As anyone who has ever encountered my opinion regarding the use of assistants in the production of work will know I do not in general approve of such practice.  But I leapt at the opportunity and am so grateful that I was asked to be involved.  If anything it was just so lovely to be actually printing again!  And interesting to print an image that I had no personal relation with: it allowed me to focus purely on the technicality of the inking* and wiping.  Such things give satisfaction on so many levels, some so deep that only an etcher would truly understand.

I should probably stop now before the gushing etching love becomes overbearing.

*with a brand new, completely untouched pot of ink.  Oomph.

I am delighted and very excited to announce that some of my degree show prints will be included in the upcoming exhibition “Printed Matter:::::/Print Process.”  Organised by Sean Scott – a 4th year Illustration student at DJCAD with whom I worked for the Edgar Schmitz “Sindanao” opening – the exhibition aims to bring together a whole variety of artists and designers who work closely with print in their practice.  The result will be an eclectic mix of styles and techniques, demonstrating the incredible versatility of print in all its processes on an international scale; Sean has received submissions from Scotland, England and even Canada!

I have submitted the following:

You may see one, you may see all three!  Either way this promises to be not only a fantastic exhibition but an opportunity to find yourself sharing a space with processes you may not have seen before.  And the only way to truly engage with prints is to see them face-to-face, stick your nose up against them and get a sense of the physical presence of ink on paper.  I find this so with all prints but particularly mine – they just don’t compare on a computer screen.

Printed Matter:::::/Print Process opens for preview at DJCAD this Thursday 22nd February 2013 and will run for a month.

As the first major print-related shindig I have been involved in since graduating you can expect lots more on this over the next couple of weeks!  In the meantime keep an eye on the Printed Matter:::::/Print Process blog.