(Duplicate of blog originally posted at www.adventureecology.com : Arts)

I have just moved both house and studio from Newcastle upon Tyne to London, which was quite a dramatic upheaval for me. I think moving my studio was probably the worst, and having now been in london for almost a month I am finally just about finished getting my new workspace into a useable state.

I am what you might call a hoarder. But in my defence I feel this is an intrinsic part of my practice. I have collections of many random things that I think I might never use but can’t dispose of them, just in case. I wonder if the fact that I have it all stashed makes it not rubbish? I had to throw away a lot of wired glass when I moved because it was just too bulky, and I was annoyed that there was no way of recycling it. Had I just hung onto it this problem would not have arisen, though obviously I can’t use excuses like that all the time.

So having moved studio, rather than starting to make art I kept finding things I needed to reorder and organise and count before I could proceed with the act of making. Sometimes I wonder if I am being a bit naughty, like when you’re at school or university and you suddenly decide you really need to spring clean your house when there happens to be an essay deadline approaching. I do have a love hate relationship with my work, alongside an undulating attention span and varying levels of patience but when I look at the nature of my practice I don’t think this kind of behaviour - the counting and ordering - should be suppressed (as far as my work is concerned).

I am asked surprisingly often (or maybe not surprisingly) whether I have some sort of controllable form of OCD, and someone even suggested once that I might exhibit slight autistic traits because of the compulsive, repetitive behaviour my installations require. These remarks weren’t intended as serious but all were a result of people watching me install my work. A good example to mention here is Come Fly With Me, probably the most painstaking piece I have made to date.

Come Fly With Me is a piece I made in 2004 and it was shown first at the Royal British Society of Sculptors’ 108 Centre in London, then at OMAC in Belfast. Around 1200 transparent threads hung from the ceiling and on the end of each was a tiny lead weight. These created the form of a flat arrow shape. Between waist and head height thousands of individual seeds from dandelion ‘clocks’ were fixed to the threads, and en masse they created the illusion of quite a precise three-dimensional arrow sweeping horizontally and measuring around 1.5m in length. The illusion of a third arrow was created by the reflection of light on the threads the work was suspended from overhead, and the relationship between these three more or less tangible arrows of light, seeds, and lead, became and important part of the work. Making it was quite a task. All 1200 weights were cut from sheet lead by hand and holes made in them by hammering a small nail through each one. One of these was tied to the end of each thread before fixing the seeds in position. The dandelion seeds had to be separated from one another without being damaged, which required some patience, and then had to be glued to each thread in the correct position without taking measurements. It was a tricky one because I really needed to get very close to the seeds while I was fixing them in order to see what I was doing, and at the same time I had to hold my breath because any movement in the air sent them flying out of my hands. The glue meant that I moved from one extreme to the other - resulting in my hands looking like they’d been tarred and feathered at one point. I wanted the resulting work to be as fragile as possible, making the labour involved seem almost futile.

The second time I made this piece was in an Arts Centre where theatre performances happened every night. I was working 16 hour days and these inevitably clashed with the flow of theatre goers in the evenings, who seemed to enjoy pointing and staring and asking me questions about my state of mind as much as they did the theatre. Maybe unfortunately for me, the obsessive behaviour sometimes does extend to my everyday life. I do take a sort of vague (albeit worrying) pleasure in arranging the china in a certain way, or sorting the rubbish into glass, paper, and so on.

During the process of preparing to make a new piece my studio constantly moves from being extremely organised to looking like a bomb’s hit it, and back again and so on, until the work is complete. While all this dramatic rearrangement of worthless or dying materials is going on, some things are moving and changing surprisingly slowly. I bought a box of around 100 apples in autumn 2003 and never got around to realising the work I intended them for. In keeping with my tendency to hoard and through no lack of patience, I never threw them away, and when I moved studio I took them out of their box for the first time in two years. I think they look incredible. They have not decomposed normally because I have protected them a little bit, and instead they have dehydrated. They are shrunken, shrivelled, heavily discoloured, and all slightly different. For me they look just about ripe and ready to become beautiful again.

(Duplicate of blog originally posted at www.adventureecology.com : Arts)

Over the past few months my style of drawing has changed quite dramatically. I haven’t ever really tried to capture things in great detail before. At least not since school when we were given exercises in drawing our own hand or drawing the person opposite us. I can’t remember such exercises being particularly successful so maybe I just dismissed this as something unachievable. I have always struggled with drawing things that already exist in the real world, maybe because I have never devoted enough time to it.

I often have to draw things that do not exist, for instance when making a proposal for a sculpture. I tend to keep such work simple. Until very recently my drawings were sketchy and free, looking almost childlike at times, and I enjoy this. Wen you’re drawing something that you have just invented, it’s a lot harder to make mistakes.

Recently I undertook a residency (at Wooda Farm, Cornwall) where I was given the time and space to really focus on certain areas of my practice. I say given, but it was actually a stipulation of the residency that I didn’t devote any time to ongoing commissions, except where absolutely essential. This might sound quite extreme but actually I was glad of it. I was able to relax and do things I haven’t had time for recently, like experimentation, drawing, and simply thinking. And I surprised myself.

I have always wanted to find a way of drawing that was akin to the rest of my practice; making drawings that could be seen as artworks in own right rather than just functioning as technical drawings or illustrations or proposals. I now seem to have found this, but not without a struggle.

Virtually all my work is labour intensive - like making 5500 paper boats, varnishing them and suspending them over a reservoir spillway, or hanging 6000 strawberries from threads, this process taking so long that by the time it was complete, the first strawberries were already starting to rot. It makes sense this sort of approach should follow through to my drawings, but it has taken a long time for me to find the right way of doing it.

I have just been drawing insects, positioned so as to form a cube. It’s an illustration of a sculpture which doesn’t exist yet, but it’s very similar to ‘Interference’, a previous work (2002-2007). I think it’s my most detailed and labour intensive drawing to date. I have been drawing for the last week and I have been finding it difficult to find a rhythm. Not for want of trying though. I ate breakfast lunch and dinner in my studio on Thursday in order to make sure I felt like I’d actually achieved something by the end of the day.

My new style of drawing is effectively making illustrations of sculptural works, but presented in a way that provides a slight ambiguity. The drawings could be a picture of an artwork or a picture of real life. In the instance of my recent interest in taxidermy this is particularly interesting because the drawings seem to give some sort of life to the animals depicted, maybe because they are illustrations of the real thing. In doing so they raise questions about the scenarios I have placed the animals within.

As with the main body of my practice, sculpture, I want there to be seemingly conflicting elements within the drawings; things which compliment each other visually, but in reality do not gel well.

My sculptural work is precise, carefully considered and usually impossible to transport, so i tend to only make things I am absolutely sure of. Because I have not had very much training when it comes to drawing, I don’t really know the rules, the rights and the wrongs. Because of this I feel much more comfortable with trying things before I know they’re going to work. The downfall of this is that I now have a growing list of drawings that I think I ought to make, and at present I am having to race to keep up!

(Duplicate of blog originally posted at www.adventureecology.com : Arts)

This week I finished my largest piece of taxidermy so far; a fox. I found him dead on a roadside a couple of months ago, after impatiently wishing to find one for the couple of months prior to that. In December I had an idea for a new piece of work that will include a fox, pieces of black polythene bin-bags collected from alleyways, and rotting organic matter. The black plastic will form a large cube that the fox appears to be investigating or interacting with.

Until very recently I would not have considered using taxidermy within my work, though I have included animals in several installations to date. Because the foundations of my practice are based on the cyclical forces that change materials over time, there is a part of me that believes in absolute truth to materials. Replicas are no substitute for real strawberries, even if this means a sculpture beginning to decompose before it is complete, and while fake flowers do not die, they also don’t grow. Likewise, in the past this approach would have meant that if I were using a dead animal within my work, it would be allowed to rot.

One piece of work that reflects this is Things that fall (2005). This was an installation housed within a barn on the grounds of Bolwick Hall, a georgian residence with extensive grounds where I spent 3 weeks. During that time I collected what materials I found, and this process determined the nature of my work. I found around 15,000 to 20,000 pine cones and 11 dead crows, as well as a lot of pine cones covered in crow droppings. The pine cones eventually filled the whole floor of the barn, and people visiting the exhibition had to carefully pick their way through. In doing so they began to discover the carcasses of crows on the floor, at various stages of decay. On closer inspection it became apparent that the crows were suspended slightly above the floor, giving them subtle movement, along with the potential for viewers to get tangled in the threads holding them. Beneath the crows were the pine cones covered in droppings. That exhibition lasted for 3 weeks and although the installation was quite beautiful visually, the crows were still decaying and so the barn was virtually inaccessible for most of the second week because of the smell.

This truth to materials is still a significant part of my practice, but I have become a little more relaxed about it at times when it might prevent a work from actually being realized. My work has moved on from focusing on the inherent properties of natural materials, to exploring the relationships between different objects. I combine points of fact with contrived forms and scenarios in order to trigger emotional responses related to our our limited understanding of life and death. This is one of the reasons I began to consider using taxidermy. The act of taking a dead animal and using its skin to create a representation of what it might have been in life is fascinating, as is thinking about what might compel someone to do so.

I could have commissioned a fox from an experienced taxidermist, but I think this might have defeated the purpose of my work. The processes involved in the creation of my sculptures are very important to me, and often laborious or exhausting, though in the instance of the fox there were new difficulties to address. I had never actually been so close to a fox before (except for the lifeless natural history specimens in museums) and it was incredibly beautiful and captivating. On the side of the road it seemed like the life had not quite finished leaving it. On touching it the signs of rigor mortis brought me back to reality. Admittedly I was quite nervous before beginning the process because of the size of the animal. I didn’t know what to expect, but once I had started I surprised myself. Despite the strength of my stomach, my inexperience meant that the process was incredibly time consuming - probably much more so than it should have been. It seems to be a recurring theme within my work that I decide I need things, then set about finding the most difficult way to obtain those things. I make light of it, but it is really important to me that I do force myself to spend time with my materials, developing and understanding of them and forming a connection to them.

I mentioned doing things the hard way. The notion of using animals that have been killed for the purpose of stuffing, as happens to pheasants and so on, is not something I am drawn to. I only want to use animals that have died accidentally, or through circumstances wholly unrelated to my own activities. The roadside seems to be a suitable starting point, but it is a tricky business. Finding an animal that is still in good condition is so hard. There aren’t any rules to follow. It’s futile to try to anticipate or plan for death, or try to rush it. It’s a very strange feeling to find yourself consumed by hoping to stumble upon it.

(Duplicate of blog originally posted at www.adventureecology.com : Arts)


I have just visited the publisher Art Editions North to arrange the distribution of a small publication that was completed this week. It’s my first monograph so it has been quite exciting to see it through the various stages of production and finally in the flesh.

Called Crowdpleaser, it is the culmination of a residency I undertook at Persistence Works studios (Sheffield) around a year ago. During the residency I was asked to explore the notion of ‘Art and the Public Realm’. Because my work spans galleries and public spaces, I used the time to consider the impact these varying contexts can have on my work both conceptually, through site-specificity or my anticipation of the responses of certain audiences, and physically, through the restrictions imposed on the work within different settings.

My main concern was that when outside the gallery it is often necessary for a work to fulfill certain criteria. My work tends to be assembled in quite a complex, precise way and possesses a certain beauty. In fact it is my way of exploring the line that exists between certain experiences and emotions: beauty and horror, things that hold positive and negative associations, and there is always an element that is inherently ugly, aggressive or dangerous. If this aspect of the work were removed or hidden too well, it could easily loose its meaning and become something that is simply nice to look at.

I made an installation in the large studio at Persistence Works. It was called Perch (crowdpleaser), and acted as a sort of cheeky statement or response to these thoughts. The main body of the work was assembled through stretching and tearing thousands of thumb-sized pieces of white polythene from used shopping bags, and threading these onto nylon monofilaments that stretched horizontally overhead across the 14 metre long studio. These were positioned to spell out the word ‘crowdpleaser’. A crow was perched on the letter ‘a’. This was a dead bird that I found in the woods some time ago. All feathers were in tact but the bird was not preserved in any way, and took on a subtle but repulsive and strangely powerful role within the installation, balancing the huge, clean, seductive qualities of the polythene on many levels.

In a way, this installation marked a turning point in my practice. It was my first opportunity to realize one of a number of large gallery orientated installations I had been planning for some time. It functioned on a slightly different level than a lot of my work up to that point, both physically and intellectually, by using text, and also by using materials that were not inherently beautiful or interesting.

The plastic is something that I have continued to be intrigued by, and it features in a lot of work I am currently planning. Stemming from an interest in the ways we interact with the rest of the natural world, and the ways that it responds to us, I have begun to work with waste materials - polythene bags being the vessels that carry many of our other residues. My work started out having quite strong, dark overtones, which surprisingly don’t really lend themselves to ‘public’ art, and this is something I set aside for a while. I am now quite excited by the fact that this uneasy aspect of my work is becoming prominent again. I think the work I will exhibit at Adventure Ecology in January will be the culmination of this fascination and horror I am feeling towards the products of our excess. My aim will be to create something that is simultaneously captivating and repulsive, and that won’t be disregarded.

(Duplicate of blog originally posted at www.adventureecology.com : Arts)

Last night myself and Richard Wilson presented our experiences of creating art within the public realm, as part of a series of ‘Artists in Conversation’ events at Arc, Hull. Not surprisingly, the overall feeling was that it is possible to create very powerful experiences that cannot exist within a gallery, but that in most cases tricky decisions and compromises need to be made.

Art in public places has a different audience and, I think, ought to be able to speak to people without the necessity of an in-depth knowledge of art. This is not to say that the work should be ‘easy’. Quite the opposite. The gallery provides us with a certain safety in that we tend to expect the unexpected; at any rate we expect to see art, and so in some ways there might potentially be less immediacy about our response. Here I am referring to less stereotypical types of ‘public’ art, of which myself and RIchard had to provide examples.

I talked about ‘A New Moon’, a temporary light-based work I originally made for a site in Whitstable in 2005, and which toured to Bristol last winter. The original site for that work was not the typical location for a public work. It was on a harbour wall on the grounds of an asphalt processing plant where major engineering works were occurring. The piece consisted of a 4.5m tall polycarbonate, lightbulb shaped sculpture, illuminated by hundreds of tiny lights mapping its contours, and suspended from a tower crane.

I wanted it to be something that could be read as playful, poignant, beautiful or intimidating. I was interested in the ways that we as a society try to battle against or outdo nature, unsuccessfully. This ‘moon’ which could be re-positioned and controlled at the flick of a switch was (intentionally) faulty. It flickered erratically for a few seconds every 15 minutes or so in a way which seemed unintentional, adding a feeling of unpredictability to it. In fact my attempt to battle with nature was highlighted to an uncomfortable extent when on both occasions it was shown, wind caused major problems with the bulb actually being hoisted.

I think something like this can have an interesting impact when people are not actually be sure whether it is art. Richard WIlson talked about work that could be equally confusing for viewers. He used his work ‘Over Easy’ as an example. This permanent, architectural piece is part of a building in Stockton called Arc (though this actually has no link to the Arc building where our discussion took place).

Arc, Stockton, is a centre for performing arts, and there is definitely something theatrical about Wilson’s addition to the building, yet at the same time it’s incredibly simple. The lower part of the building is covered in a yellow cladding and the upper part is glazed. The two meet diagonally following the line of the stairs inside. Wilson’s work is effectively a circle (with eight metre diameter), that appears to have been cut from the side of the building and encompasses areas of both materials. This circle sits completely flush with the rest of the architecture. The interesting part is that it slowly rotates, rocking back and forth through 300 degrees at a speed where the motion is imperceptible. He has made the very fabric of the building move. I love the simplicity of this work, huge and quiet at the same time. It is something that anyone can ‘get’ - both clever and playful.

During our discussion Richard talked a lot about architecture, the fact that buildings do move, and that they are not necessarily the rigid structures that they appear to be. A new piece he is working on at the minute takes the idea of ‘Over Easy’ one step further, creating a huge disc, again cut from the side of a building, that rotates three-dimensionally. I saw documentation of the proposal for this work some time ago and thought it was a fantastic idea, but near impossible to achieve. I was quite gobsmacked when I saw the photos of it actually being installed.

I won’t say any more, other than it will be in Liverpool and is due for completion this summer. It will be a hugely ambitious piece of public art, and very inspiring for me. Needless to say I will be paying a visit.

(Duplicate of blog originally posted at www.adventureecology.com : Arts)

As Artist in Residence for Adventure Ecology I’m going to be commenting on experiences related to my practice, and talking about the process of developing new work in the lead up to a solo show at The Gallery @ AE HQ in early 2008.

By coincidence this is going to start fairly dramatically (for me at least). At the minute I’m preparing to catch a train to Hull, to Arc [Architecture Centre] where I’ll be one of two artists taking part in a chaired discussion about our experiences of working within the public realm. A fairly straight forward event for me, except that the other artist involved is Richard Wilson. I haven’t met Richard before, though I think his installations are some of the most intelligent I have seen, so it’s fair to say I am pretty nervous. When I told a friend of mine I was talking alongside an artist so much more established than myself she said, Oh well, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger! Great. Really though, I am looking forward to the chance to talk about art with someone whose success I would aspire to.

A lot has happened for me in the past week. Among other things I have made plans for two solo exhibitions in 2008. As I mentioned, one of these will be at Adventure Ecology. While I feel I am not nearly knowledgeable enough in terms of solutions to ecological issues, it is an area that I need and want to learn more about.

My most recent work has a close link to this desire to gain a better understanding of our relationship with the rest of the natural world, and the impact that we have on it. I definitely wouldn’t class myself as an environmental artist, in the same way that I would not categorize my work as ‘public’ or otherwise. I don’t want to impose restrictions on myself - I am just a sculptor. Despite this, and because of the materials and forms that I employ, my installations do sit well within an environmental context. An example is that much of my current work in progress combines found manufactured waste materials such as plastic, with dead animals and organic matter. Quite blunt when I put it like that actually, but sometimes bluntness is necessary in order to grab peoples attention.

So over the next few months I will be posting information and images of work in progress and other projects, starting with tomorrow when I will write about tonight’s discussion.