Plastic fantastic

Photos from Neoreplicants, Exeter Phoenix, 16 November 2012 - 19 January 2013.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/exeterphoenixgallery/sets/72157632073532540/

On networks

Last week's Visual Arts South West (VASW) regional meeting at RAMM Exeter was a great opportunity to connect with new people and organisations and to catch up with contacts. It was also a timely reminder of just how much VASW (formerly Turning Point SW) has managed to achieve. In particular, they have offered a range of brilliant opportunities to individual practitioners - such as travel bursaries and mentoring for commercial representation - and are about to launch a critical writing programme.

The keynote speech, by Demos Associate John Holden, was on networks. He made some interesting points about real networks versus clubs (exclusive groups),  pubs (social groups) and hubs (almost-networks built around a central point), and how they need to take care of their most fragile components. Based on his definitions, VASW is still a hub and therefore not as resilient or adaptable as it could be. As a temporary initiative to give a boost to the SW arts ecology, VASW works for now.  Let's hope it continues to evolve into something more sustainable.

http://gabriellehoad.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/turning-point-or-just-more-of-same.html

www.vasw.org.uk

The geometry of shadows

Gabrielle Hoad: The Geometry of Air (2012)
Near Broadhembury, Devon 12.20.30 – 12.51.55 UTC 22/10/2011
Laser-sintered nylon mounted on Perspex (Installation view)

'Neoreplicants', the result of the Exeter Phoenix Digital Art Commission 2012, is now open. This project gave 30 artists the opportunity to work with the Centre for Additive Layer Manufacturing (CALM) at Exeter University.

I used the process to make a three-dimensional scale representation of a 30-minute glider flight. GPS readings of altitude, latitude and longitude taken during the flight were transcribed into a digital model, from which a 3D scale-model has been fabricated. The air above and below the flight path was represented as solids.

I decided to install the top part of my model and hang it from a Perspex shelf set slightly above eye height. This helps it to read as flight and has the unexpected benefit of casting a particularly beautiful shadow.

'Neoreplicants' - Exeter Phoenix, Gandy Street, Exeter EX4 3LS
Friday 16 November 2012 - Sat 19 January 2013
Featuring the work of 30 Southwest Artists including Catherine Cartwright, Mat Chivers, Sam Cook, Katy Connor, Maia Conran, Paul Channing, Susie David, Nick Davies, Robin Duttson, Gabrielle Hoad, Nicola Jaberi, Debbie Locke, Stephen Monger, Helen Snell, Michael Werbicki, Nicci Wonnacot.

Brain food

Ecoid data visualisation from The Confluence Project (2012) - iDAT

Art practice can get a bit solipsistic so it's good to stop and find out what other people (both artists and non artists) are thinking about. This week I've been able to attend Collider: Exploring Hybridity organised by Egenis at the University of Exeter and Data Ecologies organised by iDAT at Plymouth University.

Highlights of  Collider: Exploring Hybridity held at RAMM on 7th November as part of the ERSC Festival were Dr Susan Kelly on 'human chimerism' and Dr Robin Durie on the evolution of culture in robots. Dr Katharine Tyler on 'white ethnicity' was also extremely thought-provoking.  There were also great contributions from SW artists Susan Boafo and Paul Ramsay.

Slightly more related to current developments in my practice, Data Ecologies on 10th November was concerned with methods for 'making the invisible visible'. I especially liked the distinction drawn between dirty data and so-called clean data 'uncorrupted' by human subjectivity. Dirty data relates to qualitative research and 'citizen scientists'; clean data is usually quantitative information gathered via instruments.

There were fascinating contributions from Alice Sharp of Invisible Dust and Simon Blackmore from The Owl Project.  We also had an opportunity to visit the university's Immersive Vision Theatre where we experienced a giant digital model of a 3D fruit fly reassembled from electron-microscoped 'slices', and a visualisation of the constellations viewed from a non-earthcentric perspective (ie with depth).

I learned lots but, if I have one criticism, it's that many of the artists and works featured weren't really engaging with data as their material, they were simply using it as jumping off points for their ideas. Or (and I find this less forgivable) as something to pretty up for aesthetic results.  This is frustrating because data itself can be far more surprising and interesting than anything we can invent.  It just needs a little help to materialise in a form human senses can comprehend.

Conversations with Zola #4

Time to return my 1910 copy of Mutter Erde (La Terre) to The Library of Lost Books, complete with artist additions and amendments. In the end, I decided they should be quite modest.  They're based around the idea of the tri-lingual artefact (French novel, German translation, English reader) and are drawn from the closing line of the novel: 'Deaths, seed and bread grew of the earth'. Here it is, wrapped up and almost ready to go. 

http://gabriellehoad.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/conversations-with-zola-3.html

[in]visible now visible

Bird flights traced onto a window, a walk measured out in a pencil line … Drawings and photographs that track movement and time, and reveal the human presence in apparently objective observations.

Installed my show today at Exeter Phoenix Cafe Bar Gallery.  It's there until 3 November. All work is for sale.

http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/art/cafe-bar-gallery/gabrielle-hoad:-invisible.html

Time and motion studies

John Court - Spacex performance (2012)

Drawing, like performance, is durational, but some drawings make it more obvious that others. Being a bit obsessed with time and motion, I enjoy the way John Court reveals how many hundreds of hours he spent working on the drawings he currently has on show at Spacex, Exeter.

I encounter plenty of artists who share my interest in time and motion as conceptual subject matter, but few who are as concerned about the mundane business of productivity. "I like to feel I have done a day's work," he says. Agree. Though I would baulk at lying for eight hours in a pool of paint in the baking Venetian sun, an activity he recalled in conversation with Andre Stitt at Spacex last Saturday.  "I like to have a look over the edge," he says gently and smiles. I'm never quite clear if he's talking about physical endurance or the edge of a sheet of paper. I suspect both exert an equal pull on him. 

It was a privilege to hear the two of them talking together. We learned that UK-born John lives and works in Finland but doesn't speak the language. In fact, he struggles to read and write his native language. He's profoundly dyslexic and many of the works shown here grow from the impenetrability of the written word. Instead, they make language physical through movement, noise and tactility.  In his hands, language is no longer a transparent container of concepts, it's the stuff of the world. Brilliant.

John Court: The work between the lines
29 September - 24 November 2012  (with a day-long performance on 24 November)
www.spacex.org.uk