Safety in numbers

Preston Street Union - The inertia of the unknown  - Art Week Exeter 2017

As I disappeared inside a giant improvised paper envelope a couple of weeks ago, I felt a real sense of liberation. I was doing it simply because someone had written 'inside the lining of a duvet' on a card I had been dealt and this was the closest me and my fellow artists could manage with the resources available. We were following instructions generated by the Preston Street Union Random Art Machine.

It may sound odd, but the responsibilities of an artist can sometimes feel onerous. For the best of reasons, you get quite locked into particular themes and particular ways of working, and it seems a little irresponsible to deviate. So the idea of submerging yourself in a group identity, then going on to make spontaneous, randomly generated, collaborative work, feels like a real holiday. Sharing responsibility for outcomes means you can take risks and play in a way you probably haven't done since before college - but you really should do all the time.

Preston Street Union is an affiliation of artists from in and around Exeter who were first brought together by Trevor Pitt during his 2015 residency at Spacex gallery. Given the wild diversity of our artistic concerns and our different career stages, it amazes me that we've continued working together, but we have - each in parallel with our own individual practices. Sometimes all we make when we're together is a mess - that's the nature of experimentation. But this time - for Art Week Exeter - I think we (mostly) got it right. We took the risk of creating works live in the gallery and involved the wider public as contributors, spectators and occasional participants.

Responses were largely positive. We were included in Maddy Hearn's survey of Art Week Exeter for a-n.co.uk and reviewed by Terah Walkup, Curator of Fine Art at Plymouth City Museum for the AWE blog. Her words are quoted below.

"Visitors to PS45 in the former Spacex gallery, hosting the Preston Street Union Random Art Machine and the exhibition, Being Human, were in for a treat. Possibly one of the most joyous collaborations during Art Week Exeter, the Random Art Machine was the modern-day inheritor of Dadaism and mid-century performance art.

One year into their association, the affiliation of artists that make up Preston Street Union came together in a project that was both risky and chaotic but whose end product was a successful collaboration that business consultants would pay oodles to replicate. These artists relinquished control of the material, concept, and even title of the works of art they came together to create. Audiences tweeted titles, visitors brought in assorted objects and materials, and participants at the Art Market jotted down concepts on dozens of note cards. After a bout with a dart gun, I witnessed the creation of a work titled Sky Grid – a response to Tolstoy’s War and Peace (one of the prompts) – that unfolded in a conceptual performance whose real value lay not in the final tug-of-war game – which a more astute reviewer could read as metaphor – but in the preparatory conversations and negotiations that make up the interpretive process of art-making."

The Preston Street Union Random Art Machine featured as part of Art Week Exeter 2017 and was supported by Spacex.

Listening to Dartmoor

I was lucky enough to join Devon naturalist and sound artist Tony Whitehead, and tracker and bushcraft expert Robin Bowman on an early morning listening event organised in conjunction with the RSPB and Art.Earth. Taking place in a private woodland near Moretonhampstead on Dartmoor, it was a chance to listen in to one of the season’s early dawn choruses and learn more about the birds and other living things that inhabit the site.

Setting out at 4.15am and navigating narrow Dartmoor lanes in the darkness and mist, we parked up at Moor Barton at 5.00am and met others by torchlight. Gathering in a tight circle in the dark we listened to the silence (it was an incredibly still night), the owls and eventually the vast sound horizon of the first passing flight. We then walked in silence down a dark woodland path and gathered around a fire to wait for the dawn chorus, which swept towards us from the east as the darkness fell away.

There was a dream-like quality to being awake when I’d usually be asleep, and to being with other people and yet not being able to see their faces or hear their voices (much). Being silent with others in such a remote place felt safe and companionable but, at the same time, offered a sense of connection to the wider, wilder environment.

Over the next few hours, we explored the woodland site in the early morning mist: spending time with a particularly lively yellowhammer, smelling otter spraint and looking closely at deer tracks. I experienced a real tension between wanting to know facts about the place (which necessitated verbal explanation) and not wanting to hear words, just the place itself.

Robert Macfarlane has quite a lot to say about the particularity - and value - you afford something when you name it and, even now, I'm hearing bird voices better as a result of those identifications. But I also walked away feeling I would have liked even more silence from the humans and more voice from the place.

This event on 15th March 2017 was part of a series of listening events leading up to the In Other Tongues creative summit at Dartington Hall, Devon in June.

Uncomfortable in our own skins

Delighted that Throw Only To Alert Catcher at Gallery 333 was chosen by Alistair Fitchett to wrap up his 50/50 series on the Unpopular blog, not least because his thoughts about the work are so perceptive.  It's always gratifying to know someone 'gets' your work. Here's a sample:

"Here is art that exists uncomfortably within its own skin. Throw Only To Alert Catcher is art for whom that very discomfort is perhaps its most important quality. For whilst this is a work that explores relationships between the human and the non-human, its ultimate message is perhaps that any attempt to define such a relationship is doomed to at best discomfort and at worst abject (but glorious) failure."

You can read the full article - and more of Alistair's wonderful reflections on art and music at https://unpopular.typepad.com/unpopular/2016/12/2016.html

The critical and the creative

Frank Auerbach - Sketch: Mornington Crescent (1972)

The South West's perennial problem of how to generate more critical dialogue around the visual arts was addressed once again with the launch of the Art Writers Group at Hestercombe House last week. Originating in a writing workshop organised by Visual Arts South West, the group is co-ordinated by Peter Stiles and Josephine Lanyon and has just appointed four funded writers-in-residence at three locations: Plymouth, Cornwall and Bristol.

We heard from the writers in residence Patrick Langley (Cornwall), Lizzie Lloyd (Plymouth), Tom Jeffreys (Plymouth), and Mary Paterson (Bristol) as well as Phil Owen of Tertulia and Greg Neale of Resurgence magazine.

Topics under discussion included Authorship, Context and Publication. A highlight for me was Mary Paterson performing a text that took in, among other things, the refugee crisis, Vikings, walking and the slipperiness of memory.  I also enjoyed Lizzie Lloyd's conjuring of a painting by Peter Doig purely through words (and a little rhythmic pacing). Plus I got to spend a few precious minutes with a Frank Auerbach sketch in the gallery upstairs.

It was an inspiring day - and an opener to what I hope will be a far wider and deeper discussion, but the emphasis on creative writing in response to contemporary art side-stepped some of the more pressing issues surrounding art writing in relation to the region's art practice. I'm all for opening up the question of what critical writing might be but, to function in support of the visual arts ecology, it needs to be more than yet another creative activity.

The issue for me is that we need more critical dialogue around art. That means people who are prepared to respond rigorously to work in ways that allow its makers, curators and audiences to understand, learn and grow. I'm not arguing for critics as the ultimate arbiters of taste and quality, but about capable writers and speakers deploying integrity and precision in describing their responses.

I'm not saying this can't be done through creative writing, but riffing off of someone else's work to make a text work of your own is not always the same as trying honestly to interpret, and enhance appreciation of, that work. There's a reason why we might prefer to practice slightly oblique creative writing over reviewing - and that's because it's easier to hide what you really think. South West practitioners operate in a very messy, close-knit world where everyone has multiple roles. A writer might also be an artist who in 18 months time will be looking to collaborate with the artists or curators they're about to review.

There are other issues too. Although the subject of money was avoided until the closing minutes at Hestercombe, it is at the heart of how we create a properly critical atmosphere. If you want professional writers, curators, academics and critics to write generously and fairly about art, you need to pay them (or they will be too busy doing their actual jobs to give the art the time and thought it deserves). As paid opportunities for critical writing continue to shrink, it is increasingly the artists and arts organisations themselves who commission texts. Of course this need not actually stifle critical thinking, but we need to be alert to the fact that whoever pays the bill holds the power.

I have written on related topics before, back in 2014 and 2010. See more here:
http://gabriellehoad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/critical-friends-hard-to-find-harder.html
http://gabriellehoad.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/good-and-bad-art.html
http://gabriellehoad.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/is-there-right-way-to-write-about-art.html 

Digbeth First Friday

Artists Behind Bars at Grand Union, Digbeth, 2 December 2016

What sort of landscape do artists in other cities operate in? How do they solve problems like money, space, resources, profile-building, critical dialogue and networking? Can productive connections (both real and conceptual) be made between their environment and the community in which I work?

I was lucky enough to join Preston Street Union's December trip to Digbeth First Friday, a co-ordinated monthly opening of Birmingham visual arts venues. Over seven intense hours we toured this thriving industrial area on the edge of the city centre, getting a flavour of Birmingham's artist-led activity. We also reconnected with PSU's founder Trevor Pitt and other artists such as Juneau Projects and Cathy Wade who were involved in our early days with Spacex. 

First stop was the Daphne Francis Gallery in the landmark Custard Factory where we met the Cobalt Blue artist group and viewed their show Balance. From there we went on to the Eastside Projects Winter Art Fair, where we also saw Simon Bayliss' show Frantic Romantic and glimpsed elements of The Production Show with works by Linda Brothwell, Alice Channer, Nicolas Deshayes, Des Hughes and Peter Nencini. 

At Grand Union we visited shows at Vivid Projects: Black Hole Club and Centrala, then stopped for food at Digbeth Dining Club - a weekend street-food market.  Next up: A3, a space run by Trevor Pitt and Oliver C Jones, to see Catching Rabbits & Starting Fires, an event by Tom James focused on survival skills. We caught up with Juneau Projects, who we'll be working with next year, and met Mark Murphy who has a show of collage works - Remains - in the A3 project space with John Bennett. 

Back at Grand Union, we ended the evening at the Artists Behind Bars Christmas party with Fierce, where invited artists ran themed bars within a warehouse party setting. It made me think of the recent talk in Exeter by Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and her belief that enabling other people to play is a legitimate way to make art.

The quality and quantity of affordable space for art and artists close to city centre is a key factor in the success of the Birmingham visual arts scene. But its extraordinary level of ambition and energy is also driven by a strong local art school, a young and diverse population, and a high volume of resident artists. Exeter will never match it, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from it.

A singing bit of blue

Calver David Hoad | Throw only to an alert catcher | 2016 | Gallery 333

Following on from its first showing in some beach huts at Dawlish Warren, the work I made with Megan Calver and Susie David is having a second, smaller outing at Gallery 333, Exeter Phoenix.

Given the space restrictions, it's very much an edit of the work we showed before, but with the addition of some more objects from our fieldwork and a rather special blue. This colour harks back to early spring when we gazed up at the sky, trying to spot the larks we could hear so clearly.

We wanted to bring a sense of the outdoors into the gallery, so we used a colour matched to the hue of the deepest blue in a photograph of a clear Dawlish sky. It's a translation that works for me, given that the idea of mimicry (and inevitable slippage between signs and things) pervades our collaborative work.

http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/events/throw-only-to-an-alert-catcher/

16 November 2016 - 7 January 2017

Exeter Phoenix, Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, EX4 3LS

Throwing again to alert catchers

Following on from our two-day show in October in some beach huts, the work I made with Megan Calver and Susie David at Dawlish Warren National Nature Reserve is having a second, smaller outing at Gallery 333, Exeter Phoenix.

We're using this intimate installation space to show our video reel and a selection of objects from our fieldwork. Our joint actions and activities focused on creating dialogue between the human and nonhuman, often through strategies such as mimicry and hiding.

http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/events/throw-only-to-an-alert-catcher/

16 November 2016 - 7 January 2017

Mondays to Saturdays 10am-5.30pm (Please check opening times if visiting over the Christmas period.)

Exeter Phoenix, Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, EX4 3LS