Looking inward and looking outward

Finding the common threads in our practice, Gabrielle Hoad with Amy Shelton and Bettina Amtag   Preston Street Union  | Photo: Martyn Windsor/Spacex

Exeter is an isolated city that tends towards the parochial. It needs an outward-facing, internationally focused contemporary art gallery -- far more than it needs another local arts organisation. And it used to have one in Spacex. But since Arts Council England axed Spacex's regular (NPO) funding, they've had to work with what they've got.

In some ways, this shift in focus has been good news for local artists. In the old days, because of that international remit, local artists were very much the audience. Now we are participants: direct beneficiaries of the new programme of community engagement and education that has - for now - replaced the rolling exhibitions programme.

The most recent and exciting manifestation of this was the crowd-funded residency of Birmingham-based artist and curator Trevor Pitt. His Preston Street Union (PSU) was an affiliation of artists from in and around Exeter that came together over a five-week period (13 October – 7 November 2015) to explore collaboration as a strategy. It drew on and extended elements from Trevor's earlier experiment in alternative education, the Cannon Hill Art School, and referenced the work of influential artist and educator Josef Albers. It gave participants the opportunity to hear from artists such as Juneau Projects and Clare Thornton, and explore their approaches through short, super-intense practical exercises. We were also invited to participate in Cathy Wade's Shaun Ryder Beermat Show. The final full-day session was run by Emily Warner as a more extended opportunity to examine and respond to the context of the Spacex building at 45 Preston Street.

My personal practice is very focused on research and reflection, which meant I found PSU tough, tiring and occasionally bewildering (as with the Kaleider Ideas Lab a couple of years ago). But being driven to make live work with others, and with very little time to think, opened up some new freedoms for me, and also a chance to experience some of the more positive aspects of artistic collaboration. (On which, more in a later post.)

If I have any reservations, it's that the doors were never fully open to the public. Local school and community groups attended workshops with Trevor, alumni of Exeter's now defunct College of Art & Design came together for a reunion evening, and those who helped to fund the residency were invited to a social event with Trevor where he talked about the project.

But if you're someone who knew and loved the Spacex of old, but wasn't involved in PSU, it must feel like a very long time since Spacex was part of your life. Those golden days when you got to wander into the gallery at a time of your choosing and reflect quietly on some interesting contemporary art -- ideas from the world beyond Exeter.

Starlings by Dennis Hlynsky

Dennis Hlynsky | Starlings take off at 200 fps (still)

I've seen this technique before but never so well used. Technology has finally caught up with the aspirations I had 10 years ago to track bird flight paths. It's wonderful stuff, but part of me still prefers my wobbly window tracings. With thanks to Helen Drever. View the full animation here.

Plymouth Art Weekender

Phil Magee | Intervention HQ | Plymouth Art Weekender 2015

A quick mention for the Plymouth Art Weekender, a multi-site visual arts festival that highlighted the extraordinary wealth of activity in this now buzzing coastal city. Directed by Gordon Dalton and built around a small number of specially commissioned pieces by the likes of Tim Etchells and Serena Korda, it also extended an open invitation to local artists to be part of the programme. There was far too much to see in one day, but what I did experience was truly amazing: from a wonderful large-scale etching by Grayson Perry at the newly opened Ocean Studios to the extraordinary interventions by Phil Magee in a local small-business centre. Visual art in Plymouth has come a long way in the last 10 years.

Plymouth Art Weekender 25/26/17 September 2015.

The Luminous Envelope

Gabrielle Hoad | The Luminous Envelope | 2015 | Digital photograph

The Luminous Envelope is a series of photographs made in response to Fresnel's Wave Surface, one of a collection of late 19th century/early 20th century teaching models held at Oxford University's Mathematical Institute. It describes the propagation of light in an optically biaxial crystal. The crystal's molecular structure causes light to refract in predictable ways, and the university's model offers a 'snapshot' of this wavefront as it radiates from the centre.

The model renders the behaviour of light as solid, interlocking, plaster objects. I set out to invert that process by dissolving tangible objects (cubes, cones) into zones of light. Techniques used to make the images incorporate polarisation, a phenomenon employed in the study of crystals.

The photographs can be seen in 'Illegitimate Objects', alongside work from other artists working with different models from the Oxford collection. The exhibition runs from 18 September to 12 November 2015 at the Oxford Mathematical Institute, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2

https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/14879

An illegitimate object? Fresnel's wave surface.

Here's a little video from Oxford Maths Institute, showing the model of Fresnel's wave surface that I've been working with over the past few months. This two-part, interlocking plaster structure describes the propagation of light in an optically biaxial crystal.

It could be considered an 'illegitimate' object because pure mathematics can't really be conveyed through physical objects. An article in Wired magazine claims such models – made in the late 19th/early 20th century and previously used as teaching aids in university departments – were locked away in the 1940s "to protect students from the dangers of intuition".

The photographs I made in response can be seen at 'Illegitimate Objects', alongside work from other artists working with different models from the Oxford collection. The exhibition runs from 18 September to 12 November 2015 at the Oxford Mathematical Institute, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG More information on this and other models held in their collection can be found at www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/14847

Illegitimate Objects - exhibition opens soon

Hide #1 (Beach)

Gabrielle Hoad | Hide #1 (Beach) | 2015 | Textile sculpture, action and documentation

Building on my interest in animal surveillance and the way scientific knowledge is constructed, I have been working with the idea of the hide, a camouflaged structure that seeks to efface the presence of the human observer and encourage 'natural' behaviour in those observed. A digital image was made at the site, printed on fabric and returned to its source in the form of a hat.