AA2A 30th Anniversary Exhibition

 

Lost - two pigeons/153 seconds | 2014 | Laser-sintered nylon

I'm happy to be part of an exhibition in Chester, celebrating 30 years of Artists Access to Art Colleges (AA2A). In 2013-14 I had a really productive year at the University of Plymouth, developing a project to model avian flight paths using state-of-the-art bird-borne data loggers.

While at Plymouth I was able to access some of the college's own 3D printing technology including a MakerBot in engineering that extruded and melted plastic filament, and a rather eccentric machine in the ceramics that extruded liquefied porcelain clay driven by compressed air - all ahead of making my own models from laser-sintered nylon, two of which are featured in the show.

While at Plymouth, I also spent productive hours in the life room thinking about serial and parallel processes in image making. ( See also drawing and flying.) I benefited from access to the library, from meeting other fantastic artists (Tabatha Andrews, Sally Hall, Kayleigh Hill, Lee McDonald and Jamie Barber) and students such as Rachael Allain on the scheme, and sharing my work through both on-site exhibitions and talks. Sadly Plymouth University no longer hosts AA2A (or even an art department!) but I would heartily recommend AA2A to anyone who does live near a participating college.

Image: 'Lost - two pigeons/153 seconds' | 2014 | Laser-sintered nylon. Made with support from Arts Council England and the Royal Veterinary College's' Structure & Motion Lab.

The AA2A 30th Anniversary Exhibition runs from 16th July to 13th August, and is open Monday to Saturday 10:00–16:00 at CASC Gallery, University of Chester, Creative Campus Kingsway, Kingsway, Chester, CH2 2LB

The Future Present

  

I am thrilled to be one of 52 contributors to The Future Present, an edition of 200 hardback pocket books compiled, curated and published by Nick Davies of Loophole Projects. We were all asked to share a message to the future and/or offer some kind of gift to posterity.

It's now available from Nick via his website. Each contributor receives a copy, a further 100 will be gifted by Nick over the next year. The remainder are available for purchase at a cost of £20.00 plus £5.00 postage (UK only) from www.nickdaviesworks.co.uk

The Future Present features contributions from: Lou Adams, Dominic Allan, Arcade/Campfa, Parimah Avani , Jacq Bebb , Charlotte van Berckel, Sovay Berriman, Jack Brown, Philippa Brown, Tom Cardew, Paul Carter, Stuart Crewes , Angela Davies, Jeremy Deller, Dharma Hounds, Amy Douglas, Mark Eaglen, Emma Edmondson, Steven Emmanuel, George Storm Fletcher, Tim Foxon, Ryan Gander, Georgia Gendall, Thomas Goddard, Rebecca Gould, Harry Grundy, S Mark Gubb, Lauren Heckler, Gabrielle Hoad, Ellie Hoskins, William Lang, Iwan Lewis, Micah Lexier, Rudy Loewe, James Lomax, LOW PROFILE, Catrin Menai, Paula Morison, Rebecca Moss, Radha Pate, Eddie Peake, Scott Robertson, Ryan Saunders, Aled Simons, Rhys Thomas, Mark Titchner, Charlie Tweed, Miranda Whall, Alan Whitfield, Sue Williams,Tomos Williams and Lucy Wright.

Green screen and travelling roses

 Under the Rose | Work in progress | 2026

While I've been putting the art world to rights, I've also been making and remaking films. I'm still very much a learner when it comes to moving image - trying to working out what kind of films I want to make and how much of the making I want to do myself. My latest adventure is in stop motion and green screen - two technologies I never imagined I'd be using. However, they have turned out to be the best way to manipulate an image of a rose for my latest film about Victorian mediumship.

I have in my mind the idea of 'apports': objects such as fruit, flowers, jewels and even live birds that materialised in the seance room from other locations. (Film itself is, of course, a tricksy, haunted medium, very well suited to exploring the contested powers of mediums.) 

I'm thinking about a rose that travels across time and space as we hear the words of Emma Hardinge Britten (1823 –1899), a writer, orator, trance clairvoyant, and spirit medium who advocated for scientific acceptance of mediumship and spiritualist phenomena. She was a sincere believer in the powers of mediums and I'm focusing on an article she wrote for The Spiritual Magazine in 1871 where she directed attention to the 'movement of a single rose leaf' as reason to believe in 'the opening of the gates of a new science'. 

At the same time I'm working on a new edit of The Signal and the Noise, not to replace but to reinterpret some of the material and give greater emphasis to Reeves' words. It's been quite a job as the original film, which ties together much of my and Megan Calver's thinking from 2021 to 2024, is tightly constructed. However, as a stand-alone cinema film, it now feels too busy and oblique. It might work better as a gallery film, where it could contextualise the different sculptural works we made during that period as we drew inspiration from the landscape and wartime history of the Isle of Purbeck. Although finding a suitable space to make such a show is a challenge in itself...

The raw and the cooked

A short film about Gabriel Orozco*

 Apologies in advance to current practising artists - myself included - but I feel I need to set this down.

I am alarmed to find myself bored with contemporary art and I want to understand why. The prospect of traipsing around yet another gallery has started to weigh heavy, when once it was an adventure, pursued with passion. I have started to opt out of openings, to not bother to make trips to shows I once would have considered unmissable. It's true, I am older and a little jaded but I think there's another problem. The art is getting worse.

To borrow a term from Claude Lévi-Strauss, I see a lot of raw rather than cooked art these days. By which I mean art for which the raw ingredients have been gathered but which has sidestepped the more challenging process of cooking (thinking and making) that resolves those ingredients into something new.

Perhaps you'll find pure research (photos, objects, drawings, papers) arranged in vitrines or on the gallery walls, which the viewer is invited to study as if marking the artist's homework.

Or, mundane photos / barely edited smartphone footage of little significance, were it not for some accompanying text that explains an idea or reference that occurred to the artist but remains unexpressed in the visuals.

Or illustrative paintings / drawings of people or landscapes that in themselves may connote important themes or narratives, but the painter is content to sit back and let the referents and not their own painterly labour do the work.  

Or imitative abstracts (painted or sculpted) that continue to riff on a revolution in art more than 50 years after the fact. 

Or art made to illustrate a doctoral thesis or tick a scientist's funding criteria or meet a museum's engagement agenda or fulfil a property developer's Section 106 requirement. 

Or art made to look like all the other art - clumsy painting; re-assembled painted pallets; fat bundles of stuff on on spindly legs; recycled kitsch; large draped pieces of fabric; random objects culled from the street around an urban studio. 

Or clunky artisanal ceramics, and other badly executed crafts presented with (if we're lucky) a splash of irony.  

Sometimes I see these things, recognise them for what they are and part with hard cash to hang them on my wall or put them on my shelves. Because I like them and think I could live with them. But that's interior design, not art.

Sometimes things can look like any of the above and still be full of important ideas. There are no rules.

But. 

Good art, cooked art, brings together unsuspected content to create new flavours. "What if?" "Why not?" "Fuck that!" It surprises, provokes, confuses, disrupts, asks questions, opens doors, creates awkwardness, angers, unsettles. It might give pleasure, but in a thoroughly overwhelming and disorienting way - like a relentless tickle or a dose of psilocybin, not a stroke of the head. 

It resolves into something that the artist needs to tell the world, consciously or unconsciously. It alters people's minds, their ways of being. In some small way, every piece of real art changes the world; it doesn't just add to the pile of meaningless stuff already in it. 

I understand many artists are battling almost impossible odds to have the time, physical space, head space and cash to make their work. These circumstances do not help artists to generate quality work, and sometimes I feel it's a miracle any art gets made at all. 

Very few of us can make significant, fascinating, provocative art all the time. But some of us, sadly, aren't even trying. 

 *Gabriel Orozco is one of many artists whose work and process I feel hits this high bar. See also https://gabriellehoad.blogspot.com/2011/04/love-and-hate-and-gabriel-orozco.html

Making space

Life drawing - 30-second pose | 1990s

Over the past few months, I've been sifting the contents of my house, regularly traipsing to the recycling centre with bin bags full of old artworks, advertising work and shredded papers. I am hoping to make some space for a small home studio by the end of the year. 

Looking back at old art is one of the hardest, saddest things. I've drawn and painted and made stuff since I was a child, believing that being good at something was all that mattered. When I realised people like me did not get to have careers in the arts, I found a 'proper' job in advertising instead. But I kept on with the sketchbooks and evening classes and summer schools.  

I promised myself I would return to art but, in the meantime I tried to build my skills. I learnt the basics of painting, printing, photography, casting, sculpting, design. Amidst all the sketchbooks and photos and experiments, I have unearthed stacks of old life drawings. I attended classes regularly, often after long days in the office, believing it to be an essential part of the artist's routine. But I also loved the intensity of the life room: the drawings you could only make in that moment with that person in front of you.

So what a shock when I finally made it to art school as a mature student to find the life room dismissed as a 'comfort zone' and the workshops and studio spaces being actively run down. Instead I was taught ideas and theories. After a bit, I adapted happily enough to a more conceptually oriented way of working, with much of the making outsourced. It's what I still, broadly speaking, do today. It suits my studio-less state. 

It's sad to think of all the long hours and labour I devoted to a dream that never quite materialised, but I don't see the time as wasted. In the moment it had meaning and I still use much of the knowledge I acquired - from plasterwork to print pre-production, sewing to screenprinting - even if it's only to commission makers who are more practised in their craft than me.

I do make, of course: I perform live actions, I arrange things in spaces, I bring people together for events, I create photos and moving image footage, I design publications and edit films. And, when I have bigger ideas I want to execute, I work things out through models and prototypes. But I do miss the process of thinking through making with my hands. It's a long time since I made physical marks and formed physical shapes simply to see what they show me. Or indeed since I went to life class. Just thinking about splooshing paint or ink or plaster around again makes me homesick with longing.  It's time to make some space for making.

On not being an artist

Image public domain from OpenClipart

A few days ago, I heard that a modestly funded residency I applied for had received over 250 applications. I'm grateful to the organisers for their transparency - and have adjusted my expectations of the outcome accordingly! They've clearly put a lot of thought into the application process: asking for the bare minimum they need to shortlist, while making it as accessible and easy as possible, so I have no grumbles with them. But it does indicate how few good-quality opportunties are available and how many artists are now competing for them.

No wonder so many artists are abandoning the profession (or even this entire Brexit-hobbled country) - often entering trades such as plumbing, carpentry, building, clothes-making, community organising, food and catering, horticulture, marketing, and painting and decorating ... Where they usually find their intelligence, creativity, energy and problem-solving skills are highly valued. Out in the real world, people expect to pay you for your time, materials and overheads, and respect you for being the expert you are. It's not all rosy, of course, but it is possible to earn a living and feel good about what you do.

Meanwhile I watch the demoralising privatisation of the art space and a corresponding drop in the quality of work that gains any traction. My Instagram feed is full of ads for self-funded 'residencies' in private venues; 'open' exhibitions charging extortionate entry fees; fee-based professional development opportunities promising to equip desperate artists with the skills to compete; and privately run galleries and venues pushing an agenda of exclusivity and privilege. And don't get me started on the way art has been colonised by bloated university departments pyramid-selling pointless qualifications. Any one would think artists are awash with money when, in fact, most are simply out of options.

It's not going to get better any time soon, so new strategies are needed. Even though I'd love to continue to share physical work in physical spaces, the opportunities to do so with proper support are becoming vanishingly rare - and eyewateringly competitive. My move towards film has been partly motivated by a desire to stop wrangling with gate-keepers and have more control over the means of production and distribution. Self-organised events will be key but, to reach larger, more international audiences, there are also thousands of film festivals and screenings.  

I've been pleasantly surprised by Film Freeway, a central hub for entering film festivals around the world. Yes, you still 'pay to play' as you would for an open exhibition but, if you're canny and hit earlybird entry fees, the costs stay low. Best of all, there's a very light admin burden: you upload your film and publicity materials just once, for free, and then pay fees as and when you choose to enter different festivals. No tailored proposals required, no images and statements in umpteen different formats, no delivery and collection days where you must turn up in person to hand in or collect your work. 

It's this kind of respect for the busy and precarious lives of people who make stuff that I'm looking for, whether it's the paid residency with a simple application process and transparent communication, or the application platform that alleviates my admin burden. I also really appreciate a thoughtful rejection message (because, let's face it, we see far more of those than acceptances!)

Curators and commissioners probably do need to think harder about what they are asking of artists when they advertise opportunities ... before we all become so exhausted we stop bothering to apply (no joke). Andrew Simonet is very good on the extractive nature of artist call-outs and what organisations might do to improve things.  

The Film Festival Experience

I feel privileged to have had my film The Porous Body shown as part of the Official Selection at Two Short Nights 2026. It's really thrilling (as well as totally overwhelming) to see your film on the big screen and to hear it relayed through a cinema sound system. It was also very instructive.  I've spent the weekend doing a few tweaks: correcting tiny mistakes that were suddenly evident in this new setting.

As an artist more used revealing my new work in gallery spaces, it felt incredible to have a room full of strangers sit quietly in the dark and give my film their full attention. By contrast, a gallery private view is mostly full of people standing around drinking wine and gossiping.

But here's the thing I have to accept about film festivals. My films may or may not find complementary company. The Porous Body was shown as part of a programme called 'Something Feels Off', which focused on horror, suspense and the uncanny. As soon as I saw the programme I knew that my low-budget, low-key, research-driven film was going to be swamped. The other films (all of them well-resourced dramas) were great but they were of a very different genre. I was proud of the integrity and simplicity of my work, but it simply didn't fit.

(By contrast, the film I made with Frankie Williams and Tim King as part of the Two Short Nights 48-Hour Film Challenge benefited enormously from being screened alongside similarly make-shift, chaotic works in an atmosphere of generosity and hilarity.)

This isn't a criticism of the programming as I understand how hard it is to fit everything together for a festival. There's no perfect way in such a crammed schedule to give each film the space it deserves. But it is something I need to consider as I continue to make submissions to different film festivals.