Artists as Parents as Artists

We went to this event today by Townley and Bradley at First Site in Colchester. They were exploring how having children has changed their practice and become part of their practice.

The session was mixture of play, films, presentation and discussion. In the talk they used a mixture of powerpoint and banners. Bradley said that 'Banners were like a medieval powerpoint' which I really liked. One of the slogans was 'sensual engagement conceptual rigour'. It is interesting thinking about how people of all ages experience things sensually and how that physical engagement could be seen as part of most successful art. The conceptual rigour part is essential, but there is also no reason to think that children are not capable of this. Interestingly though Townley and Bradley were very clear about their children not being artists.

A theme in the talk was children as curators. Townley had made some great drawings (1 a day) of how their children place objects in relation to one another, and in the discussion afterwards we spoke about the huge attachment that children have to the physical, material presence of objects. They often like to be close to particular objects physically, like carrying a special stone to bed with them.

Another thing I really liked was they started the talk with a banner which was a simplified spread sheet of their accounts for the last year. It was good that they acknowledged the interconnectedness of the challenge of supporting your family and being an artist, and how that influences the work you might make.

S

Paper Planes

Hi Rachel,

This is a show I saw today at Phase 2, Arup, by Nicolas Grospierre http://www.grospierre.art.pl It was based on the design of an aircraft museum in Krakow. Grospierre took photos of the different surfaces of the aviation museum and flattened them, creating a paper design to then be made into paper aeroplanes.

Visitors could make one. Here is mine. And he had some larger ones.




Sx

Prefab estate in Catford

Hi Rachel,

We went to see the Prefab Excalibur estate in Catford which was built by German and Italian prisoners of war. It has been in the news recently as it is under threat of being demolished by Lewisham council.

As with the estate at Thamesmead it was really interesting to see how the residents have adapted each place to make it into a individual and often quirky home. I also liked the tin roof prefab church designed as part of the estate.

There are 187 homes here. This is a photo from the 60's.

Sx

p.s. more images on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/barbaresiandround/sets/72157625747470679/

Form Alice and Joe Woodhouse

Hi Rachel,

Just seen Corrina Spencer's blog post about Form at Transition http://www.corinnaspencer.com They are sister and brother who have worked very directly together on drawings.

Transition website: "Their work begins as a grid of blank paper onto which both of them in turn draw without conferring. After numerous edits and rearrangements the final result is achieved when both artists feel the work to be complete"

I'm interested in different possible models for collaboration and like the idea of a silent visual exchange.

S

A short tour during Oxford Open House weekend

Hi Suzy,
Oxford had a weekend of various buildings around the city being opened to the public (called open doors - a bit like open house in London) and so we spent a day visiting a few interesting places.

We started at Bartlemas Church - a short distance from our house, just off the Cowley Road. After going through a gate marked private (it is on land owned by Oriel College), we passed an old stone farmhouse, and came to the church which has a 16th century building next to it, the old leper hospital which has been re-built - the original was built in the 12th century, and the chapel was added in the 14th Century.

The gardens around the chapel are quite overgrown and it is hard to connect this peaceful spot, which feels rural as a cotswold hamlet, with the hubbub of the Cowley Road nearby. This spot would have felt quite remote from the rest of the city prior to the Victorian development of East Oxford - the way an area like Blackbird Leys, located outside the ring road, feels now.

I had to photograph the ceiling of the chapel - the bold colour works so well in the otherwise simple and undecorated space.







We visited New College, purely because Z had watched a TV programme about it a few days previously so we thought it would be nice for her to see it. I've included a pic of the cloisters as Jacobsen took this traditional form in collegiate architecture and brought it into the 20th century at St Catherine's college.



We had a guided tour of St Catherine's college. The lady who took us around was very knowledgeable about the building and told us all sorts of interesting anecdotes. It seems that the college are very serious about caring for the building and respecting the original design so it is one of the best preserved examples of Jacobsen's work. The interiors are still totally original, and they replace furniture like with like. The library was particularly impressive, with delicate spiral staircases, mezzanines overlooking the main space, and a reading area which feels cosy and intimate despite being in such a vast space because the light shades hover just over the circular tables.

The enormous concrete beams in the dining room were brought into Oxford pre-cast. The surface of the concrete is beautiful. It looks slightly mottled and is very smooth as it was cast in mahogany moulds. The way the beams extend slightly beyond the outside walls, surrounded by glass gives a sense of delicacy and lightness that contradicts the weight and solidity of the concrete. The pillars that support the beams go very deep into the ground (they are only half visible). I think this was because they were building on drained marshland/flood plain and are supporting so much weight.














Rachel

a disused motorway under Friedrich Gerlach Brüche in Friedenau Berlin

Tempelhof

Some images of the derilict Tempelhof airport that B and I went to last week. It has only been out of action since 2008, and is now a public space. Built in 1923. Although it has only been a couple of years it is already being over grown and interesting to imagine how it would be in 10 or 20 years. While we were there B played with some Kindergarten children. The teacher told me how her father had remembered it as fields he played in before the airport was built and now returning to that status. It is right in the city so polution and noise was a problem.

Hitler was a big fan of Tempelhof, and under Speer's direction the terminal was rebuilt in 1934. It was also the lifeline for Berlin, when the Soviets cut off all transport by water or land in 1948.

More images www.flickr.com/photos/barbaresiandround

work in progress

Hi Rachel,

This is to give you a sense of how things are developing with the piece for the Art and Architecture show.

The images I had been working with, the photos i took of the buildings and grounds were naturally quite geometrical and felt a bit restrictive with the projection. My starting point for where i have got to now was the plastic cover for B's alphabet stamps (that came free with a newspaper). When projected it reminded me of an ariel view of a group of buildings. So I started working with a google earth image of Brunel University, and cutting into and painting onto the plastic.

I painted onto some paper on the wall to try and give a sense of how the projection might work with a wall painting. I'm not sure its totally successful, but I could imagine it working if the painting was a bit more pared down and selective. I really like working with this push and pull between the projected image and the painting.

A couple of images also of using different materials with projecting.

Surfacing briefly

I feel i should post on the blog, just to say i'm here! My time and energy has been directed elsewhere in the last 8 months as you know. It has taken a long time to reach a stage where i get some 'me' time, but Poppy has started napping on her own, so i get an hour or two every day when i'm not holding a baby now. I think it will be a while before i'm really involved in my/our work again! But i have the occasional thought/idea. Its great to see what you're doing and your ideas develop for the work for Brunel's art and architecture exhibition.

Bradford

Hi Rachel,

While in Bradford over Easter we went out looking at a couple of significant buildings from the early 70's which are now empty, which coincidentally were both designed by Matt's Dad's firm John Brunton and Partners.

The Bradford and Bingley Building Society headquarters in Bingley. It has a very sympathetic relationship with the hills, and the zig zag flow of the 5 rise locks. Since the financial crisis and government bail out the savings part of the business was sold to Santander. It is now up for sale/let.

Also the Yorkshire building society headquarters in Bradford.

And we took a look at the big hole in the middle of Bradford at the moment. There were plans to 'regenerate' the centre. The existing buildings were demolished, then the financial crisis of 2008 happened and it has been left derelict. There are posters around the site saying bitterly, 'Bradford's regeneration, The Sky's the limit'

Modern ruins in general is quite a key theme of our work, starting with the Thamesmead project, and something I've been thinking about a lot since going to the derelict Iraqi embassy last summer. I was interested to read this piece in Frieze January issue http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/decline_and_fall it has some interesting references for other artists who have worked are working with this theme such as: Martha Rosler’s 1993 video How Do We Know What Home Looks Like?,where she explores Le Cobusier’s Unité d’Habitation at Firminy-Vert.

I wonder about the danger of sentimentality towards Modernism, a nostalgia for an era of greater certainty, "The variously thoroughgoing or superficial archaeology of architectural and artistic Modernism that has exercised so many artists in the last decade is patently, on one level, a discourse on ruins in a Romantic mode."

I've put all the pics on http://www.flickr.com/photos/barbaresiandround

S

Brunel University

Hi Rachel,

I've put the photos of Brunel University on www.flickr.com/photos/barbaresiandround and found out a little about the history of the Campus at Uxbridge.

It came about from the radical changes made in further education post-war, whereby each education authority had to submit plans for its own area with a view to meeting the growing needs of the population. Brunel university was a development from Acton Technical college. In 1957 it was decided that the facilities at Acton were holding back the college's growth. One site contintued at Acton with National Certificate and craft courses, and approval was given for the site at Uxbridge to focus on technology and was called Brunel college of Technology, then was granted University status in 1966. In 1971 it left the Acton site and the whole University was brought together at Uxbridge.

The site and buildings were designed by Sheppard, Robson & Partners www.sheppardrobson.com and the main phases built in 1965-7. The idea of the students feeling loyalty to the University as a whole rather than just departments was important to the concept. The buildings are interconnected and are designed to bring students of different discaplines together.

S

more Landy

Was wondering about Oxford / Paris Correspondence and how we made art from very little, or things considered without value - literally discarded. How does it relate to ideas about giving art value? It probally has little relationship now. It's the opposite of contracts medieval artists had with a church they were being commisioned by, where the amount of lapis lazuli and gold leaf in a madonna would be specified.

I went to the closing party. It was interesting to see the types of work people had thrown in. Lots of big painterly painting. What people decide is a failure is to a large extent about the contemporary situation and that is a collective thing.

Michael Landy Art Bin

Hi Rachel,

I took one of our postcards to the Art bin at the South London Gallery last weekend. Michael Landy was there and asked me about it. It was one of the bourse de travail or job centre designed by Niemeyer in the northern Parisian suburb of Bobigny.

I guess he wants to make sure that people aren't coming and putting their rubbish in it. But I had to fill in quite an official form about rights to the work and it was archived. I was looking at his tweet www.twitter.com/LandysArtBin and he was talking about peoples contributions. He seems to value things sent from a long way or where there is alot of effort or loss involved.

Sx

Berlin Wall Paintings

Here are some outdoor paintings/mosaics I found around Berlin.