Katherine Penrice steals the show again this year. She’s doing some work with Rowse, the honey people, involving wax sculpture and using the smells and atmospheres of the industrious honey bee. But it’s the Riley-esque floor/mirror/sound pieces that captured most of my time this year.
Katherine came to one of my one-day website-for-artist courses last year, and unfortunately she still doesn’t seem to have a website. When you read this K, please get in touch and we’ll sort this situation out, asap.
Notable others? Lauren Healey, who co-incidentally had some role at A~N when the funding was agreed (but never paid) for said website courses. She has a sculptural installation involving one drawer from a chest, a pillow or two and an empty tin. Speaks of “loss, fragility, memory and loneliness” and “photographs of empty spaces printed onto letters whose authors have passed away.” Speaks to me of the non-payment of invoices, of course.
Charles Napier’s photography based billboard montages: badly exposed, poorly printed with wonk and fringing, they might be ‘found’ photographs aka nicked off the interwebs, and who knows if the text was applied later, although in most cases it’s pretty easy to tell.
He references the 90s cult of conventional advertising subversion to me, but subtly, without the biting wit. And of course placed in a gallery it has far less impact than guerilla street art made under cover of darkness and at risk of arrest, but hey, kudos to him all the same, unless of course one of the photos he nicked is mine. This one above could be Seaham beach. The one below is not one of Charles’, of course. That stuff’s all been done before, right?
My disparate companions’ top favourite by many earth miles this year is Tom Schofield’s News Globe. He’s using open source software, RSS and news stories from selected UK newspapers’ websites to track the frequency of key words and show them on a projection of a revolving world map. Very pretty, and with a useful message about bias, provincialism and the ethics of reporting. I like this iPhone photo, too.
Other works that connected in some way: Annie O’Donnell’s Based on Actual Events works with urban collapse and regeneration; Laura Cresser’s take on architecture and documentation, with her wee model of Alfred Stieglitz; Narbi Price’s primitive lithographs. That’s rather a lot to like, so go and see it, don’t stay at home this year, don’t go to Baltic instead.
To prompt a discussion on one of the north’s popular artist mailing lists, the listowner asked “Send out a picture of your mum. Write a poem.” Someone else asked what we’d seen that made us laugh or cry or rage. So I posted these:
Clare Twomey’s huge pile of old crocks. What does it say? I wrote:
Look At Me – I am a HUGE Pile of Broken Crockery!
I Am A Potential Avalanche Of Spiky Shards – Beware My Inner Power!
In capitals, like that. Shouty, but not as loud as THIS.Made me laugh at its preposterous arrogance. For goodness sake, you are just crocks! The familiarity and easy domesticity of our own smashed cup (I broke one the other day) and bulk of a (mini) Matterhorn is funny.
It may have been some statement about the collapse of the Stoke-on-Trent pottery industries, but I could find no reference to that in the artist’s statements, except that she does get sponsorship from Wedgewood.
What made it art? Why, it was in a Gallery, of course! I think we could easily go and collect any amount of illegally dumped fly-tip piles that would have just as, or more interesting content, but unless we were funded, or have a history of producing proper art, it wouldn’t qualify, would it?
And I posted this iPhone picture of my mother on Saltburn pier…
…and her poem:
Bring out your brightest brollies,
struggle through wind and rain.
The people of the north
know it’s summer time again.
She is tiny, and yes she’s a poet. (We must get on with making that book.)
Craig Wilson wrote that the poem and photo combo was better than anything he’d seen at MIMA, but I’m not sure that says much about either Connie’s poem, my aptitude with the cameraphone, or about MIMA, but still.
Go and see this year’s Newcastle MFA. If you’re going to be disgruntled about something you see in a gallery, think it’s Not Art, you might just as well be disgruntled, unsettled by the work of someone you know, or have met, or who works around the corner, and who needs the exposure, the feedback, the support.
Hello to the new people encountered at the opening, including one of the dynamos behind Designed and Made, and the hardworking head of sculpture, whose thoughtful and supportive input truly shows. Sculpture was the most interesting and best realised work this year, again. Congratulations to you all.
Rachel Maloney still hasn’t got a website either. Yes, she does! Rachel Maloney.com.
Why do artists find this so very difficult? Why is the north-east so poor at getting itself, getting northeast artists online? Please get in touch if you need help to set up a site like this one. It’s important, but if you’re reading, you will know that. At least there is a MFA website, and they have listed it on Art Rabbit, where I’ve started to list the EDAN exhibitions. Hooray.
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4 Comments
Great write-up of recent events! Although, I’m not really a list-owner as such, more a sort of glorified janitor. And that last picture has an artist from round here – I don’t know her name, but I think she has a residency at Carole’s coming up.
Yes, she was going to do 6 months at No7 but needs casual work to support herself, and there’s nothing around here at the mo. I am so sorry not to have been able to make it today.
Hello.
What an embarrasing picture of me, a good reason not to go to openings I feel! I do actually have a website its http://www.rachel-maloney.com xx
The only embarrassing thing about the picture is that I didn’t recognise you until I put it here. Sincerely very sorry about that. Eye test needed, methinks. :)
Thank you for your link: I’ve updated the post. The problem with image-based websites is that many of them don’t show up in Google searches. We could do an interview, if you like, so that people looking for you can find you here, and then click through. I have been doing a series of interviews with women photographers, and we’re due another one soon.