Market Estate Project

Great News! Joe and I have been selected for the Market Estate Project.

http://www.marketestateproject.com

It's a fantastic community art project. Market Estate is a 1960s housing estate (with a lot of social problems) near Caledonian Road. It's being demolished and rebuilt for the community. But before the bulldozers move in they are inviting 50 artists to take over the flats and make a 'creative playground' of the empty flats, facades and public spaces.

Over 350 artists applied and the proposal that Joe (my studio-mate) and I submitted has been selected to the top 50.

We're proposing to make an installation that explores the relationships between colour, memory, danger and notions of home as a response to the particular kind of domestic setting of the building's location and the period in which it was built.

We aim to re-create a 1967 living room, but paint everything in the space (including the walls, floors, ceiling, fixtures & fittings, domestic objects, personal items) with fluorescent yellow paint. Like Denis Severs' House we intend the space to feel as if it is inhabited but the resident has temporarily left the room. There will be mundane objects such as a half-eaten piece of toast for example, and a cup of tea that will signify this presence - all coloured fluorecent yellow.

We've decided to use fluorescent yellow because of the many things it is used to represent in everyday life: safety, danger, authority, rebellion and hope. These themes were prevalent in the 1960s: the hope and safety of utopian housing schemes, the uncertainty and danger of the atomic bomb, the changing form of antiquated authority and the rebellion against authority by young and student movements.

These themes can be seen to resonate with concerns arising once more in today's society as well as the imminent demolition of this building. Furthermore, the colour can be read as a caricature of the nuclear age due to its violent glow. Like the 'space city' architecture of the Market Estate building, nuclear power was supposed to herald harmony and prosperity, instead results yielded unforeseen, sometimes catastrophic, side-effects. It's our aim that the ubiquitiousness and luminosity of the colour will alter the viewer's perceptions of time, space and the formal nature of the objects in the room. We hope the environment will become an uncanny immersive reality.

We hope the work will be reflect a sense of hope and optimism but be unnervingly saturated. We intend to evoke both a nostalgia for the utopian idealism of the 1960s (a paradise lost) but also question whether in the context of the Market Estate it could rather be seen as a promise gone sour.


If anyone has 20L of fluorescent yellow paint they could spare... we'd be very grateful!!

New Studio

I'm hugely pleased to be able to announce that I've finally moved into a studio. It's a brilliant space in The Old Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey.

Bermondsey used to be known as 'Biscuit Town' because of the smell of the biscuits baking and the fact that 4,000 people living here worked in this factory. It was built in 1866 and only closed in 1989. Peek Freane not only invented the humble Bourbon and Garibaldi biscuits here, but in the 1930s (at the height of the 'cocktail age', so they claim) our studio was the birthplace of the mighty Twiglet. No doubt with such an inspiring spirit in the walls great things shall be created here!

I'm sharing a 370 sq ft space with Joe Morris (a fellow painter from Camberwell) and there are 18 other young artists with studios here. It's a beautiful building with high ceilings and big windows. It has roughly put up wall divisions so it feels very communal. The Biscuit Factory are trying to fill our building with arts organisations. So far, our neighbours include: The Royal Court, Shunt, some sculptors and a temporary gallery space. As well as a great cafe (scampi & chips highly recommended), there is a printers on-site and a strong sense of community.

We can't really believe how lucky we are! ACAVA have negotiated an 18-month contract for us and we all moved in 2 weeks ago so have been busy painting walls, moving in furniture and getting to know one another.

If you're interested in visiting, please do get in touch. We love to show people around and we make a mean cuppa tea.

Watch out for details of Open Studios in the New Year.

For information on ACAVA studios see: http://www.acava.org.uk

FROL-IK Masquerave

SHOWPONY have been asked to create a series of artist-designed masks for the FROL-IK (an East London based DJ Collective) Masquerave night on the 20th January 2010, at The Miller in Borough.

My design is based on modernist architecture and 1950s design.

SHOWPONY. Stimulates. Creative. Collaboration.

One of the things I've been working on has been setting up SHOWPONY.

SHOWPONY is an artist-led collective of four female graduates of University of the Arts. Formed in Peckham in September 2009 by Jess Blandford, Grace Schofield, Charlotte Settle and Amy Woodward.

SHOWPONY stimulates creative collaboration. We hunt out creative opportunities to make and showcase contemporary fine art, and stimulate lively critical discussions and interactions.

We believe in building strong creative alliances to support avant-garde art making and pride ourselves on our approachabiltiy, integrity and our get-stuck-in attitude.

We are curating a series of art-related events including: exhibitions, talk nights, art tours and collaborative projects with other creative organisations.

We will also be hosting an emerging artist's community forum on our website.

We've been busy over the last few months. Some of our recent and current projects include:

'Through the eyes of an emerging artist' tours of Frieze Art Fair 2009; mural commission for Marmite Pop-Up Shop; digital collaboration with Id&Ego; Lucky Pages Directory with LuckyPDF; design project with FROL-IK; Cambridge-Peckham Ideas Exchange; 100 books for young artists project.

See SHOWPONY on-line for more details:

http://showponyart.blogspot.com

or follow us on twitter:

http://twitter.com/Showponyart

We're always interested in creating stimulating collaborative projects with other artists or creative organisations. To get in touch with an idea please email us at: showpony.art@gmail.com

2008 Works

This is from a series of paper houses that I made which involved the notion of destruction. The paper houses (based on places I have lived) were painstakingly constructed by hand and then destroyed in a performance on the opening night of an exhibition at Area 10 in April 2008. This series was the beginning of my interest in fragile structures and explored the notion of artistic control, in that I had to let go of my work and allow it to be changed by others. The only 'instruction' the performers were given was to change the structure using the domestic implement they were given. The performance was documented through photographs, and the resulting 'disaster structures' were displayed for the rest of the week-long show.

At this time I also made a film of a paper house being destroyed by commuters on their way home on the tube. You can see it with some of the other films it was screened with at The Ritzy in Brixton, at this YouTube link. My 2 minute film is at 7mins 35 secs into the reel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=ObXIf1TXVgo

2007 Works

I've been documenting some of my older works. These were made in 2007 using domestic objects (stuffed into tights) to create odd bodily structures - then used as if for life-drawing and paintings. Influenced by Louise Bourgeois and Hans Belmer, this is a series of drawings on paper (some with watercolour), small paintings and large paintings in acrylic on canvas or board.

These were shown in a group show at The Sassoon Gallery as part of the I LOVE PECKHAM Festival 2007.

Lucky Pages

Insert for the LuckyPdf directory as part of the Bricks exhibition at Area 10, Peckham.

http://artlicks.com/events/24/peckham-welcomes-bricks