'Out with the hammers' in Exeter!

'Out with the hammers' is the recent solo exhibition from Edwina Ashton and has been comissioned by Animated Exeter and Exeter Pheonix (where it is also on show unitl the 20th March). When I saw the title of this exhibition, 'Out with the hammers', could you blame me for getting quite excited and as a result heading on the train to Exeter Pheonix to check it out. Afterall, it had 'hammers' in the title, so it had to be good, right? So this Wednesday myself and a friend disembarked on a train from Taunton to find out.

Ashton's work in this exhibition includes a series of videos, animations, drawings and a few mixed media sculptures. The first room of which we entered being a moss green painted room with the crude and niave bird-like sculptures in. The sculptures had been made from bits of plastic/bottles/junk/tape and sat on perches around the room whilst on the walls were delicate little drawings (of the kind of style you can see here). I've always thought drawings on walls are quite interesting, especailly as you know they cannot be bought or taken away which makes them temporary. This temporary-ness can make any drawing more interesting as you know its not going to be there forever, so for some reason no matter how good or bad the drawing it makes you want to look at it longer. Anyway, these creatures in this space, I read from the blurb on the wall are supossedly gathered around a rockpool. The text and drawings inspired from 19th century natualist, Philip Henry Gosse who studied marine life in Devon's rockpools. "Ah, ha!" I find myself saying, "now its beginning to make sense." There is something sensitive and intriguing about the little drawings on the walls that does almost whisper to the viewer, to come closer and investigate. You can begin to understand that this is similar to investgating rockpools themselves, often rockpools at firstappear empty and it is only after further and closer inspection that we begin to see the tiny and often unusual looking forms of life living within them. The fragility and delicateness of the exhibtion space possibly (it doesn't say) also echoes the fragility of these tiny ecosystems and habitats.

The video next door featuring shrimp and other creatures is not without humour in the way it is quite child-like in its visual style but watches like a very knowledgable scientific documentary (admitedly I didn't watch the whole thing through, due to a noisy group of children and the fact we really needed a drink round about the time we got here!). After the weridly isolated experince of seeing the plastic constructed ganets and 'elephant looking' figures drawn on the walls in the previous room, where everything was still and silent; the animation next door was much more of an immersive experience and demanded more attention than I gave it. Such is the way of viewing exhibitions sometimes.

There were even more werid videos in the other rooms of the Pheonix which I won't go into now, in order to keep this blog from becoming an essay. However I will say that on viewing the whole show I didn't think I was 'blown away' by any of it at the time, but funnily enough after writing this and having to put down my thoughts in words, I actually now think it wasn't so bad after all. In fact, for the reasons and things I talked about around the drawings on the walls and the way the project was linked with the kind of biological sciences/natural history I am liking it all a lot more. Its been interesting in seeing how this artist, Edwina Ashton has used that research to create her work. Most contemporary art requires an active audience so whilst this exhibition may have required more thinking than others, I think it was worth it.

The only question that remains is that, 'what do hammers have to do with it?'

Writings on the wall

I was thinking...After reviewing the '1000 journals project' book, that some of the images in that book reminded me of the graffiti wall that people created/added to during the 'Exhibition of the teenager' at the Brewhouse last month. The wall acted like a huge sketchbook that anyone could look at or add to, which resulted in a mixture of doodles, song lyrics, political rantings and a whole bunch of random chatter! All, of which is not unlike the '1000 journals project'.

Below are three images taken from the wall:

For the rest of the images of the madness, that is 'The Exhibition of the teenager' wall please visit their facebook page on the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Exhibition-Of-The-Teenager/188551641156619

The local artist, Scott Walker who set up workshops for this graffiti wall also creates graffiti/doodle walls, murals and more... Scott has worked on projects with Spaeda in the past and uses 'Posca pens' (which are more like painting, but with a pen) to create his community based work like seen here. Check out his website below for more:
http://mildlyartistic.co.uk/

Book of the month for February: The 1000 journals project by some guy

At last, here it is! February's long over due 'Book of the month' and this one doesn't require reading for it to be enjoyed. This book is a visual feast for the eyes! In fact, if you want to look at the book itself (for free!) and to get a 'taste' of it, please click on the link at the end of this post.

The 1000 journals project is 'some guy's' idea in which in the year 2000, 1000 blank journals were unleashed into the world. If you were one of the people to find one of these journals you'd discover instructions inside asking you to use the journal to create personal pages in it and then pass the journal on to other strangers. It made me wonder if I would ever pick up a journal someone had left say in a park or would I not notice and walk past? Or what would I put in a journal if I actually found one? Would it be similar to my own sketchbooks? And how would I pass it on for the next person to find?

This book features copies of the journals that arrived back to 'some guy' (its not clear but I'm assuming they include an address or someway of sending them on?) or have been published/posted onto the projects website online. Those journals have been scanned and printed in glorious colour inside this book and some of the pages are actually stitched making this book tactile and a work of art in its own right. Not only is it fascinating to see how many different countries the journals ended up in (Japan, Canada, Spain, Germany and Australia to name a few) it is even more fascinating to flick through and look at the collage, doodles, poetry, adverts, photographs and diary entries that those who owned a journal created. To anyone that has ever kept a sketchbook, you'll understand what useful tools they are for documenting a vast array of people/places/experiences, expressing thoughts and creating ideas. Often more casual and more intimate than any other work produced by an artist, I feel that sketchbooks open up the window of the intention behind an artists work. Whether as an artist you're a musician, a writer, a performance artist, or whatever the sketchbooks that creative people keep are often the most revealing and raw parts of their practice. Understandably, not everyone wants to share their sketchbooks with the outside world, so this project is great at providing an opportunity of opening up and revealing sketchbook work to those that are happy to share it. Another point being that when I say 'creative people' I don't just mean artists, after all if Joseph Beuys has taught us anything, its certainly agreeable that 'everyone is an artist', and that therefore everyone can be creative. In fact, the dedication written at the start of this book, is 'dedicated to everyone who's ever said, "I'm not creative." Quite frankly, that's exactly what this book goes on to prove, that anyone can be a part of this project and indeed be creative. Another nice touch to this book is that it adds notes from the owners of the journals, giving details of where they're from, what they used the journal for and who they were passing it on to (whether it was someone they knew of a stranger). This gives a really personal feel to the book and makes it more 'readable' for those of you out there who don't just want visual images but a bit of contextual info too.

To conclude, this is one of those rare books, that you can dive in and out of and every time see something different. From someone like myself who loves keeping sketchbooks (often more than creating separate art works themselves) it's also a very inspiring and reassuring book. I never went to see the 'Blood on paper' exhibition at the V&A gallery a few years back (an exhibition featuring artists books) but I can imagine it was similar in the way it recognises journals/sketchbooks or artists books as an art form in its own right. The wonderful thing (as already mentioned, but I'm repeating it because it's so important) about 'the 1000 journals project' book, is that compared to the V&A show which featured predominately artists, the 1000 journals project works because in it, everyone is an artist. Exactly.

Here's that link I promised, check it out!

http://www.1000journals.com/index.php?view=Journals%2FIndex