The Blackdown hills are alive with the sound of BHAAM!

When I first heard of the art group named BHAAM I thought that they were maybe a modern equivalent to Futurism or a Roy Lichtenstein comic-book pop art fan club (although that probably says more about me), anyway, I think the last thing I expected was to learn that BHAAM (short for Blackdown Hills Artists and Makers) was a membership organisation of creative practitioners who live, work, and have an interest in the Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the Devon/Somerset border. The mnemonic of BHAAM, however couldn’t be more  appropriately apt as this week saw the opening of a two years arts project, ‘Skills Unearthed’ and is currently packing a punch (of the good kind) and making itself known in the South West.

 I had a look-see around three out of a possible seven venues this weekend to see what exactly what was going on in them thar’ hills...

Liz Fathers displays her bloomers amongst an exhibition of cut-outs, sculpture and research about washing at Simonsburrow House, Hemyock.

At Simonsburrow House in Hemyock, Devon there is washing on a line, a fair bit of it to and come rain or shine or, well, more rain (after all we are in Devon!) it continues to hang there sentient in rows seemingly unaware that it is there to be viewed and maybe even scrutinized as it makes up the integral part of an exhibition all about laundry!

Artist Liz Fathers has created an exhibition that documents her exploration of the skills and practice of laundry. Specifically based on the memories of people living in the Blackdown Hills, Liz has researched into the cultural background of this domestic practice as it has evolved over the years with the advancement of electricity, indoor water and washing machines. Whilst I might not be the biggest fan of actually having to do the washing it doesn’t take much to convince me that washing laundry and washing machines and irons can be beautiful as well as interesting, culturally, as objects. Sold! In fact, it gives me an excuse to bring up the exhibition, ‘Dirt’ I visited and reviewed on this blog at The Wellcome Collection last year. Similarly to Liz that exhibition and saw artists working with research/items from the museum’s collection on the subject of waste, washing, dirt, recycling, health and hygiene.

 

Liz is one of the most thorough and prolific researchers I have ever had the pleasure to know and whilst she has used some of her findings to make some sculptural pieces, silhouette cut-outs (pictured specifically so I could drop a Kara Walker reference in-heh) and more. For me the greatest success is that the research becomes the actual art work itself. Liz knows this, and presents her findings in an openly refreshing way that is matched with a great sense of humour and conversation (aided by copious amounts of tea!) that she brings to the work. I’d love to see how she (if she chooses to) develops this work next.

 For all of the artists taking part in ‘Skills Unearthed’ the work shown this November represents the first stage of the two year project and has the aim of growing and strengthening the membership of BHHAAM as well as commissioning and exhibiting a series of new works and events that celebrate crafts and industries, past and present of the area. So whilst the work exhibited is very much finished there is still the opportunity that the work may continue and develop into the second part of the project which is exciting as in many cases there is potential to continue work on a similar theme and perhaps uncover even more...

A site specific trouve of intrigue at the Nissen Hut at Cherry Hayes Farm, Smeatharpe

Next on our list, was a Nissen Hut formally used in WW2 and one of several which are in use by the farmer on what was a formerly used as an airfield. This particular hut however, is kept free from farming and has a planned future use to be turned into a Museum by South West Airfields Heritage Trust. In the mean time, it is the perfect location that both contextualises and in some cases has also inspired the practice of several of the artists who are exhibiting here. Namely: Carly Batchelor, Ruth Bell, Sara Dudman, Jon England, Tim Martin, Michelle Ridings and Karin Sabin Krommes.  For example, Sara Dudman’s paintings have been created taking inspiration from the people and farming activities of the sheep farm that the Nissen Hut is situated on. Similarly Jon England and Karin Sabin Krommes (pictured) collaborative photography, ‘investigates the topography and ecology of the Blackdown Hills’ three World War II airfield sites: Culmhead, Dunkeswell and Smeatharpe (Upottery). Sited here specifically for their rural isolation the airfields present a terrain that is at odds with much of the rest of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.’ Tim Martin’s video piece, about the Young Farmer’s Club YFC made with the Culm Valley Young Farmers reveals an interesting link to the origins of the YFC being first established in Hemyock before becoming the national organisation it is today.



Carly Batchelor -Blackdown Blueprints

Karin Sabin Krommes at Nissen Hut on Cherry Hayes Farm

By now our feet were well and truly frozen, so it was off to our final visit for the day to see Gordon Field at Otterhead Lodge, Culmhead. Wish I had taken some photos to show you, I’ve had to pinch one I previously used from the SAW website to give you just one example of Gordon’s work.

 

 

Where Gordon works is more like a cabinet of curiosities than a studio, filled with objects like those pictured above, tools, ash tree branches, paintings, ceramics and more and more. However, the work he has made for ‘Skills Unearthed’ is presented throughout the Orchard and in the shed on the way up to the studio. Branches that have been used for dowsing have been painted and then placed in specific locations throughout the orchard mapping the pathways of badgers and bumble bees that journey across it. It doesn’t probably get more site-specific than this, but interestingly as the work influences how the viewer navigates the site of the orchard and garden, it also makes one consider the relationship within the greater context of the natural world as a whole. Again, perhaps the highlight (other than Gordon’s studio) was actually talking with the artist himself, as a novice myself into the mysterious art/or science of dowsing it was insightful and interesting to learn more about this ancient skill.

 They don’t call it ‘Skills Unearthed’ for nothing!

Skills Unearthed : artworks across seven different venues in and around the Blackdown Hills can be seen until  3^rd - 18^th November (most venues only open weekends please visit link to website below for further details on opening times and map) Other participating artists include; Andrew Bell, Louise Cottey, Alice Crane, Katherine Creasey, June Dobson, Sarah George, Maxine Green, Liz Gregory, Bronwen Gundry, Fiona Hamilton, Nick Meech, Pauline Rook, Andre Wallace and Gillian Widden.

http://www.bhaam.org.uk/

What's love got to do with it?

-Reflections of MA Fine Art practice

This week sees the opening of Plymouth University’s MA degree show in Peninsula Arts. It features selected work across the MA programmes from Photography, Digital Art and Technology, Communication Design, Three Dimensional Design, Architecture, Creative Writing,  and Fine Art; my own work amongst the latter. Of course, I am pleased, in fact, delighted to have recently achieved my MA in Fine Art alongside my peers and I am equally  proud of the exhibition and opportunities it has given as a whole, but when it comes to my own work in the exhibition I have my inhibitions which I aim to cathartically elaborate on in this week’s blog post and use it as a way of thinking through some of my recent thoughts on my MA Fine Art practice. Whilst I appreciate it may be more self-reflective than the usual posts on here, I hope that in my debate it also raises and presents some questions that may reflect the experiences of other artists reading this blog.

Below are some images showing a series of drawings I created for my MA.

My MA project enquired into, ‘how do we know tools’ through embodied and pragmatic processes of using them. In the ‘Tudiculation’ drawings (pictured) different types of hammers (pin/claw/mallet) have been used to pound 16 grams of carbon (representative of the 16kg of carbon in the human body) to create a drawing and indexical trace of the hammer. Capturing both a moment in time and the action of using the tool these drawings become an embodied record of a ‘drawing out’. The marks themselves in the drawings suggest a tool or man-made object has been used to bruise or pound (aka tudiculate) but whether the viewer is aware or not that the drawings have been made with a hammer is irrelevant. I hope that in speculating what made the marks it also questions the wider concept of ‘what is a tool’ and the viewers own experiences of using them.

I won’t go into an overtly long synopsis of my written project report that documented, discussed and contextualised this work in further depth but taking that aside and making a critique of the physical work itself I’d say, on the face of it, it’s not terrible but neither is it breathtakingly original or exciting and is way too ‘serious of itself’ in my opinion. Interestingly, if it had been anyone else’s work I probably wouldn’t be so harsh on it. Double standards? (Or that I am a harsher critic of my own work than I am over other people?) I maintain that my process and reasoning behind this work is sincere, however my problem with the work is that I hated making it. I didn’t enjoy it and have never made work that was so joyless and a discrepancy against everything that makes my work, my own. So much so, it is a release to be able to at last express my opinion openly without it causing risk of compromising my proposed outcomes and intentions. To reveal this crisis of conscious throughout making the work would have resulted in never completing it. “Fine,” you might say, “why not stop making it if it’s such a problem.” Yes, all very well, but then I’d never be completing what I started, never answering what I had proposed to do and possibly in never completing my MA. In other words I was trapped in a creation of my own doing that I had to see through to the end even if that meant challenging my integrity in order to do it.  In terms of personal development it may have had some success, and that completing my objectives and coming to a conclusion of my findings were all the ‘right’ things to do. Certainly it also kept to its justification and methods on a conceptual level, but I had always hoped that an MA would result in a sense of accomplishment and realisation of ‘what sort of artist am I?’ that I could be proud of, instead, I feel I’ve learnt an entirely new perspective on art and my own practice with the urge to move completely away from the work I had made during the process and start anew. Exactly. What sort of artist does that make me?  In what has been an infuriating and emotionally painful process I could now ‘emerge’ to actually learn from it and come out more positive as a result of it?...Weird! And that is what stems into my question for this blog post, is a love for what you are doing important or integral to making artwork? Is integrity also important? Is it possible to make work and not care about it?

As usual with art, I do not doubt that the answer to these questions is most likely to be subjective. But is it?? Even the most business-driven artists like Hirst and Warhol must have at least believed in what they were doing, thought it was cool and/or enjoyed it? Even when they were deliberately taking the piss, they were doing so knowingly because they wanted to, in a slightly contradictory way that still showed its own form of integrity.

On the other side of this question one could argue, that love and sentiment can get in the way of developing or challenging ones practice, prevent it from moving forward. Which I can kind-of agree with and if I can glean one positive from this work, from MA practice it’s that undergoing these difficult changes, decisions and moments of doubt and insecurity have perhaps opened my mind into learning more about art than I may have ever done had I continued to stay within familiarity.

Besides, there was just about one piece that I felt did retain its integrity and that piece is pictured below, titled ‘Tool Chest’.

 

In, ‘Tool Chest’, the body theme is continued more playfully in the form of a pun on words. Quite literally the tool chest has become a vessel containing a human chest X-ray. The tiered and layers of the tool chest echoes the breathing/expansion of its human equivalent and the rusty flecks in its surface patination show through the image of the X-ray appearing like scar-tissue or decay. This piece acts as a link between tools and the body which is repeated in the drawings.

Maybe if anything this all puts into question my feelings towards the institution of art practice and education than it does of art itself and that whilst at BA level the treatment of practice and theory is more holistic and broader at MA level the cerebral minded verbosity for the sake of verbosity, for me, got in the way of the process of making art, on its positive aspects it enhanced analytical and reflective thinking and the ability to use theory to contextualise practice in more depth but on the negative, this came at a cost of stifling the creativity and spontaneity of making the actual work. Although, oddly, I do not regret undergoing this process for at least it feels better to have experienced both. I will never have aspirations to fill my own practice ever again with the extent of theory that I did on the MA (I am not an academic) but neither will I go on a purely self-indulgent creating spree that lacks purpose or meaning. Ideally, I will aspire to fit somewhere between the two and feel that it is the work that I may go on to make next, post-MA that will most accurately and truly define my beliefs and what I have learnt and what I have chosen to leave behind.

Whilst the success/failure of the work exhibited at Plymouth may/may not be measured by my audience on whether they believe in its integrity or not or whether they care if its maker enjoyed making it; for me, knowing my heart wasn’t in it will always get in the way of any reading of the work. Whether love seemingly may have or have nothing to do with art may also be a romantic sentiment that I may/may not share with others depending on every individuals view, but in terms of a motivating force, to love what you are doing still seems of underlying importance if not imperative to ‘making’ work. This isn’t an argument between the expressive vs. the conceptual ways of working as quite honestly I cannot comprehend what, other than one’s own thoughts, reactions or emotions does motivate? You cannot be motivated by an idea, only the desire to see that idea be made reality and desire is born out of a passion, a want, a need which are all emotive. Even the most scientific of artists are motivated by curiosity in the first instance, whether or not those artists then choose to reveal or conceal themselves within their work is up to them, however I strongly feel that intuition, ‘gut-intsinct’, spontaneity and one’s feelings towards making work are only to be ignored at ones peril.

So what has love got to do with it? Well, if making art, then I still believe it has everything to do with it.

And what next? For those of you that know me, and if interested, then perhaps this will allude to the answer...

“His creative intelligence, stifled by too much theory and too many grades in college, would now become reawakened by the boredom of the shop.*”

Amen!

 

*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig

This is an announcement...

ATTENTION SOMERSET ARTISTS!

 

Are you thinking of taking part in Art Weeks 2013? Organising your own exhibition and project, or have been invited to take part? We will share with you what 'curatorial' means to you as an artist, tips and hints in developing your own exhibitions and projects. The event will be suitable for those organising group exhibitions, projects or presenting work together with other artists, even if you are not planning to take part in Art Weeks 2013. The event is open to all SAW members.

The event will cover the following:
- Outline and presentation of our new published A Curatorial Guide for Artists in Somerset (see below)
- Share ideas about your exhibitions and projects
- Identify your needs, your aims and what you wish to achieve

Event Date: Monday 12 November, 2012
Please select one of the following sessions when you make your booking.
Session 1: 11am - 1pm
Session 2: 6pm - 8pm

FREE Event: booking is essential and must be made by 6 November.

Numbers are limited
Email admin@somersetartworks.org.uk or phone 01458 253800

Location: SAW office, The Town Hall, Langport TA10 9PR

Not a member of SAW yet? Please visit http://www.somersetartworks.org.uk/ for more details.