So when I went back into the space to work on the third day, I had a bit of a tidy up and suddenly the mists cleared. Something about getting all the stuff into one space gave me a bit of perspective on some of the themes that are emerging through the works.

Brillian tutorial w Babak Ghazi helped immensly. Tutorial notes on another post, but hearing his impressions of the work which he has not seen before was great. Key words; containment, psychological explorations, constraints, contrasts between things filling a space because it is there to fill vs not filling.

We talked about how I am moving away from making things which represent other things, and the anxiety that goes with this uncertainty Now I am loosening this control and working more intuitively and spontaneously with materials and arrangements, the meanings are coming out anyway, but subtly, and this invites more looking, rather than completing the whole story from the beginning.

I also worried at first that I had filled the great big working space with a load of stuff without knowing why. Turns out the slices of hot-water tanks, felt and cables were pretty consistent and pleasingly limited the chaos.

Some of the highlights were in the details, and this detail will definitely feature in my large scale 2d work.

Mixed response to the drawings, or rather, to their presence alongside the objects- they could better stand alone. I am so happy I have found my favorite crayon pen to draw with, after a long search since we left Berlin, source of the first.

 

I think the colours and textures work well with this- the verdigris of the inside, the purple wire and the colours of the felt.

 

Clearing the space out and looking at the exposed wiring of the space. This is actually another separate piece of work which didn’t work well when laid out along with the other stuff.

 

Playing with my camera, trying to wrestle with it until the one I had stolen is replaced. I really like this piece.

 

This emerged as the favorite of the collection. A real learning curve for me, as initially I was dissappointed that the huge pile of cable I spent 2 hours cutting up only amounted to this much, and the weight of it distorted the water tank slice, but in the end the space left became an important part of the work.

 

The bundles of cables evolve once more. More organic. Totally unplanned. Seen here talking to a very Beuysian arrangement of felt wth cable ties.

Re-edited arrangement of space by Sam Walker, This is Art and Billy Ward

 

Feedback from the visitors included: machinery, agriculture, harvest time, things plugged in, alchemy, circuits. References: Eva Hesse/Camden Arts Center show, Briony Fer essay, Michael Asher and André.