Challenges of the project

There are several general challenges to this project but these are the kind of things familiar to anyone who is working to produce a body of work within a specific time frame. As usual reality has a habit of intervening and taking up time allotted for the studio. However, I know (more or less) the artistic and material parameters of most pieces I want to do for this exhibition and the preparation and planning is on track which is really the most important aspect of any project. The biggest challenge of all involves something I have never done before!

The piece which I know is going to be the most difficult to tackle for this project is a 3 metre sculpture that I will produce from a felled tree. The tree is from the Lee Valley Park and will form the basis for the first site-specific sculpture that I have ever worked on. This is a challenge that is beyond anything I have ever attempted before and as you can see from these images, the first challenge was moving the tree from its original site to the sculpture site! 

Planning is definitely the most important aspect of this piece because it will be done on-site in public view over a period of several weeks so I need to have a really clear idea of how the work could evolve. I am really looking forward to getting stuck into this aspect of the project but at the same time it is a little scary. I am hoping to create a sculpture that is artistically engaging and appealing to the public and also remains in complete harmony with its own environment.


The really exciting thing about this piece of work is that it will remain in situ after the exhibition. So it will become a permanent sculpture  in the Lee Valley along one of the main public footpaths leading to the Olympic Park.  I will post images of my progress on this sculpture as it emerges.

Art in progress 1

Q) What are you working on at the moment? 

Stage 1

I'm at the studio a lot at the moment working on the new pieces for Changing Spaces. The studio is really full of stuff that I have been collecting over a long period for this project so I am having to work around it where I can  and take it outside when I can't!.

These pictures have been taken over the last 3 weeks and give a sense of how the objects progress from their original state and how the work comes together. The centre piece of this particular work is an old valve pipe from an industrial heating system. The valve pipe was found discarded in an abandoned warehouse building near the Lee Valley Park.

Stage 2

The pipe is probably between 40 and 50 years old. I have kept it intact so it is more or less in the shape that I found it although it is of course repainted. The base that provides the support and frame for the transformed valve is constructed from corrugated board and plywood.

This piece of art in particular reflects very directly the industrial landscape which dominates this area. It also plays around with the idea of regeneration - of turning something old into some new.

Stage 3

Article in the Guardian on the impact of the Olympic Park

A friend of my sent me link to an interesting article in the Guardian by Alexandra Topping. The article looks at the impact of the development of the Olympic Park and its connection to the surrounding area:

An alternative Olympic tour takes in Hackney's art, history and fashions

The article in many ways touches upon what I am trying to achieve in my project. Have a look and see for yourself and please feel free to leave comment on the blog.

Three more 3D

Q) Did the other three 3D pieces emerge in the same way as Leaded Tree? 

Yes - all were produced from materials I had found around the industrial area of Walthamstow which connects to the Lee Valley Park. Industrial Landscape.was constructed from an old radiator which was once part of an industrial size fridge....   

  

Industrial Landscape

Deconstructed Landscape used corrugated board.around the outer edges and wood chippings in the centre and was framed in an old wooden wine storage box....



Deconstructed Landscape 2

... and A Grey Area was produced by inlaying corrugated board into MDF. All of the works were then painted with acrylic to harmonise them visually and remove them a step further from their original function and appearance.  



A Grey Area



Interview (2)

Q) It seems that 3D has emerged organically from your painting but did you have any interest in sculpture before conceiving of Changing Spaces or is this a completely new  thing for you? 

Part of my interest in sculpture and 3D artwork does go back a long way to GCSEs at Chiswick Community School in West London in the early 1990s. We had visiting teacher who introduced me to the media of assemblage. Although this was a short-lived introduction it left a strong impression on me although, at that time, the process of creating  the assemblage was often much more appealing that the outcome!

Assemblage was about using found objects and presenting them in their raw state, so when I produced my first 3D artwork in 2010 I used the general ideas of assemblage and added my own style and approach. My aim was to try and strike a balance between the conceptual and the aesthetic. The results off the first group of sculptural  works led me to explore other possibilities. Ironically I found myself going back to some basic creative principles I had as a teenager and the freedom to experiment in order to develop ideas. Nearly all my ideas for each sculpture are inspired by the physical process of creating the work. I find it nearly impossible and actually quite restricting to actually plan each piece in terms of preparatory sketches or set processes.

The first 3D work I produced was called Leaded Tree. I had  found a piece of tree branch on an industrial estate in the Lee Valley Park and I took it back to the studio intending to carve it in some way. First I found that the tools I was using had a huge impact on the nature of the carving. In fact, it was the chisels themselves which began to dictate the work rather than any ideas I had for it. At that time my studio building was being renovated and I had picked up several scraps of lead which were just sitting in my studio as I was working on the wood. I had often worked with lead doing building work so I knew how supple it was and how easy to shape. The two materials are similar in the sense that both lead and wood are created by nature but each is also very much perceived, and used, as an industrial staple. So these two things just merged to form my first sculptural piece in 2010.

Interview - Part One

As one of the collaborative aspects of Changing Spaces,. artist and writer, Valerie Grove will be conducting an ongoing interview as the project unfolds. Her first question is addressed in this post.

1. Up until this point all of your work has been 2D and all has been painting. Although there have been changes in your painting style over the years this project seems to mark a major shift in your artistic development. How did this move to 3D emerge? 

In 2009 I produced several paintings in which the surfaces were very thickly layered  and the paint was actually applied over other materials such as corrugated card inlaid into MDF. I left parts of the underlying materials exposed which revealed the depth of the layers and actually gave the appearance of 3D sections within the flat surface of the whole work. This was important because it was transitional work which really brought my interest in 3D into focus.

I took this much further in 2010 with four experimental pieces of art  in which I used found objects to produce three-dimensional wall mounted works. These were included in a solo exhibition exploring the physical relationship between London and England shown at Vestry House Museum, London E17. There was a lot of  interest in the approach I took in producing these works which encouraged me to investigate other ways of working within a 3D aesthetic using found objects. 


I was fascinated by the physical scale of the development of the Olympic Park and its structural complexities and was lucky to be given an opportunity to visit the Park in its development stages. The ODA and the Lee Valley Park subsequently provided me with materials to produce a more ambitious body of work and the Lee Valley Park then offered me an exhibition as part of their 2012 programme. So this is my first real opportunity to just focus on producing 3D artwork and is how Changing Spaces has emerged. 

Welcome to Changing Spaces

Raw materials

Over the next few months I will be developing new visual art for the Cultural Olympiad 2012. This project is supported by Arts Council England and the Lee Valley Park Authority. This blog is an opportunity for people to engage in the creation of the project and to post comment and opinion. The series of completed works will go on display in June 2012 at the Waterworks Nature Reserve in Waltham Forest.

My aim is to produce art that is abstract and which makes people curious about the materials and how the work is constructed. I want to link this curiosity with the physical techniques and methods used in the regeneration of brownfield sites (the Olympic Park) and the revitalising of the Lee Valley Park. My interest in these practical, creative processes is partly a result of working on construction sites over many years. This experience informed my own interest in regeneration and all the things that go unseen by the public when regeneration projects are undertaken as well as their huge impact on our visual and cultural environment. 



Transformed

 

The Olympic Delivery Authority has provided me with access to the Olympic Park to inform the development of Changing Spaces. Additionally, the ODA and the Lee Valley Park Authority have provided me with recycled building materials and found objects for inclusion in the final artworks. This access will not only make this project feasible, but it will enable me to capture some of the more abstract yet intrinsic physical changes like those created by construction workers, park visitors and natural phenomena - the kind of minutiae that people walk by every day but never really notice.