The whole process

Please give us a brief synopsis of the process of creating this piece of work?  
OK... this particular piece consists of three different components. Two of these - the bricks and the wood - were salvaged from the Olympic Park more than twelve months ago which is a good indication of just how long I had been thinking about and planning this project. At that time I was constantly on the lookout for things that I could potentially use although at that time I was still not sure that the project would ever see the light of day. So to be writing about this now as a completed work is a really good feeling.

The first stage was to get my bricks in a row...

It was very important to get the symmetry and scale of this work right from the outset so that the precision work that followed always had the right alignment.

The next stage was to insert the salvaged wood into the brick and put in some serious work to transform the rough wood to the extent that it becomes almost unrecognisable. I then attached the whole construct to a a base which had been sized to harmonise with the shape and scale of the brick and the wood:

 Once I had the scale I started to work on the surrounding textures and colours:

One other thing that I would like to say about this particular piece is that the brick is really quite special. It is 'London Brick' which has a long history. The London Brick Company was founded in 1889 and has essentially built London since then and it continues to do so. The bricks I use in this work were left over from the Olympic Park and much of the brick based construction in the Olympic Park and the Lea Valley Park as well, were manufactured by the London Brick Company. 

What about the wood? 
The wood has come from wooden pallets that could be seen everywhere during the construction as they are the bases upon which everything is delivered. So the pallets would have had bricks  or other building materials sacked on them. So I think this particular work really is a linear distillation of the materials and processes of construction.

 

Video tour of the Studio

Here is a short tour of my studio which gives a general idea of the work I have produced for this project so far. Not all of the pieces are finished but they are all well on the way leaving me free to focus on the on the sculptural piece I will be doing on-site in the Lee Valley Park. 

This video also shows just how much it is actually possible to do and to fit in a very small space! 

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.