the week after a week away

storks nest on the Badi Palace in Marrakech

Re-entering the climate, culture, routine and patterns of home whilst trying to hold onto, digest and understand what you’ve just left.  So many pictures to sift through, I’ll try and post some as I go.  For now, the amazing storks that loom large over the ruins of the Badi Palace and create a raucous rattling with their beaks – CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK.

 

CUBE

Very briefly, go see. In the open exhibition that runs until 18th February there is too much to mention,except for the  Guide to Getting Lost by Jennie Savage . This must be, firstly as it’s a lovely idea, secondly as it features Marrakesh and I’m off there next week and thirdly, because it would be much better if you were allowed to go out and get lost with it,  I was only allowed to walk round and round the gallery with it and think the work lost a lot of it’s point that way. I recommend insisting you take the guide for a proper walk.

dark landscapes

Graham Sutherland, Entrance to a Lane, 1939

 

Went to see An Unfinished World at MOMA in Oxford yesterday. 85 of Graham Sutherland’s works on paper, curated by George Shaw.  All landscapes or bombed buildings and mines, looking like landscapes. Landscapes looking like bodies, no bodies but many paths implying the route a body might take into them. I love the life in his marks describing the physicality of the surfaces and the light and darkness that carve the spaces. Especially I love his use of colour, twilight hues on edge and magical, a bit like Henri Rousseau.

International Print Bienale

Marta Lech: 10.10, linocut 62x90cm

In November I got a lift to Newcastle which turned out to be a lovely city as I discovered walking all over it to visit the International Print Biennale. First stop, the most welcoming Northern Print workshops who co-ordinated the bienale, made me a cup of tea and showed me around.  A very blustery and invigorating walk along the river for a  quick trip to the ‘closed due to electric fault’ Baltic  and back over the river to the Laing, Newcastle and Northumberland University exhibitions too. My favourite were  Marta Lech‘s  large linocuts  of lightplay, beautifully cut if unfortunately set behind wobbly crap flexi-plastic. Other highlights were  Lauren Dreschers etching and wax tattoed figures , Michael Donnelly’s one-plate-9-images-clever-inking, Katsutoshi Yuasa’s massive woodcut shipwrecks, Jessica Harrisons’ Blarney Stone and Elizabeth Boasts’ larger than life consequences woodcuts. Bit of a theme there I’m afraid. Alongside all the rest which was good too, including the Chapman Brothers and Mervyn Peake retrospective (not technically in the biennale but worth mentioning all the same).  Apart from being a wide ranging print show, the biennale is a good introduction to Newcastle. I loved the scale of Newcastle’s buildings  it’s great big bridges and it’s almost-sea air, I hope to get back there soon.

Moving books

In the summer I had a go at making a short animation of my dandelion books, it was  intended as a quick rough sketch, it took an hour at the most, then I spent the next few months trying to find the piece of music I wanted to add to it. Finally it’s done! Music by David Armes of Last Harbour.

Gum Dichromate

tri-colour of an amzing fuzzy tree in Rye

2 colour photo of a place I love in norfolk, its the gap between the trees that does it, it has a telegraph pole running through it's middle.

I spent 2 lovely days at Hot Bed Press last weekend on a workshop taught by John Brewer who specialises in alternative photographic printing methods. Gum Dichromate is like a photographic watercolour process, so you can build up washes of an image. I think we were all surprised at how many prints we could make in the time we had and it all got a bit giddy on the last day – so much fun and some results I’m quite happy with. The best thing about it is that it’s best to work with digital photos – finally a way ( I can handle) of adding magic and depth to digital pictures.

Manchester Cloth

I forgot to mention the exhibition we had for this project at the end of the summer – a day of showing people around the tribulations of a years collaborative work  accompanied by tea, cake and an ace piano player.

20:20

I’ve been crossing my fingers whilst suicide printing an edition for the 20:20 print exchange organised by Hot Bed Press.  I think it came out ok in the end.  The print carries on a theme started in my book The Bridges of Budapest where greenery is exploding from the page, this time I was thinking of the sounds and smells murmuring in Matthew Weltons’ The Book of Matthew, hence the murmuring.

 

New work

trial print for the journey series,

I made some new prints for the Hot Bed Press residency at Warrington Art Gallery and Museum.  We were asked to respond to one of the themes in the Inspired to…exhibition that showcases work from the collection under the categories music, seasons, love and journeys. I’ve spent the summer sitting in random places meditating on the wild spaces between paths of travel we cut through the landscape. It seemed a natural progression to use these shapes in the prints. It’s hard to see, but the whole print is debossed, honest. There are four prints at Warrington as part of the Warrington Arts festival, showing until the 27th October so have a look if you can. Among others showing are Mandy Tolley and Kelly Dyson who are both brilliant printmakers.

2 lovely things

Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Emily Speed’s work.  The Bothy Gallery seemed a perfect fit, not too big, not too small and with just the right shaped spaces for the work.  Accompanied by a book with poetic essays on space and process.  By the last day of the exhibition harvest spiders had moved into the architectural cardboard spaces, as I imagine any of us would if it were physically possible.