That's tool for now!

This will be my last post in residence on this blog in which I want to take a moment to conclude and reflect on the residency as a whole. Thanks to everyone who came to the Private View on Friday, very, very appreciated! Secondly, thanks to Emily Bull who has run the residency and supported us throughout the project especially when it came to hanging the exhibition. Cheers, Brian and Paul and Somerset College too!

I have really loved having the studio space on this residency and have made some really good progress in my work and enjoyed it at the same time. There has been a lot I want to draw from this experience too and I have a clearer idea of my strengths and weaknesses as an artist (in my work and in a professional sense) and hope to expand on this when I progress onto my Masters in September this year. What was particularly exciting for me was that I have been given several tools from different people as a result of the project and I can now explore what I originally intended in looking at tools that other professions use. I have exhausted the same old saws, hammers that I have used for previous projects and am grateful for the offers of more unusual tools to use from other people! I've got Somerset Art Weeks to prepare for now too so watch this space!

I've learnt a lot about putting up exhibitions recently...

I have learnt a lot more about hanging work in these last few weeks. Things like, what looks good/bad next to each other, how to hang things straight and with the right distancing etc. As well as the more obscure things like, how to move thirty-six bags of floor tiles (see above photo) out of a gallery space in thirty minutes and how to move things again and again until your happy with how it looks even though you're exhausted (probably as a result of moving all those bags earlier!). All of these things have really frustrated and helped me reaffirm what is important about these kind of shows and that it is always worth fighting for the cause and not settling for anything less than what is the best that you can do. A little corny perhaps, but from a art management point of view I think its an interesting process and sometimes, battle that art has to go through in order to grace the walls of even small galleries like this one at Somerset College.

As a result of the residency I feel I have not only learnt about my own practice but have learnt about professionalism and organising of shows a little bit more. I can hopefully take this with me on future shows. There are many stories to tell and it has been a great process and one that I thought I'd briefly share with you.

Show time!

After four wonderful, crazy and intense weeks at Somerset College, Brian, Paul, Emily and myself can finally bring you: The Context Residency Exhibition!

Come and check it out! Its on and up now in the White Space at Somerset College everyday 9.00-4.30 until September..........

Week 4: Monday 2nd - Friday 6th

Ok, so this a little more than in retrospect but I wanted to conclude the project for future reference and so it didn't look like I just disappeared into nowhere! This was my progress on week four which was the last full week I was going to have in the studio as the following week was hanging time! I wanted to let everything dry this week so I began by finishing off my prints and one particular big piece that I was scratching into so it could dry in time. I had realised at this point that I had made more of a substantial body of work than I had thought I would have when I started. I don't think the work I have produced was necessarily perfect and polished but it has certainly been productive in pushing my practice further. I now have rekindled my interest in tools and the print process developing my visual language in this medium.

Successes have been my colour palette is better in the sense it is in ways truer to the real life tool workshop and I have found some new styles I can explore further for example: developing the photocopy pieces to look more at scale and execution. Things I'd like to develop are the flatness factor which has improved and hasn't and I wonder if I can create even richer and deeper surfaces within the prints. I'd like too. I would also like to explore the background work I had been exploring but didn't have time to finish using the empty workshop as a scene to print off of. As far as failures go, there have been a few pieces which I won't hang come the exhibition and even the work that I do hang isn't perfect by far but there is, as I have mentioned a lot of potential to develop the things discovered here, further.

In the latter part of this week I managed to cut out twenty-ish tools for future canvases to go in the Somerset Art Weeks exhibition, so I was pleased about that too.

Messy feet in a messy studio space....

Studio space at the end of Week 3.

Work that combines the photocopy process with the printing one.