By Way of Small Actions/Tearing Space Apart

My first exploration in producing an artist's book will be on show and available for sale at Basket House Village Universe's residency programme which opens 1 July 2011


Tearing Space Apart #1-7 is a series of graphite drawings which explore the space of a piece of paper. More information on the drawings and the process used to create them can be seen in a separate posting.

Artists who entered By Way of Small Actions were asked to create a visual book of 'small actions' describing their working process and these will be on display and available to buy throughout the duration of the residency. Artists Gema Sainz, Joanna Peace, James Lowne & Andrew Stewart, Nicol Dourala and Victoria Adam have been invited into the gallery space to develop working ideas simultaneously in situ as a month long residency. Working across the disciplines of sculpture, video, performance, drawing and installation, the artists will have free reign over what direction their work might take over the course of the month. The gallery will be open to the public whilst the artists are at work, offering visitors a rare insight into artists working methods, and how the art works evolve and interact with the space and each other.

Tearing Space Apart #1-7

I recently produced a series of graphite drawings as part of a submission process for a residency which has set me off on an interesting path. Here i'll show the process used and the final works.

Process:

• 3:1 format piece of paper
• Tear random shapes out of page until just a border remains
• Number shapes
• Use a chance method to select a quantity of pieces and which pieces to use
• From a height, allow the selected pieces to land on a new 3:1 piece of paper
• Use a variety of drawing methods (graphite powder, outlines, erasing) to mark the spaces on the paper

These drawings are inspired by my 2008 visit to Ryoan-ji gardens, a series of my drawings which can be seen here and the recent John Cage Every day is a good day exhibition at BALTIC last September.

Cover - Space torn apart

#1 Graphite - flat

#2 Graphite - flow between

#3 Pencil Outlines

#4 Pencil Outlines until touching

#5 Eraser outline

#6 Erased graphite

#7 processes #1-6 combined

Future Collaboration with the Rat Pit

A successful meeting with Carly Lindon Forrester from Liverpool-based experimental performance company the The Rat Pit, will lead to a collaboration during 2011.

The Rat Pit also plan to work with Wendy Williams, Simon Jones, John Bernard, Matt Smith and Lee Tisdall

See the Rat Pit announcements page for futher updates.

Tearing the Space apart

A new graphite on paper drawing, currently exhibited at The Bureau gallery in Manchester as part of the exhibition We are all in this together.