Laura Ford

Reflection

I decided to make a lot of the work for Shredding Paper on site at PAD, exposing the making to the visiting public [Visiting public being a mixture of artists, crafts specialists, gallery owner/manager and the general public] in order to expose that process which is specific to each artist but also something incredibly personal for each artist, in order to generate dialogue/questions/feelings between artist and viewer and maybe contributing towards the idea that art can be something other than a object/thing/something [sorry for the very broad/not very good terms here!] but a process, that can be seen, shared and experienced. A two way process. 

I decided to advertise that I would be there at specific times on specific days for a week and these were the times that people could come and see the making/performances etc. Because I had advertised the times with a couple of hours between them e.g. 10 - 2, I found that I could really just concentrate on making as I didn't know when people would turn up, if they would catch me in the middle of talking to someone else, which is fine but what if they had come expecting a 'performance', to see something happening rather than me just sat there having a cup of tea? I didn't know if they would have any prior knowledge as to what was going on. With the benefit of reflection and looking back these questions don't seem so bad now, so what if they caught me having a cup of tea thinking or not in the middle of some intimate exploration? That is part of what I wanted to explore and expose. This did happen, alot actually! People coming in when I was just sat there staring into space, thinking, jotting notes or eating a biscuit! and I enjoyed it but at the time a part of me was thinking that some people would want to see some sort of performance and would be disappointed if they didn't. What I found really interesting [and slightly funny] was when I was doing small performances people didn't know whether to just 'watch' or to come over and talk to me as there was no obvious viewer/audience situation. I really liked the uncertainty of the viewer at times. There was a chance for people to come and see that performative making, more performance, me lost in the making but not as many people saw this. Next time I think I need to put on specific times for the performative/intimate making i.e 10-10.30am, make more of an event of it. But I feel this would require a little of knowing what I was going to do. 

Those moments of just making and exploring where really interesting. In the first few days there, as I didn't really know the space that well, I felt almost awkward within myself, moving around, bumping into skirting boards and knocking over work I'd just made. Visitors also kicked floor pieces over [by accident I hope!] but I found myself not minding at all, pieces not quite as I initially intended, as they were quite hard to see, I liked the suprise of the viewer. 

The resulting exhibition that was up for three weeks afterwards felt to me and looked incredibly polished. I wanted it to feel more like BUILT, like someone had just been there, the presence of the artist still to be felt, inviting the viewer to want to touch etc but it didn't, not to me any way. I think it must have been something to do with the space itself, the clean white walled space. The space at Rogue Studios for BUILT was nothing such, half of it looked a bit worse for ware. I don't think it was from a material aspect, the materials I used were same as the ones used in BUILT, with the addition large rolls of paper, some text pieces and a video piece. I feel that wanting to foreground process got lost in the final exhibition, apart from the video pieces playing showing aspects of me working. On the other hand, the size of the space and the time I had allowed for mistakes, risks that I felt free to take. Not a overly interesting space but one which I was able to find idiosyncrasies from and work with and the definite structure of the space, the lines I could trace with material and my own body and the reaction between the two - the space was big enough for that. I feel next time I would benefit from more site visits. A chance to understand what me being in the space would do to the space - if that makes sense.

Maybe that is one of the reasons I have applied for the AA2A residency at Salford: it will give ,me a chance to explore spaces outside of the 'gallery space' somewhere my work can fall over and be ok.

Even though I don't see what I do as 'rehearsal' I though this quote from a review on a Francis Alys exhibition from a old magazine I was reading whilst in the space at PAD was quite poignant,

'Rehearsal, after all is not a passive waiting but an active practice of keeping alive the wish for something better' 

Tatiana Trouve

Artist Talk

I will be giving a artist talk on 18.09.10 at 1pm at PAD, on my current work, Shredding Paper

Shredding Paper

                    

In conversation with Gavin Osborn

Below is an extract from recent email exchange on concepts/ideas/thoughts on my current practice. Dialogue with Gavin started after BUILT in response to the installation at Rogue Studios [01 - 08 April].

Lisa- I am much more interested in body as object rather than a subject. Exploring the reciprocal relationship between the materiality of objects and body. I want my body to be seen as material , moving in response to the other objects/materials and not an act that takes place with psychological motivations. I know that I can't help what the audience read into it, especially if a lot of the performance is left to chance or 'is of the moment' but my interests do lay in body as a material. Matter alongside matter or in combination with other matter, another object in space, I suppose this foregrounds materiality and process?

Gav- I think that's a great idea - particularly the succinct expression of it as 'matter alongside matter or in combination with other matter, another object in space' - it reminds me of certain types of dance. I think, as far as audience perception goes, it probably has to be established over a certain amount of time through how you interact with your materials - it seems to me that most of the things people tend to interact with accustom them to reading overtly psychological & narrative into things to start with, so maybe it takes some time for them to forget about psych 101 & see what's going on - what did you find from comments you got from the BUILT performance? Maybe I'm totally wrong & people lock in straight away!

In speaking of the artists body as a material, I also think that it could relate to the types of materials that I choose to work with, envelopes, thread, sticky dots etc. The materials I use, I like because I don't see them as anything precious. I am not afraid to damage, rip or tear them or do experimental things to them and obviously they are cheap and easy to source but another reason could be [and this relates back to how the artists body is seen within the performance as material object or subject etc] that they don't have instant 'bodily' connotations. Envelopes, cellophane windows and sticky dots on viewing - out of context - don't reference the 'body' automatically, so as a result the viewer doesn't see them as having a bodily relevance so when the body is on view [ the artists ] it could be seen maybe as a separate object - matter alongside matter

there's also the fact that they're 'universal' in the sense that most people will have handled them & will be able to imagine the sensations of your interactions - and perhaps in doing this, this is how they stop trying to read a psychological narrative or whatever into it, becuase as they watch you move & manipulate the material, they can imagine what this feels like - as if they were doing it - and this then removes any personal narrative they're trying to read, because actually they're there with you in the moment? and although the materials may have personal reading for them - opening an envelope, sealing one, using thread etc, even their own personal projections onto the materials fall away, because they're with you at that present moment?

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Whereas if I used materials and objects that where of bodily reference, say for example water, clothes, food items etc I think the viewer would conceive of these items as having something to do with the body and this is even further emphasized by the fact that there is a body to viewer [the artists] responding and working with the materials, so the reading(s) from the audience would be more as 'subject' in the first instance - feminist readings etc? 

well, I guess if anything I suggest above is true, it might be possible to do it with other, more bodily related material (although I do think your envelopes etc are quite body-resonant, because of how we have to physically interact with them to use them); as far as feminist readings go, there's the usual business of people reading 'domestic' materials etc, and also how they manifest in the space, but how would you want it read, if you want it read as a body as material with other materials? is it gendered, or not? just 'a human'? just materials, other molecules that happen to be phuysically arranged as 'human body' not 'thread' or 'cellophane'?

Exhibition - Shredding Paper

31.08.10 - 01.10.10


Lisa Gorton will present new works at PAD, Preston. 

Lisa’s work deals with the nature of drawing. It has evolved out of an enquiry into the relationship drawing has to sculpture and asking whether sculpture can be seen as drawing. Recent research has dealt with material tensions: the dependency of material on material, the reciprocal nature of support. Small, intimate installations generated through fragile everyday materials and the role of the body in this intervention.

New work at PAD will focus on small performative situations, exploring new materials through drawings and installation, focusing and responding to the specific idiosyncrasies of the gallery space.  

Preview - Thursday 9th September 6 - 8pm

Notes on/from - Shredding Paper

Wanted a new material to play with but a material where I am still able to explore notions of' the 'line' and within that, form. A material that can hang and drop but at the same time still open to more manipulations. It seems odd that I hadn't played with shredded paper before since a lot of my interests and research are 'paper based'. It felt like a re - wind: coming across the shredded paper as shredded paper, rather than paper and then through studio experiments, shredding it. Shredding is what happens to the paper and I went through the repetitive process to get the paper to this altered state but I wasn't aware at the time of what I was doing, I was initially shredding so to get rid of 'confidential information' and then the paper sat there for weeks. I like that idea, the paper sitting there for weeks have no function, until it the human interaction and manipulation. Picking up the bag of shredded paper was like handling gristle and sponge: bouncy , soft but extremely prickly. Using the paper in the studio, I soon became frustrated; it wasn't perfectly straight, different lengths and would just move of it's own accord... so I ironed it. The flicks at the end stayed, but I didn't mind after using it with other materials, black plastic pots and biro pen.

I am now shredding myself. Larger sheets of paper, holding the top of the shredder [minus the bucket] at various heights. I quite like the notion of using shreds of paper which are roughly the same height as my body and at the same time making small sculptures and installations. These small sculptures have stemmed from the work I did for Project One, a small cardboard like document which contained various elements of drawing, collage, photography and objects research. Snippets of a body of work and a work within themselves. These and the shredded paper agenda is what I developing for the exhibition at PAD in January 2011.

I also drew the shredded paper.Sublime. The repetition, the almost 'formless' repetition kept me wanting to do more. I drew on cardboard, mainly because I have stacks of it at the moment and because I can cut and bend it and it still stands up. As in the past with my work, the drawings for me, stand in some mid - way 'limbo', I always want to draw from my own sculptures, these drawings can be the start, at the end [not an end, finito but end as in when I just decide to stop] or they can be part of the process somewhere in the middle, a catalyst for new thoughts, ideas, desires. I am committed to their potential as threads of thought, of what they suggest to me for moving into the sculptural and then what the sculpture can provide for the drawing rather than their direct transformation into a product. In there two dimensional state, before any further transformation I feel they hold a certain precariousness, a certain elements of something that could happen that could be out of my control.

Notes on/from - 'DOT.LABEL.THREAD.DOT' Rogue Artist Studios, Manchester. 01.04.10

First. [Studio] I changed the name of the piece. 'encounter' felt a bit too broad, general, encompassing any[every]thing. 'DOT.LABEL.THREAD.DOT' feels much more specific, material and doing. It came from the 'doing' in my studio. It came from the re-action of the same. Thread, sticky-dot, thread, pull, tight, sticky-dot.

Wrapping
Placing
Pulling
Sticking

I tried to make it much more complex then it needed to be. Should be simple? Just 'perform' the main elements, form/action/[line]. Three simple actions, then it became two. The placing of envelopes and cellophane rectangles as action? Why not [dot].

Reliance of one material on another and what it gives back. Sound. Thread on plastic.

Second. [Rogue Project Space] Performed. ?  Changed to eleven small actions. Thread. Align. Place. Stick. Pull. Place. Stick [x7] Trace lines with feet, walk next to line. Existing floor lines, wall lines, material lines. My lines. Sit. Wrap cardboard with thread [forgot plastic] [x1]. Place envelopes on thread lines, place cardboard, place cellophane rectangles [x3]. Re-trace lines. Walk away.

Third. [In my head]  Why am I including my body? Do I want people to see my body in relation to other materials. Is my body necessary to what it is that I am exploring?

To explore new territories within my practice is knowledge building. To be completely shifted out of my comfort zone was adrenaline pumping. To be so absorbed in what I was doing was has changed me. To not think of anything else and to drown within action/process was exhilarating. But to what extent and why does my body need to be seen?

The bodies movement and inclusion within material function and outcome is important to my practice, the reciprocal nature of material, what it does and how when certain forces from other material are added, even the addition of the body. Is it the outcome or the process that I want to be seen? The outcome, suggests a final. No, I can show process without the 'live' viewing of the body in 'action'. Materials in action can be viewed when static. The force, tension, materiality of a specific object, the performative element of materials can be explored without the direct inclusion of the body to be seen. ?? Or can it?

My body needs to be seen and thought of as a material. A material that re-acts and performs to [other] material. That reciprocates, struggles and functions in relation to....

"Practice has a logic which is not that of a logician. This has to be acknowledged in order to avoid asking of it more logic than it can give, thereby condemning oneself either to wring incoherence out of it or to thrust a forced coherence upon it." [Bourdieu, 1990:80]

BUILT - Rogue studios, Manchester

'encounter' ...Rogue Artist Studio Space, Manchester

I will be performing 'encounter' at Rogue Project Space, Manchester on 01.04.2010 as part of BUILT,


BUILT brings together 8 Female artists from across the UK whose practises deal with specific aspects of the built environment.
Through the use of Sculpture, Installation, Animation and Performance the selected artists respond to the structures which surround our daily activity; be that personal shelters and social networks, or our more public man made surroundings that are compounded in the cities we live in. They search for a space in the parameters between art and these constructed locations, subtly commenting; "Women build stuff too".

Built is curated by Elizabeth Murphy.

Postal Project

Postal Project


We would like to set up a project that enables people to ‘generate’ a random address for them to write to.

You won’t know this person but they may have something interesting to say, they may not.

We think it will be fun, who knows what will happen?

Aim?

We would like to create a website that anyone can join. When you join our website, this will enable you to generate a random address, this will be the address you will write to. When you join you can also create a profile on which you can upload/scan in your received letters.

From this archive of peoples’ post, we would like to create a publication, which could be in the form of a magazine or a book. If the project grows to be very popular, we would like to publish yearly annuals.

FIRST AND FOREMOST!

We thought it would be a grand idea to have an event of address swapping, to start the ball rolling, and to begin our archiving of addresses.

WE NEED YOU TO SEND US YOUR ADDRESSES!

START DATE; MARCH 2010

END DATE; DEC 2010

If you’d like to be involved, then send us a postcard with your address on!

Postcards can be of any size and contain any artwork/text/visuals but must have your postal address on them.

Your address will be exhibited at an event in York, England (date TBC). People who attend the event will choose an address from the exhibition-style event, and they will send you a letter!

We will document everything we have received, and the event via our tumblr page;

http://postalproject.tumblr.com


This project has 3 inventors, so 3 addresses for you lot to choose from!

J BlOOD

Flat 4a Low Ousegate

York

YO1 9QU

UK

L GORTON

47 Elm Road

Burscough

Ormskirk

Lancashire

L40 7RJ

UK

M ALEXANDROU

Unit 8

59-61 Sunderland Street

Macclesfield

Cheshire

SK11 6HN

UK