endsandpossiblebeginnings

the workshop at The Maxwell around problem solving for the new cohort of PhD Nanotechnology students went well - I know this mainly because people laughed at my jokes! What was fascinating was the initial reaction that I had moved the tables from the usual configuration was the most challenging experience for the students - listening to a coat hanger and collaborating and laterally explaining what was in the bag through mime (you had to be there) were the least problematic issues. As ever it felt glorious to be in such a dynamic space with galvanised people - you can almost feel the creativity. I also took down all the exhibitions that were in the various spaces (apart from the prints that were created as a result of encountering crystallography that are a permanent feature within the corridors of metallurgy).

Meanwhile the work for Chelmsford is up and opened - I couldn't be at the ceremony but I do have a photograph - more to come when I visit the site. Can't wait for tonight's Spill opening and the weekend of performance Sirens calling......

breathingintobeabletobreathout

A quick jaunt around London's East End galleries took me first to The Whitechapel but £14.50 to see a deserted swimming pool seemed a little steep even of made by the wonderful by Elmgreen and Dragset. so onto Gao Gallery to see the beautiful tea soap installation by Godai Sahara. Carlos had some faintly creepy drawings (in a good way) by Stuart Middleton. Herald Street has the tiny scan-arte.com space which had the work of Fermin Jimenez Landa who creates seemingly slight interventions - my favourite is that he walked across Europe without touching a door. Ryder projects had a neon display. Maureen Paley has the glorious AA Bronson AIDS wallpaper installation.

the show at 180 The Strand is fabulous  http://180thestrand.com/ - it's a must see and you really do need around 2 - 3 hours to fully take it all in. Difficult to know what to specifically recommend as my second viewing brought new and different highlights. This time around it was Jewel by Hassan Khan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYA4MM4T-7Q  and Now eat my script by Mounira Al Solnh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoh7ovWeKxk  real gems.

After all the digital work - I also took in the ICA  it was a desire to see something 'physical' that led me to the National Gallery to see one of my go-to pictures - the Pope by Bellini but it was taken away for the show downstairs at which I would have to pay to see a picture I have stood in front of for I don't know how many years. So after a few other pieces in the area I settled for The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo focusing on the detail of the cloth.

Academic activity has been full on this week, both on and offline. In terms of teaching there was group and individual tutorials, seminars, practical making workshops and presentations. The research for the upcoming presentations included a wide ranging list of subjects from positing women's underarm hair as a radical textile activity to looking at rap videos to explore the influence of ostentatious visibility and its relationship to branding, marketing and product placement. Bureaucracy Includes monitoring attendance, writing up tutorial reports, populating timetables (still), and planning and organising in general (fire fighting) and of course there is the pleasure of getting to know my new line manager on the BA Textile Design Course at Norwich - Kate Farley. All good. A busy week ahead - the two opposites of working as an artist are happening on Tuesday. My work at Goldlay Sq is being unveiled as part of the new building development in Chelmsford, https://www.instagram.com/knownknowledge/ meanwhile in Cambridge the exhibitions I created that were part of https://unfoldingthinking.blogspot.com/  are being taken down and packed away after I have given a workshop around problem solving to the new cohort of Nanotechnology PhD students.

intergalacticbuilding

a good morning in Essex where we located the work at Goldlay Sq in Chelmsford. The Guys were super helpful and brought their understanding of scale and alignment to the problem.

But couldn't help but think of intergalactic video by the Beastie Boys when looking at the documentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilnnMzK_m8w

backtoreality

a full on week of back to reality - NUA has been about timetables - which are now ready and waiting OCA had its first session - I am now year 1 tutor and looking forward to guiding the 2018 cohort. Camberwell is ........well............in the process of deconstructing its relationship to MA teaching and Book Arts in particular. We shall see what happens. The work for Goldlay Sq has gone from my space and is now in their space. I get to site the work next week. Next week is the first week with year 1 students at NUA - we have loads of excellent activities planned including a visit to Cromer. Finished the devastating Ozark - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5071412/?ref_=nv_sr_1 it was such a trip and towards the end just a catalogue of trauma. I am now in season 2 of Atypical https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6315640/ it really is quite beautiful between the pain and tears. In terms of podcasts its been mostly repeats and best ofs whilst they take a break over Summer. Like most I have become slightly obsessed with Trump so https://art19.com/shows/pod-save-america Pod save America has become a key feature of my listening alongside the wonderfully funny Stephen Colbert on The Late Show and the inciteful Anderson Cooper and disturbingly fair Chris Cuomo from CNN.

booksbooksbooksandsometeachingwithsteel

after 7 days swimming, breathing and reading in Carry-le- Rouet just outside Marseille it's a brutal return. I managed to read some books which  I would recommend. In descending order - The Only Story by Julian Barnes is a tale of love, loss and regret beautifully written with passages that will stay with you, haunting your soul for what is and what could of been. In A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler the stillness and heart retching experience of one man's life as he exists in time, embedded in a place will move you. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North is a glorious rambling story where Ground Hog Day meets Momento with wonderful subterfuge thrown in. Kamila Shamrie's Home Fire is a searing indictment of how we choose to live with a truly wonderful pointless ending, (in a good way). Lullaby by Leila Slimani is a stunningly head slamming awful story well written, the reality of the first pages come to a terrible conclusion on the last page. The Helium Kids by D. J. Taylor is a rollicking ride of a pastiche documenting the rise and downfall of a mythical band running parallel to recent history, weaving truth and known events; clever and witty. The Adulterants by Joe Dunthorne charts a insular self important group of people where the central character was annoying. Returning to a day at NUA addressing the timetable, building spaces and creating the admin systems which will support the teaching and the initial session with OCA. I am now Year 1 Tutor and we had a wonderfully supportive session with the new cohort - really looking forward to the year ahead. I wrote a blog post about my practice for the OCA site - here is a link https://weareoca.com/education/oca-ma-fine-art-introducing-tutor-les-bicknell/ This week we are delivering the work created for Goldlay Square. The work has been 'developing' a wonderful patina in my garden over 3 months and gets to go tonight and delivered tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing it in the space over the following week.

gettingouttoseestuff

The work for Chelmsford is rusting nicely in the back garden - the colour is quite beautiful. Meanwhile ....I had to go back to see Ed Atkins at Cabinet - and on second viewing it just gets better - it's still head swivellingly odd but then when spending more time you see the interlinked nature of the films - the baby from one frame wandering into another the boy in the field moving across to play the piano etc etc http://www.cabinet.uk.com/index.php?ed-atkins-olde-food . The Tate has the extraordinarily bleak coloured sculpture by Jordan Wolfson - this is also starkly eye wateringly cruel and a truly must see - after the last Tate mess having this in the tanks has resurrected my faith in them a little. Age of Terror at the War Museum was okay - but most of the work was not about terror but war and most of it seen elsewhere so £15.00 seemed a little steep (maybe that was the terror?) - the two stand out pieces were Francis Alys video work of soldiers from both 'sides' stripping and rebuilding weapons and the very raw footage by Tony Oursler at the 'ground zero' site days afterwards as he prowled around the site videoing the carnage and the human fair that arrived - so many stalls selling prayer as the answer. The real terror is laid out in the Holocaust exhibit on the 4th floor - it is very clever, starting off with a little bit of nationalistic pride and snappy sloganeering and ending with war trials World just after harrowing images of concentration camps and testimony from survivors. World without us at Battersea Arts Centre was just that a one person show that explored the before and after of our existence on earth. Some nice ideas and the narrative visualised what it would look like when we are gone. quieter with a lot of plastic.

theshadowandthevoid

the shadow and the void - continuing the work on the pieces for Goldlay in Chelmsford. The shadows and their relationship to the objects are really dynamic and have emerged even better than I had hoped.

magicintheworkshop

Work for Goldlay Square is progressing. The working environment at http://www.steelsculptures.co.uk/ is a mixture of pre-industrial revelation, labour camp and alchemy. This time of year the cold infiltrates your bones but the mind is engaged with the mental gymnastics needed to cope with watching an idea become a thing. What was a drawing has evolved into very large physical objects. To do this collaboration has been essential, between people and between processes. The tools range from whatsapp to a pencil via illustrator software and a plasma cutter. The air is infused with possibilities and otherness when the hyperotherworldlynesshazyblue of the welding torch merges metals, meanwhile the plasma cutter is a little like magic transcribing and translating the digital to the very physical. We are on our way...

checkcheckcheckchecking

the snow has given the opportunity to work on the digital files for the Goldlay Sq commission, checking how they interface with the plasma cutter. 

2 days in London after synthetic anatomy session I went to a few exhibitions - The Gursky at the Hayward was impressive, the images are quietly heroic but I spent a lot of time working out how much the organisation was making on ticket sales as it was very busy and at £15:00 a little steep. Which gets me to The Whitechapel - unsure why I actually went as 1, it was Mark Dion, an artist who is now making work about the work he was making - see the array of costumes, 2, it's just better to go and see actual work by ornithologists, archaeologists etc  3 I had seen all the work in other places and 4 it was also £15:00 which seemed very expensive. But at least we have the bookshop which is a London treat. I had seen some extraordinary work almost on my own for free in a number of galleries the day before which didn't help.  Lorna Simpson and Matthew Day Jackson at Hauser and Wirth were good shows - instructive and powerful. Marvin Gaye Chetwynd at Sadie Coles was messy and fun. John Riddy at Frith St Gallery has some darkly narrative photographs of brick walls that were really moving. The mixed show at Marian Goodman was so tasteful with well thought out and has some technically excellent pieces. Worth the journey to see a work by Giuseppe Penone Indistinti-confini - Talaventum a tree study which was just so moving.  meanwhile Detroit is a brutal film of brutality that brutally brutalises your mind while brutalising a cast of people from the beginning to the end 143 mins later  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5390504/?ref_=nv_sr_1 actually on real TV I've been working through Collateral, enjoying it until episode 3 where it appears to laid out all the connections and the plot in general, but we will see - maybe.

walkingsmokingwatchingthedarkness

a week of long walks - came across another example of smoking architecture in Orford - to add to my collection - https://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/smoking-architecture  The next stage in the work for Goldlay Sq is that the title of the piece will lead the public to a social platform where the research that supported the thinking and making can be viewed - thinking @knownknowledge is the answer. Posts later. season 4 black mirror was as expectedly dark as it should be and at its best when engaging with technology that appears to already be here, but is it becoming a place to scare the children and promote fear of the future?....meanwhile all these sleepless nights - a truly beautiful film that shines a light on the stupid glorious wonderfulness of youth - it just hangs around being young - how wondrous. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5146068/ The remake of The Beguiled http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5592248/?ref_=nv_sr_1 by Sofia Coppola has some interesting directorial choices in relationship to the original with Clint Eastwood - check out the mad trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n47_BZ2pj5U

goldlayisrising

The work for Essex continues - Goldlay Sq is rising from the empty space, although as we know it was never empty. I have been looking closely at the designs and considering them within the context of the build and the budget. The work is developing into a focused intense experience, the pieces clustering so that they can be viewed as if a narrative. They are in themselves becoming more intense, more decorative. There will be more cutting which means that there will be less metal in the pieces but more space for interpretation. Thinking about a title for the piece - I'm interesting in the title linking in some way to an instagram account. I like the idea that I can put all the research that has informed the piece in a place that can be found by individuals if they want and also it will date the piece as instagram will obviously fall by the digital wayside as so many platforms have in the past.

bookseedcrystal

crystalstructure

bookbook

bookstructure

bookknowledge

crystalcell

crystalbook

bookcell

containedcell

knowledgeseed

bookseedcrystal

crystalbookseed

seedbookcrystal

pastnowfuture

futureknowledge

futurebookknowledge

unknownknwoledge

knownknowledge

unseenknowns

knownknows

@crystalbookseed

there is to be a sign, a plaque - wordage to follow.

responsibilityandrespect

work on the structures for Goldlay Square progresses - the choices are now finding locations within the plan - I love the action of positioning - working within the digital space - moving something not yet made within a space that does not exist which will impact on people's lives - notions of responsibility and respect are running high today.

steelbooksaregogogo

A wonderfully creative day in Chelmsford yesterday - starting out with a site visit to test out the full-size model of the proposed sculpture. Envisioning is an interesting activity and a designer has to have lots - the site has its buildings 'foot printed' with most of the 2nd floors built so you can get begin to get a real feel for the site -  the spaces within, between and around the buildings. I was pleased that the scale of the proposed pieces appear to 'work'. But by getting onto the site the idea of the pieces unfolding up and around the buildings became an obvious development.

Part two was a meeting to discuss the initial ideas and to iron out any issues that came to light within the build, design, installation and placing of the work. It's a kind of pre-mortem - I love the idea of working within 'negative space' of possibilities - not in the negative sense but in a positive anticipating problem way - working with the possible by carving away what is not 'right'. The meeting went well and it looks as if I will get to make 'giant' steel books structures and 'scatter' them over the site - sooooooo excited......

sizeisall

a morning of thinking about scale whilst admiring a sample for the Goldlay Square work. The overall scale of the pieces in relation to the pattern is interesting to consider and has been highlighted after getting a piece of steel plasma cut. Really pleased with the sample, it has a sense of flow and all the connections that I have been inspired by are embedded within the work.

cuttingcardandstickingart

starting next to a pool and continuing in my studio the thinking around Goldlay Square is becoming focused - there is still a lot of flexibility in the choice and the proposed construction will enable the making to be creative up to the last moment

drawingtomakesenseoftheworld

more drawings in an attempt to rethink or plan the nets - added the image of book structures so the idea of maybe not making sense in terms of being built in the mind could be a part of the work. As ever the tangram is a way of thinking out this puzzle part of the project.

thefirstmechanicalcut

After much learning with illustrator the lazer cutting tests for the Goldlay Square commission look good - really pleased with how the references have become heightened - the  images of books opening and cell structures 'pop' out of the design. Also when you have a physical thing rather than the digital you really get a sense of the scale. Other physical aspects of its materiality become obvious such as how the design creates excellent shadows.

tessellationtessellationtessellation

Spent the day focused on building Penrose tessellations for the Goldlay Square commission. Working with illustrator to create vector drawings that combine the history of the site - the cell like structures that come from the seed/growth/allotment reference and the open book structures that are derived from the book repository and printers. I really like that the more one looks at the design one can see patterns within patterns and the negative spaces provide a place of play. 

growthgrowngrowingcontainer

Working on the background research for Goldlay Sq in Chelmsford. Continuing the idea of information and communication whilst making connections with the history of the site.  This has taken two more paths. In the process of the space becoming a place it was the site of an allotment. I have been thinking about the material contained within plant matter. Looking at cell structures and the process of growth. Words such as storage, connections, food and seed are spinning around my head. This is a fairly underlying concept and is at the root of the idea of existence and evolution - this has taken me into the world of Ernst Haeckel. Information and embedded knowledge has thrown up numbers, patterns and sacred geometry. On the other hand the library storage facility and the idea of book have resurfaced. I started to build and draw book structures whilst thinking about the question - What does information look like? The book as an image standing in for knowledge, a container of information, documented and disseminating. To disseminate is to "spread abroad as though sowing seed. The two ideas mesh and point to fundamentals - the building blocks of the material around us.