naturaldrawings

I have finally started using the ‘inks’ made from materials that were on the site of where Sizewell C Power Station is being constructed. Its day one and I am slowly working out what the materials do. A truly magical evening at Snape last night – 2 concerts – the first a selection of ‘protest’ pieces, mainly bonkers and a little dated, a kind of period piece, but still interesting. After that the second concert by the Britten Sinfonia had a sublime first half, a highlight was a piece by Brett Dean, Carlo. There was also a splendid recorder piece played by Genevieve Lacey. After the interval it was difficult to take your eyes off the dynamic cello playing of Laura van der Heijden, truly awe inspiringly magnificent. But I think the real star was the exquisite conducting by Gemma New. She elegantly held both the orchestra and the audience. It was a live event.  Meanwhile onto screens – In the grey – yes out there is a parallel universe of highly organised illegal enforcers. Madeline – whimsical and a little sad.

sayingyesalot

Having said yes, a lot a couple of weeks ago I now have a long list of stuff to do with several large scale, interrelated and complex projects. 1 The work with Aldeburgh Hospital and the school is moving on with organisational meetings and some positive conversations. 2 The final stage of Energy? Hanging the work at SZC visitor centre for a STEAM event is the last and seemingly most challenging stage after generating an instructional pack, sending it out to schools to create over 1000 images, creating films and 50 panels with 25 images! 3 The flag project for the opera is completed, and the next stage is dyeing 200 yards of material with natural dye for the backdrop. Assessment is about to start at Norwich; it will be great to see the students work on the project I set around textile narratives. The show at Unit 4 has some really interesting work that is hung well, the space is a great addition and now the nearest gallery to my house, it would be great if the SZC roadworks didn’t detour my route. The latest sharing at Snape as part of the open sessions was fascinating – the system of graphic scores and unusual instruments made for an eccentric evening. Rob Bentall on nyckelharpa and Zebedee Budworth on hammered dulcimer were fantastic together. Onto screens – Sirat – one thing leads to another, oh dear. How to Make a Killing – witty and procedural. Hail Mary – great fun, and if you take a 10-year-old along with your belief will be suspended.

apackedcoupleofweeks

Started work on digitizing the images created by students who were asked what does energy look like? - the images will be printed up and shown at the new Sizewell C visitor centre as part of a festival celebrating STEAM in East Suffolkschools. I created a pack for schools which included instructions for a workshop to be undertaken by teachers. I'll also be running a series of workshops over the 3 days exploring potential connections between art and science. Packing away the work and materials from this years interation of synthetic anatomy, including archiving the materials. I seem to say this every year but this year was spectacular, a development from the previous year. Either we are getting very good at what we do, word of mouth has got around or/and students are becoming more hybid in their thinking! 2 busy weekends - last week - Caroline - a musical about radio Caroline at the Wolsey in Ipswich then a sharing of the weeks residency at Snape - Tyrone Isaac Stuart with more noise was eclectic - music dance poetry text projection and basketball - this weekend had another sharing with the glorious Alex Groves and The Carice Singers 
what an amazing sound alongside the great retuning of voice with tuning forks - the work exhibited at the cut by Sarah Horton is medative - private view full of conversation brighten the corners, a day festival of free music was energizing - highlights were the full-on Sebukku and the gloriously raucous Rad Pitt hip rock with funk - brilliant.

itsbehindyou

a busy week at Snape – I have given 7 talks this week and 3 the week before. As ever it’s interesting to talk about the work and reflect on it. It’s fascinating to hear myself reflecting on the past year, the work and the experience of being artist in residence. There are a couple of revelations having being there so often – that the ai constructed people are all the same age and that the shadow in the switch room is the shape of Sizewell B. Onto screens – War Machine……aliens! Almost finished How to get to heaven from Belfast…..great script.

moremoremore

A busy week – working with year 1 bioengineers at Kings introducing lateral thinking and problem solving via creative workshops. The end of the week saw Pecha kucchas from all teams on the synthetic anatomy module. As ever some wonderful projects are on the table, lots of hybrid animals, legends, humans transformed by climate catastrophe and sci fi starting points. In the middle of the whole thing there is assessment time at Norwich – hours of pouring over work and writing comments and handing out numbers. It was also interesting to meet people to escort them around the show at Snape. It is as ever informative showing people work, the conversations always lead to me finding out about what I have made and help me to make sense of what I’ve made. Managed to see a few exhibitions – Klara Hosnedlova at White cube, Monster Chetwynd and Petrit Halilaj at the Tate. Onto screens – Small Prophets is truly wonderful, Waiting for the out – stunningly oppressive with the right ending!

tellingstories

Final day of putting the work in the spaces at Snape, 2 rooms of work that cover vast areas of the year and 2 installations that focus on specific areas of the residency. Pleased with the hang. Onto screens – The Penguin Stories – a sweet story about dictatorship and kidnapping thwarted by a bird. Onto Industry – more hideous people behaving hideously.

ayearofvoices

after a year of work it’s time to make the work visible to a wider audience – my first year of the residency at Sizewell C has been amazing and I can’t wait to share the work with the community…..it will be interesting, hanging the work over 4 sites today was instructive, so many voices in my head instructing and guiding my decisions. onto screens Eternity – oh dear, in another writer/director’s hands the interesting premise might be more interesting and less hetro-normative and just dull. The Rip – tight acting served by a great script. The Life of Chuck will have you confusedly torn apart in a beautiful way.

silentthinking

A cracking evening out at Snape on Saturday - the Aurora Orchestra did a great deconstruction of Mendelssohn's 'Italian Symphony after the interval but my highlight was Caroline Shaw's Entr`acte. A week of meetings - schools, teachers, hospital, kings, G with SZC. All leading to lots of work and stuff to do as a result. I managed to finally think about next year at SZC and decided that I want to work more with natural materials so I went on a gathering materials before they all disappear mode. I intend to make ink and drawing materials from vegetation on the site. Put some work in a silent auction for the art station - interesting to see what the market makes of this. Onto screens - loved the series film night - so sweet. 

alwaysawinner

work with SZC continues, working with ideas of connectivity with the pylon as a starting point motif. First light festival was a winner, the curated show in the gardens was eclectic and fun, managed to see a couple of bands, Caswell, LFay and Sebbuku, all good. Ken Worploe was good on landscape and building, and of course Luke Wright was Luke Wright – always a winner. Created our own Snape Festival with a couple of £10:00 tickets alongside the art on display and an afternoon of new music by young people, which was excellent. Meanwhile onto screens, still chugging along with Alpha House which is very funny but Riefenstahl is another thing – did she know or was she innocent or an artist taking an opportunity? Watching her control the lighting when she was being interviewed at around 80 says a lot about her, and so many photographs documenting her existence – fascinating and all too easy to make connections with America at the moment, the rallies were terrifying.

somestuff

The yearly school’s celebration at Snape was wonderful, as ever there was a real sense of happiness and pleasure in the room. Unconsumed - the show at the shoe factory in Norwich looks good – there is much to see in this eclectic exhibition – I appear to of sold something (red dot) which is nice. https://www.instagram.com/unconsumed.theshoefactory/ The work is part of a new body of thinking so its good that somebody else recognises the potential. Meanwhile onto screens – deep into The only murders in the building – wacky and twisted.

tattoosandanewproject

The next set of tattoos with the wonderful @jims_skins – really pleased with the way these lines work with the hand. Working on a great project with Stowupland Secondary School and Red Gables through Jubilant! Looking at the potential of an adjacent space to the school. We are asking lots of questions to map and measure what is there to determine what could be. The book that is being created as part of the project's legacy is developing and will be a great manual for future conversations. A night at Snape to watch Anna Lapwood playing an organ on the stage - a rare occurrence. I loved her talking about the idea of 'voicing the organ' to the space and her interpretation of Britten's Four Seasons Interludes was fascinating. Also had the chance to check out again Laurence Edward's work around the site which is always a pleasure. Meanwhile onto screens watched The Lazarus Project which was full of complicated time travel rules - back into Better Call Saul with season 6 which is both dark and complicated. Just finished Jarvis Cocker's book Good Pop Bad Pop - it's a gentle ramble through some easy going reminiscing. 

todayortomorrow

I have a flag in Saxmundham High Street – as part of celebrations artstation invited a few people to design and submit a design https://theartstation.uk/event/sax-flags/ …t a couple of interesting local show – Brian Dawn Chalkley at The Cut was a joy and a surprise https://thecut.org.uk/events/brian-dawn-chalkley/ The show at Snape as part of this years festival was good - Paul Benney, Laurence Edwards and Kiki Smith have some work dotted around the space. Laurence has a couple of very special new pieces that are really worth the trip to the space; a boat/fence/bodies hybrid piece and a small body trapped in a eel trap.Onto screens – Interceptor was what it says on the tin - So to Pistols - Danny Boyle is responsible for another travesty but for a different reason. Brexit was obviously his fault as his excellent direction of the Olympic ceremony convinced us to go through with the illusion of Brexit by creating a glorious fantastical fairy-tale Britain where we believed we were more important than we actually were and of course doing it all on our own without the support of others or underpinned by our dark history of slavery and colonialism ....at its best Pistols is punk panto when it's not unnecessarily dallying with art school knob twiddling video techniques, seemingly as a way of attempting to gain relevance.....oh well.

stuffandmorestuff

A busy weekend – off to Orford Ness for Afterness as ever it was going to be interesting to see if any of the artists could match or at least work with the extraordinary space that is Orford Ness – they couldn’t - there was nothing to see of any consequence, apart from the space and buildings themselves – dull and not up to Artangel usual standard. Next was first flight in Lowestoft. Brought to us by the fabulous people who brought us First Light it was a celebration of birds and bird boxes but actually it was a celebration of community as hundreds of people turned up just to be there. https://firstlightlowestoft.com/whats-on/first-flight/  I popped up to Oxford and Cambridge Home Zone, something I worked on 20 years ago doesn’t look too bad, the worst damage was done by contractors digging up cobbles and replacing them with tarmac. Next - Snape Maltings to see a piece that was less than interesting, apart from a short moment when the players went off key on purpose to illustrate a person’s inner self disentangling – playing all the notes just in the wrong places! Art Station at Saxmundham has some good pieces in what is a great development for the arts in Suffolk. https://theartstation.uk/  I have a some work in it which isn’t bad but there is a piece by William Cobbing that is mesmerizing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fD86pPPkoo  The costumes from Black Panther are contextualised within a fantastic exhibition at Christchurch Mansions – The Power of Stories - truly amazing. https://www.powerofstories.co.uk/  Also I had forgotten how amazing the building and its collection is – you could get lost in there for hours. Finally, onto Felixstowe to see the new development at the Martello Tower area – great roof but not yet finished – it will look good in the end. Then just standing at the entrance to the Port is mind-blowing – truly vast ships, almost too big to comprehend with containers that look like tiny blocks being lifted seemingly effortlessly onto trucks – capitalisation and globalisation meshed together was quite disturbing. Onto screens - late to the party but have started 6 feet under dark, funny with a great script and what looks like excellent complex characters – it should be good. The Dead Don't Die https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8695030/ every indie star is in place as the film casually moves forward – dealing with the zombie threat in a way that does not appear to feel like one. My Year in New York has terrible reviews, but I enjoyed the ‘stagy’ feel and over dramatic nature of it.

alltimestrangeandindulgentIdonotunderstandwork

I went out to see/listen to something! - Daniel Pioro and Katherine Tinker at Snape – really very beautiful, Daniel’s playing was so considered yet muscular, he brought something new to Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending, the stillness was exquisite. A trip to see Mathew Barney at the Hayward Gallery. I am such a fan with the Cremaster Cycle possibly topping my list - all-time-strange-and-indulgent-I-do-not-understand-work. The show has some extraordinary pieces, especially the frames! – meanwhile New Contemporaries at South London Gallery has less to recommend. Onto screens - The dog who wouldn’t be quiet – superbly odd. Riders of Justice – superbly funny. Managed to get through Time – gruelling - it should make everyone reconsider their criminal intentions, its simultaneously relentlessly grinding and terrifying …. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jun/06/time-review-sean-bean-and-stephen-graham-astound-in-enraging-prison-drama

afoldedpresent

todays sounds running through my head include - Joe Goddard feat. Valentina – Gabriel. arrived home after a walk to find a wonderful present from Steel Sculptures in the driveway! @steelsculptures The cube is made of extra pieces from the work created for Goldlay Gardens in Chelmsford. It was manufactured by the lovely Paul and Cath over at http://www.steelsculptures.co.uk/index in Middleton. To entertainment - the online Snape showcase Festival of New Makers was superb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heT4Esayg6U&t=1160s the series of films of work in progress highlighted some fantastic work both as pieces in themselves and something to look forward to. The process of demonstrating creativity was stunning with collaboration at the core of their thinking. Join the Din, Maz O’Connor, Shruthi Rajasekar & Reylon Yount, Nadine Benjamin, Charlie Grey & Joseph Peach, Emily Levy were all interesting and Max Baillie & Vahakn Matossian, were so sincere, but Dom Bouffard and his crew of glorious noise makers working in the abandoned space at Snape https://www.dombouffard.com/ was a fave. Meanwhile to screens – ma rainey's black bottom was a little like watching American’s do costume drama. Capital in the Twenty-First Century lays out, again, the injustices embedded within capitalism and talks about how the concept of capital has evolved to continue to serve those in power, power from the point of ownership. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5723056/ and we are now embarking on the latest season of Snowpiercer.