illustrative experiments

I've decided that the first thing to work on for Borges illustrative work is a book cover illo.

So I wanted to draw elements from his narratives to give an impression of Borges' writings. The Penguin copy I have mainly consists of a 1930s style black and white image of a group of identical men standing with their backs to the viewer, all looking at a white square on a wall.

It does have a nice silvery background for the text at the bottom and the back, but Borges writes about mirrors, time, God, encyclopaedias, paradoxes, it's very Doctor Who, and there needs to be a sense of the futurism and postmodernism of his writing.

Google "hexagonal labyrinths" and most that come up are actually octagonal.

It took me ages to construct this labyrinth, but it works. There's one true path to the central hexagon, all other paths are false. It isn't like other simple labyrinths, where it's really just one path. The spider's web design seemed obvious; why no one has invented a labyrinth based on that before is odd. Etched into silver card it shares the beauty, delicacy and intricacy of its design, with a slightly space age edge. 

"Fictions" Exhibition

Helen Dearnley

Labyrinths 2011

“Fictions”

18 September – 24 September Gallery @ St. Martin’s, Lincoln

This new body of work marks a departure from previous themes in my art practice, an instinctive move towards more sculptural and architectural work illustrating the writings of Jorge Luis Borges. My conscience wrestles with the fact that I initially intended to create a series of illustrations, so the work is a memory expressed sculpturally, as sculptural illustrations. Illustrations will develop from this work.

From the Garden Of Forking Paths, I have expanded upon the original text to incorporate personal memories of feeling at the moment my father died, that I was transported to the Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude, which became a greenhouse, a labyrinth, a memory and an encyclopaedia.

My earliest memory of Dad is as perspicuous as the glass panes of the veridian pavilion in which it resides, running through seemingly endless greenhouses as darkness pursued seditiously through those vast steel and kryptonite prisms.

The greenhouses were composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite forest of steel and glass, each rectangle multiplying the perception of space by its repetition, with beds of plants growing within, and interspersed with irrigation channels that broke up the consistency of the horticultural flower beds, where growth is perpetually illuminated by the twilight of the next greenhouse. I inferred from the greenhouses that they were infinite, those glass cathedrals of Mother Nature’s son.

Works

All prints are digital imagery on mirror board with foil

“Fauna Of Mirrors” and “Funes The Memorious” 2011

“The Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude” 2011 Mixed media

“The Garden Of Forking Paths” 2011 Found objects

“Fauna Of Mirrors” 2011 Foil, Chinese lantern, text from Jorge Luis Borges

“Funes The Memorious” 2011 Foil, rebound book

“The Alicanto” 2011 Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011 character from "The Garden Of Forking Paths"

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"Funes The Memorious"

Digital print on mirror board

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"The Fauna Of Mirrors"

Digital print on mirror board

Helen Dearnley 2011

"The Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude"

Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011 character from "The Garden Of Forking Paths"

Helen Dearnley 2011 Untitled

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"The Fauna Of Mirrors"

Sculpture

"...the Fish was a shifting and shining creature that nobody had ever caught but that many had said they had glimpsed in the depths of mirrors." Jorge Luis Borges "The Book Of Imaginary Beings"

Helen Dearnley 2011 

Untitled

Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011

"The Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude"

Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"Funes The Memorious"

Found object - reappropriated diary

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"Alicanto"

Mixed media

Holidays, Research trips, and upcoming Fictions exhibition

It's been some time since my last exhibition, and I realised I hadn't blogged since then. I've been busy applying for various art events without much success, and it saddens me that these events are promoted as hosting very talented artists, but as I'm never included, that makes me think this is untrue, which is a negative thing. So I keep quiet, rather than post negative experiences, and wait for something more positive to happen.

The main problem I seem to have is having very ambitious ideas for work that require more funding than is available. 

I feel that I possess a wealth of creativity and artistic expression just waiting to be discovered, that needs investment to make it all a reality.

I've been off work over the summer holidays concentrating on my other full time but otherwise unpaid job of being a single parent. I've had the expense of brand new school uniform, as the school has gone to an academy, which is Kafkaesque for making parents spend what savings they've made not on a holiday, but yet more school stuff.

The most I could stretch to in this age of austerity, or as I call it: government sanctioned financial abuse, was a trip to London to see the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Peter Zumthor http://www.serpentinegallery.org/architecture/

The above photograph was expertly taken by my son Brett, 
aged 12

The Pavilion was recommended by Apparatjik via twitter/Facebook, and I also visited the gallery to see 

Michelangelo Pistoletto 
The Mirror of Judgement 

which runs until 17th September.

It was the pavilion that inspired me, as I'd been busy in my studio creating work for the upcoming LAN "Fictions" exhibition this September, for which I wanted to move away from previous work and illustrate the writings and theories of Jorge Luis Borges. 

However, I've found myself making small scale sculptures, and in particular, the Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude, which is from the essay The Garden Of Forking Paths. 

For this, I imagined the pavilion as a greenhouse, a book, a labyrinth, and a memory. 

However, I did intend to create a series of illustrations, but my concentration has lost focus due to a dispute I'm unfortunately engaged with with the mobile phone company Orange.

I'm considering whether to include this in the exhibition, in the same way that Tracey Emin showed her "Bed" after being asked to exhibit work and being ill. Barbara Walker made work to highlight how her son kept being stopped and searched by police for what she thought were racial motives, so this kind of work can have a powerful effect. It isn't what I intended to exhibit at all, and I'm not entirely sure whether I should give Orange or any of these companies associated the publicity, but I am being adversely affected by it, so I wish to make my opinion clear.

How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (Flow My Tears, A-ha)

The exhibition entitled "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (Flow My Tears, A-ha)", Alley Cafe, Nottingham, 2nd June - 4th July 2011

Entitled "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (Flow My Tears, A-ha)". I've been invited to exhibit work for an exhibition at Alley Cafe in Nottingham  for 1 month. This will be retrospective work of my A-ha-themed illustrations. The title relates to the science fiction author Philip K. Dick, who recounts in the essay entitled "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later"  how he wrote a novel "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" in which he later  "met" in real life characters from this novel, and how he recounted the story to a priest, the priest told him that his coincidental experiences were exactly the  same as in the Book Of Acts in the Bible. http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2b​uild.htm In my work, this relates to my experiences of collaborating with, and encounters  with Norwegian band A-ha. In his novel "Flow My Tears", a celebrity wakes up to find he is completely  unknown to the outside world... There are several layers of simulacra contained therefore within this, following  from research for my degree show. I keep thinking that my A-ha related work  will finish, (especially now they've finally retired) but similarly strange  coincidences keep occurring to me since I started illustrating their comic book  world. The cafe will hopefully invoke the spirit of the original Take On Me video, and  work will be for sale.

Feedback from the guys at Page45 comic shop in Nottingham was that the comic was funny, which is good, because that was its intention.

Other feedback has been that the comic is high quality print, and comments included from Facebook above. The comic is available to purchase from me at £3 plus p&p, contact me if you'd like a copy. 
It is available to view only online here.

I'm very excited to say that I have copies of my comic "The Unreal God And Aspects Of His Non-existent Universe" updated for 2011 and will be available for sale at Alley Cafe, Nottingham @ £2.60 a copy :-)

How Bazaar!

The Alley Cafe show is looming, so I hoped to raise some funding at the Engine Shed on Saturday for How Bazaar!! Here is my stall:

Made some sales to keep me in tea (!) Not quite as much as I'd hoped, but it was fun, and for a good cause!!

No sign of any celebrities, apart from a Christer Karlsson lookalike.

S02011 Festival Skegness

Yesterday I frantically wrote a proposal for SO Festival in Skegness and was successful!! http://skegnessinternational.com/

So I will go to Skeggy to discuss this with the organisers on Tuesday with a vague idea of having an I Scream Van based on Edvard Munch's "Skrik". I like the idea of juxtaposing English seaside kitsch with Nordic darkedged gothic noir. 
Because it's Lincolnshire this will most likely be made out of straw.....


Not entirely sure yet!! But I'm quite excited!