The Art Party Conference

Last weekend, I had loads of fun at The Art Party Conference in Scarborough

crossing the Humber Bridge on the way to The Art Party Conference

Scarborough

Beware these crafty ravens, trying to force you to part with £s!

Of course, being a blackbird, I'm not normally a huge fan of ravens, but nice brolly :-) I didn't buy a mask, because I already have one of my own :-)

Throw stuff at small effigies of the Rt. Hon Michael Gove MP!

Karen Thompson's Goveshy was such fun! Many artists really went for it throwing stuff at Gove's multiple heads!

Big hello to the very welcoming and friendly Arts Emergency lady that was doing zines.

There was much art manifesto writing going on with Airspace gallery's Pigdogandmonkeyfestos, which reminded me of Foundation Art at Boston college with Andy Black 

This will become part of an exhibition at Airspace gallery in Stoke-on-Trent 3rd May to 7th June 2014, so we might have to go for a trip to see what happens to them!

a-n were there doing AIRtime, which included the most best maltesers cake - here's Susan Jones' latest article for The Art Party Conference.  

The Rt. Hon Michael Grove MP

BBC news coverage

The Rt. Hon Michael Grove MP being challenged on his policies

Bob And Roberta Smith
Bob and Roberta Smith's STEAMPUNK manifesto for art and education

The Rt. Hon Michael Grove MP - booooo!!!

Message from Jeremy Deller for all his critics!

We asked Jeremy Deller to write a note to Becky's Dad. We explained that Becky's Dad was at the battle of Orgreave, and subsequently hates Jeremy Deller's work "The Battle Of Orgreave". This is the note Jeremy wrote for him :-)

The Lincoln Simulacrum

For a zero budget exhibition, The Lincoln Simulacrum was installed.

With a group of artists blagging laptops, projectors, materials and time, the exhibition was installed, and a Wewillgather cashmob was set up to recover some costs.

The private view went particularly well, with performances by artists Rebecca Willoughby and Peter Rollings' Experimental Sonic Machines. 

I exhibited selected work from my graphic novel, alongside sound work from the last digital collaboration with Apparatjik, and images from my trip to Oslo.

I haven't been commissioned to produce any new work, instead, I'm struggling to survive at all, either as an artist, certainly as a single parent, and that isn't conducive to creativity. 

I feel as though the work was good, it went well, but it was only a test. Compared to the ambition of my ideas, it was nowhere near.

However, the alternative would've been to not have done anything at all, and that is what non-creatives want. They want to break my spirit. Advice has been to give up self-employment and go and do some other job instead - this only makes me more determined to continue, to fight against this false dichotomy. 

All information and images are in this blog

The good news is that I've been offered a paid role with Lincoln Inspired Festival, and I'm still pushing for opportunities that generate an income for myself and other artists. I'm hoping that in some way I'll definitely be included in Frequency Festival next year. In a conversation yesterday it was noted that I'm still only involved in "fringe" events - it really does beggar belief as to how I can do so much yet I'm still not accepted into any proper role within the arts.

Is it any wonder that I still don't feel part of any of it? Yet I still somehow get recommendations for art on Linked In from fellow artists and arts professionals - I genuinely don't understand why!! 

The Lincoln Simulacrum

After a stressful few weeks of single parent nightmares, somehow or another something is coming together for the Outer Trial Bank project and an LAN installation.

I've been working hard for the LAN, developing Viking Biking Expeditions and The Birds workshop, where artists were invited to make cardboard bird wings and beaks to create a flock of birds that migrates around the city for a Viking Biking Expedition during and after The Lincoln Simulacrum exhibition!

"Cow twerking"

"Cow twerking" - guerilla art interaction along The Viking Way

The Birds workshop

Apparatjik disco bike

We're very busy constructing a Cube - after thinking it wouldn't be possible, some kind of DIY Cube is happening, and preparations are afoot to exhibit work by several artists for The Lincoln Simulacrum, which coincides with Frequency festival, but is not funded by Frequency, and I cannot endorse any form of workfare, so this is why I'm going ahead with it as an artist-led independent fringe event.

I'm also working on an Apparatjik Disco Bike, which is intended as a sculptural piece that I hope might be exhibited in various hotels at a future date....

Summer holidays

It's been a tumultuous last week of the summer holidays. I have tried to have some time off, a break from work, to give myself time off to wait for the outcome of the ACE grant proposal, but have found myself coming up with ideas for other work, and I spent two weeks putting together a Kickstarter project for my graphic novel (which is all documented via my illustration blog).

I wanted to get away, go somewhere, I had a few places in mind, but not a chance of affording even the cheapest travel overseas to anywhere such as Denmark or Amsterdam, both of which were enticing me to go and visit.

sunflower field, South Holland, Lincolnshire

Instead, the most I can afford is a visit to my sister's down in Saxmundham. She moved there a while ago, so it's the first time I've been to visit and see her new kittens. 

This last week, my eldest son went to his friend's and never came home. He says he wants to move out. Which I'm strongly trying to convince him not to do at this point. If he does, I will lose support for him, and I will have to move to a smaller place. I can't afford to move right now, he would be much better off staying at home for another year - I did try to explain to him that if he does well enough to go to University, and decides to study here, he'd have less costs living at home, as he won't have to pay to live in halls. He can always hang out with his mates there, so he won't miss out.

I'm treating his kamikaze attempt to fly the nest as a brief hangout round his mates, and went to get away for a day or two. 

It was a horrible, rainy day, but we went to the beach despite the weather, and to Snape Maltings.

The Scallop 

 The Scallop, by Suffolk artist Maggie Hambling is dedicated to Benjamin Britten.
It's the perfect accompaniment to the book I read on the train home - "Orkney" by Amy Sackville.
We passed the House In The Clouds 
As the fine art and illustration staff at the University of Lincoln move into the all new AAD faculty building on Brayford campus, I feel somewhat lucky to have been able to have come up with the concept for Cloudbusting having been educated at the top of Steep Hill, an experience future freshers will miss out on. 

????

This road sign sculpture immediately caught my eye when we arrived in the car park, but I didn't catch who did it! It reminds me of waiting at the train barrier on Lincoln High St, which is where I would curate it!

Benjamin Britten at Snape Maltings

boring

grey, misty, rainy weather

giant snozcumbers

 According to Brett, snozcumbers from The BFG. In Sarah Lucas' world that means the BFG had 2..... OMG! Here, you can use the Sewell sampler to construct a critique of this piece.

Snape Maltings 

boring

 There was a family at this sculpture. A Mum, Dad and some kids. The parents were asking the kids about the materials used, they were clearly educated and trying to teach them something, but the kids were, as kids tend to be, far more interested in poking their heads through every hole, and climbing on it. I photographed it for anyone that might be interested in this sort of thing. To me, it's utterly dull. It's as dull as The Flintstones cartoon if the flintstones had been made in the time it was set, and had to be hewn out of granite for each frame of animation. By the time it'd been made, everyone would've been killed by wild boars or wolves. 

Lego Hero Jack Covill Lowndes from Wainfleet

This is more like it - the story of Jack Covill-Lowndes having his statue made out of Lego for fundraising for the hospice where his Mum died of cancer, was a story I read in The Metro on the train to Spalding - here's the story from the Skegness standard. I think it should be installed in Skeggy, perhaps at the train station, or on the seafront near the clock tower, where kids can have their photo taken next to it. Actually, he could be waving on the pier! 

we wondered if this was a part of the art work

I was drawn to the Sarah Lucas sculpture, it immediately reminds me of The Haywain, but also of Granny's collection of shire horses and carts that she has in her house. I'm guessing this was the original reference, made to resemble an ornament, to a much larger scale. The BFG's mantlepiece.
Here, you can use Sewell Sampler 2, as well as the original above, to critique this piece.  

The Lincoln Simulacrum

I'm currently busy developing a project for the Digital Arts Festival in October, inviting Lincoln based artists, illustrators, photographers, and creatives to submit work to be eventually displayed on an Apparatjik-style Cube. 
I decided that the Cube is going to be called The Lincoln Simulacrum, a reference to Jean Baudrillard. 
I've drafted up an Arts Council grant application, and went for a meeting with Tiina Hill from the Arts Council to discuss the project on 4th July.
This is a lot later than I'd really like, as I was hoping to get the project put together and submitted by the end of June. I've now completed and submitted the arts council funding application, and now have to wait to find out of it's successful. 

I'm otherwise been busy working on an illustration commission for harpist Erin Hill, and trying to work out how I might be affected by these proposals for Universal Credit from next April. I've largely stopped doing as much work since January, when I developed a huge fear that, as a self-employed artist and illustrator, I would not have any income to support myself and my kids if I'm not earning any other income, due to this "minimum income floor" that was concocted without any consultation with me. If the government had asked me, I could've told them that I don't earn enough for the work I do already, never mind have any more cuts to that income. I could've informed them that when I got divorced, I escaped a financially abusive marriage, and I didn't expect to be financially abused further by rich toffs sitting on ugly green sofas, generally not doing a lot of work themselves, and earning huge salaries, whilst those of us actually creating and producing things struggle to pay the bills.

Recently, I went to Citizen's Advice to try and find out how I might be affected by Universal Credit. 
In 2009-2010 I was subject to a lot of financial abuse and gaslighting by the DWP, and was made homeless as a result. I now pay £75 more rent a month, a cost I was trying really hard to avoid. As was homelessness and abuse.

This is all subject material for my current graphic novel.

I decided that it is incredibly important that single parents highlight and showcase the problems so-called "austerity" is creating, and the sheer hypocrisy and abuse being dictated to society. I'm angry that 5 years on, nothing has been done to stop these proposals, that they're rolled out and no one is even allowed to object to them.

I have no intention to be subjected to less income due to Universal Credit. My costs will remain the same if not more, costs keep going up, not down, and unless they do go down, or unless I'm paid adequately for the work I do, any reduction in income isn't financially viable. 
I don't get paid for writing this blog.

And I don't have any intention of going to the Jobcentre and having to search for their non-existent and impossible jobs. I'm not leaving my degree off my CV, as I worked damned hard to get that, and I did that so that I could earn more, not be forced to take up any underqualified work to struggle to pay the bills. If I'm struggling to survive, I'm generally not creating anything. 

I could, in theory, spend months creating really awful work, but it's all part of a process of experimentation that will lead onto something good, and all creativity is subject to the risk of failure. James Dyson I believe made lots of prototypes before he came up with a viable design for his vacuum cleaner, and he was creating a mere product, a consumer device, not working on anything that is for the development of the human soul, which is what art serves to do. 

In other news, the kids break up for the summer holidays tomorrow. I have a meeting to discuss other potential projects, but will mostly not get much work done for 5 weeks. The is known as "shirking". I've already updated last years' application for the AA2A scheme, so that I can re-apply to support the graphic novel. This years' application is looking much better already.

Discernible exhibition

After all the excitement of Magne's amazing exhibition, whilst in London, I also met up with Jack Hutchinson, and we went to have a look at Discernible at ZAP studios in New Cross.

Work that caught my eye was Kate Murdoch's sculptural pieces, and I was pleased to see Rosalind Davies' paintings exhibited (and a sneaky spy in her studio).

Jack was telling me about his ipad drawings, so pleased that they were picked up by ILikeArtists on twitter.

So now it's back to getting on with work again, with a couple of illustration commissions to look forward to and busy applying for funding.

Magne Furuholmen's "Norwegian Wood" exhibition

Magne Furuholmen and Katrina at Magne's "Norwegian Wood" exhibition 

I feel a bit of a cheat considering this is meant to be a blog about how I go about creating my own work, and I'm about to share the work of another artist, but then this is what Andrew Bracey and Ashleigh Mc Dougall would regard as "mondegreen" 
Here are some photos I took of the show

I felt very privileged to find the opportunity to go and speak to Magne about his work, to share the anecdote about lino printing, and the connections to my own work, and Magne said there was nothing new in the world. 
I said that I love the Apparatjik stuff (I had the intention to ask them if they had any time free to come to Lincoln, but this escaped my thoughts) and I said I wished I was going to Copenhagen where they performed this weekend, and Guy said he wished he was going too (he wasn't), then Magne said he was going, but then added "but no one would really notice if it was just a bloke in a mask!" which we all laughed at. 

Later on, I asked Guy if he knew much about the process of woodblock printing that the curator had very kindly spent some time explaining to me - I thought the prints would be a lot smaller, and was impressed by the large scale, and he explained that they'd been created to that scale - since then, images have appeared on the gallery website showing how Magne created the prints.

But Guy said I probably knew more than he did. He bought "Helter Skelter", so I now wonder if that's his favourite Beatles track, or his favourite Magne print of a Beatles track? Or both!
My favourite print was "Norwegian Wood" (what, no Blackbird??!). I was drawn to the Van Gogh marks in the W, that really captured a sense of frustration that something hadn't gone to plan, perhaps the ambition to be as big as The Beatles, that I think Magne felt about A-ha. But I think that, for Norway, A-ha were definitely as big as The Beatles for taking Norwegian music to a global audience. 

Magne Furuholmen - Norwegian Wood

When I was taught lino printing, we were always told that if you include text, to reverse it so it prints the right way, but in Magne's work the reflective type is indicative of seeing the Beatles tracks from a different perspective, from that of a Norwegian fan, and following on from Magne's signature Schwitters style cut-out text and interest in language. The English is in reverse. In Norwegian, it would be Norske Tre. A-ha always wrote their songs in English, not Norwegian.
The frustration of hundreds of fans that wish they could be at the show but can't make it!

In one of the prints, I noticed a tiny splinter of wood, trapped in the ink, and I thought that if you touched it, you'd get a splinter that would cut into your finger, much the same way that the piece had been created by cutting into the wood with tools borrowed from Sir Peter Blake.

Here, I have written some lyrics about the evening:

I once had a Guy, or should I say, Guy and Magne.

He showed me his print,

isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?

I asked for a photo

As he was just standing right there

So I looked around

And I saw Peter Blake in the chair

I stood on a nail biding my time

Drinking their wine

We talked until eight and then I said, "no,

it’s time to go”

I told him I worked in printing

and started to laugh

He told me he didn't

and crawled off to go for a fag

And when I went home I was alone

This bird had flown

So I caught my train

Isn’t it good Norwegian Wood?

I'll get my coat....

I had lamented a trip to Brighton earlier this year, where some friends met with Steve Barron, director of the "Take On Me" video, and I was sharing with him my experience going to Oslo to see the original illustrations for the video.
He said I hadn't missed much at that talk!! 

Happy Birthday to Steve today - May the 4th be with you and all that!

I'd been thinking about the Apparatjik project - someone asked me if I got the funding, I wondered what funding, as I've been applying for loads. I was going to ask Guy and Magne if Apparatjik could come to Lincoln, and it escaped my thoughts - but still the encounter has given me a better idea. Apparatjik asked everyone to send in images of their face to go on their Light Space Modulator, and Guy wasn't going to be in Copenhagen himself, so there will be someone else standing in for him, the guy that was in Oslo that I still cited was him! I don't know who the fake Guy A simulacra is! So... therefore, for the purposes of this current project, I'm going to fake it and ask local musicians such as Lincoln Moondog to come and be an Apparatjik. No one would really notice it isn't Magne in a mask ;-) What would be really interesting, would be if Apparatjik then display the outcome of this fake Apparatjik experiment on the LSM proper somewhere. All of this has been keeping me awake.