| In November, we agreed to postpone the Crafting by Committee conclusion until January as some people had other commitments in December. The group was excited then to start the New Year by sharing their final outcomes for the Crafting by Committee project. There was a varied response with each contributor demonstrating an identifiable departure from their usual practises and genuine responses to both rounds of committee feedback. The group reflected that the experience made people reconsider their approaches, and that the idea of the committee was a good one. There were varying levels of willingness to accept committee feedback however, and some felt uncomfortable about the instructions they received. Despite this, it was agreed that it had been positive to encourage each other to do something different within our practices. Some felt the main outcome was that it reinforced and highlighted what we already do, while for others it has encouraged development and more change in direction. Everyone found it to be an interesting exercise and agreed that it resulted in a variation on existing practices more than specific deviations from disciplines. One analogy was that it was more like adding a new flavour than a using an entirely new recipe. You can find details of the individual outcomes and further discussion on each by visiting the final stage project page. This month we were also pleased to welcome photographer Jim in his first visit to CRITgroup. With a background in the building trade, he has also been active for the last 15 years in his side line of professional photography, focussing particularly on documenting performances. He is now hoping to extend into other areas and has an interest in 3D modelling and rapid prototyping. Next month we will meet for an informal CRITsession and everyone is invited to bring some work. We will also make time to reflect further on the Crafting by Committee project, as well as discussing the possibility of a third research project. |  James Sharp DaDa Manchester 1 Things kick as the city decks its halls Bright red decorations stretch out Manchester's main streets Square plays Dancers performing Quarter's Contemporary Art Kevin Linanne  Christine Wilcox-Baker  Annabeth Orton |
|
0 Comments
We were then delighted to view work by our new visitor; Colin Binns. With a background in architecture, Colin currently works from his studio in Preston and is currently engaged with developing abstract mixed media work based on an exploration of the Bridgewater Canal for an exhibition at the Bank Quay Gallery, Warrington in November 2014. Colin starts with photographic references and develops these through drawing and print media into a series of canvases. He also shared some older work with us, much of which had references to specific cities. Of particular interest was a series completed as a portrait of Blackpool, in which Colin had associated different areas in the region with the concept of Chakras. These had particularly influenced the colours used and environmental features represented in the work. Those of you who have often attended meetings, or kept a close eye on the blogs will remember the work of regular attendee, Kevin Linnane whose work has also been inspired by the canal networks in Manchester. Colin and Kevin found they had still more in common with an interest in the application of dowsing techniques to respond to the environment that inspires their work.
 This month we broke slightly with tradition and I stepped out of the organiser role to give a talk on my own recent practice. This work, which was exhibited at the Chinese Arts Centre earlier this month, looked at developing recent PlaceMaking project work by engaging with Chinese Nationals both visiting the UK and as residents in China. Christine kindly agreed to take a few notes on my presentation (I can multi-task but probably not write an unbiased account of my own talk!). Her thoughts follow below. Annabeth gave us a very interesting and informative presentation about her experiences this summer in China as part of her travels. The quote “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” from T S Eliot resonated with her experiences as you will see below. In the tradition of the artist collector, on their Grand Tour, Annabeth set out to gain experience, inspiration and artefacts to further inform her current practice. Her tour took in a variety of friends, locations and new contacts and participants – many of them new to ‘art’. Having already run a series of workshops in the UK (around Greater Manchester, York and London) she had pre-organised a series of workshops in China in order to be able to compare and contrast the responses of those taking part, from schoolchildren to the curious ‘grown up kids’. I should like to thank Christine for her time in composing this passage; it's always fascinating to read about your work from an alternative perspective!
Later in the meeting, we also discussed our plans for beginning the new collaborative project next month. Crafting by Committee will be a shorter, three session project taking us up to the end of the year in which each collaborator will produce a brief project proposal, situated within their current practice. The rest of the group will then act as a panel who will, upon hearing the proposal, specify particular criteria for how the project must progress. The practitioner must then follow these instructions precisely and return to the panel in November with the outcome. The hope is that we can then use these pieces to reflect upon how decision making within different practices can impact upon outcomes but also be an intrinsic part of the creative process. Again, these will be research pieces, starting points for potential development and pieces of work in their own right. As some members cannot be present on one or more of the meetings, we agreed that everyone would submit their proposal in a brief written format a fortnight ahead of the next meeting. This will allows some time to preview the proposals and have a think before forming our committee! Again, as a research project and with so many different practices in the group, the outcomes of this are naturally unknown but one thing is certain; it will be an interesting couple of months finding them out! I can’t quite believe how quickly the last year has gone and already we are moving towards CRITgroup’s second birthday! It feels as though we have already achieved a lot with the successful conclusion and exhibition of Creative Whispers so I’m very excited about the plans for the next couple of months. Our next meeting is on October 30th and if you would like to become involved, feel free to come along, or drop us a message for more information using the contact form on the home page.  We have had a quiet couple of months at CRITgroup as people take time out to make the most of the summer, both in creative and other senses. I have had an especially exciting time of it, though I don’t want to give too much away as I shall be giving a talk on my recent PlaceMaking project work in China at the next CRITgroup on September 25th. While you can see this work on my website, it will also be briefly on display at the Chinese Arts Centre from the 10th to the 14th of September with a late night opening on Thursday the 12th; CRITgroup members are of course warmly invited to the opening!  One project I will share that I have also added to over the summer is This Place Is. A public project launched last year, it aims to build up a physical record of personal responses to a variety of places, starting from the UK and hopefully including places all over the world. I was in a good position to increase the global reach over the last couple of months and you can see my own use of the project booklets by visiting the This Place Is Summer 2013 gallery.  Christine Wilcox-Baker has been getting political with a public art exhibition designed to raise public awareness and support for Asian Elephant conservation. ‘Elephant Parade’ is coming to Manchester before stomping off all over the country and arriving in London next summer. Christine has designed and painted one of the elephant sculptures titled ‘Stop the traffic’ that is the size of a real baby elephant! You can see it, at the Trafford Centre until the 12th of September.  James Sharp has also been keeping busy attending crafts fairs and running workshops. You can find details of his activities in textiles, artists’ books and journal keeping on his blog.
As mentioned, the next CRITgroup will be on September 25th, when I shall be transporting you overseas with an investigation into Chinese approaches to public spaces. In October, we will be getting back up and running with our second collaborative project; Crafting by Committee.  It seems Summer is well and truly underway (despite the weather!) with many people on holiday (or conversely being so creative they were too busy to make it!) I do however; have a couple of recent updates of my own that I shall share before including news from a few of our other regular attendees. On the 15th of June, I was delighted to take the PlaceMaking and This Place Is workshops that I have been developing along to the Magpie Thunder Bureau Pop Up as part of the Barnaby Festival. In the morning, we took the PlaceMaking boards on to the streets of Macclesfield and gathered some thoughts on local perspectives, especially in light of the recent approval of some major town centre redevelopments. This took a slightly new approach to previous sessions and rather than working as part of an existing workshop group, we approached Saturday shoppers and arts trail visitors. We got some interesting conversations going too, once we had persuaded people that we weren't trying to sell them anything! In the afternoon, I ran a This Place Is demo session back at the Pop Up Shop and rather than asking for completed booklets there and then, they were made available for the duration of the festival for visitors to take away and return at their leisure. If you are interested in participating yourself, you can request a booklet online and find the return address on the project page.
I normally arrive at MadLab a good twenty minutes before everyone else, so this month it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted on the stairs by a member of staff who excitedly informed me that there were already people waiting. I was then pleased to discover a few familiar faces and to welcome a new contributor.
Comments from other members centred (unsurprisingly!) around the featuring of Danbo in the photographic visualisation which head up each section. If you’re a regular reader of CRITblog you’ll remember that Danbo paid us a visit last month; an impressively designed cut-out-and-make cardboard ‘robot’ with moving parts. Asked if Danbo would be featuring in all James’ Japanese photos, he explained he is keeping an open mind about his expectations for the workload whilst out there and wasn’t sure how practical that would really be. This then led on to an interesting discussion about the relationship of photographic documentation to actual experience and the potential for falling into the trap of unintentionally focusing so much on taking photos that you remain one step removed from fully enjoying the experience of being somewhere. James wrapped up by impressing us with his Japanese, demonstrating the most important word he’s learnt so far… 'Bīru'. Yes, it means ‘beer’. Following James, I shared my latest steps on some existing projects, including work currently on display at the Nexus Art Café in Manchester. I also took the opportunity for one last bout of shameless self-promotion by reminding the group about the next evening’s Private View of the Nexhibitionists show at which I will be showing some photographs of two recent workshops, one with Rolls Crescent Primary School and one with Nexus staff and contributors (though the Rolls Crescent work has been up since May and will be coming out in a week to move to the school itself.)
Kevin Linnane took over and showed us some video work related to the 53 Views project. Interested in issues of psychogeography, especially around notions of ‘resonance’ and the qualities of places which mean people are attracted (or in some cases it may seem repelled!) to particular locations, Kevin organises and undertakes walks in areas which can be located in the wide view from his flat. These then generate responses to the environment, primarily in photographic form. Some discussion took place around ideas of pilgrimage and how the act of travelling can dislocate the walker from ordinary experience. Most of Kevin’s recent work has included imagery of water around the Manchester canal network and Salford Quays/Media City. This also generated conversations around the religious connotations of water and contrasts between concepts of desecration and libation as applied to urban environments. Kevin then made the suggestion that CRITgroup members meet to join him on a walk round the Mancunian Way. This was arranged for Sunday July 22nd and we will be meeting at Oxford Road Station at midday. Kevin will ask participants to carry out specific activities at points along the route and we will also be using it as an opportunity to air the new This Place Is booklets. I’m delighted Kevin suggested this and really looking forward to the first creative collaboration for CRITgroup! If you would like to join us, drop me an email (mouse@glittermouse.co.uk) and I’ll look forward to seeing you there!
James Sharp shared three new journals with us today, a Cook Book (with pages for notes and recipes), a Stuff Stash (a book-based format of an existing textile product; for keeping notes and loose pages together) and a Lazy Journal (for those who enjoy the aesthetics of his work but are not inspired to generate their own content!). James will be giving a live painting demonstration at the Creative Recycling Gallery this Saturday (26th of May) as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival and will have a stall at Much Wenlock in Shropshire on the following Saturday (2nd of June). James Pashley then introduced us to the newest member of the group in the form of Danbo (see above!); a card model robot who will be helping us keep up to date with James’ imminent adventures in Japan by posing for a series of photographs for section headings on the new (and rapidly improving) instantpash site (link soon). I then spent the next 10 minutes working with Dambo on a series of glamour shots and completely failed to support James in explaining our recent collaboration to the others!
One key consideration raised was the need to be aware of health and safety restrictions, though it was also recognised that this was being deliberately set to one side temporarily in order to avoid prematurely capping the creative stages. It was also argued that allowing children exposure to supervised and calculated risk is an important part of facilitating healthy development and that opportunities to encourage outdoor play could be seen as especially responsive to recent news items regarding a lack of exercise and over use of screen based media. The next big challenge facing us in this project is the actual design of the map as we have a proposed route and a suggest list of features, all of which tie in with the source reference to Senda
The next meeting is June 27th and you can find details of months up to October including guest speakers on the home page. Six months since the seminal meeting, MadLab felt very much like ‘home’ for the fourth group meeting. Five of us came along this month and there were plenty of varied projects to cover with some interesting debates being generated in many cases. James Pashley started by sharing the exciting news that he has now confirmed an offer of employment working as a teaching assistant in Japan! He will be working as part of a cultural exchange programme to support English teaching beginning in late July or early August. While his insights and contributions will be missed in meetings, we are all looking forward to seeing his new website, which we briefly discussed, and to hearing updates on his experiences via his new blog. Meanwhile I am wondering if this means we can now label CRITgroup as an international art collective…! Christine Wilcox-Baker who joined us for the first time last month to tease us with a hint of her work in the areas of art and gardening then shared details of what sounds like a very exciting and potentially high profile project working with the Cheshire Gardens Trust. The Caldwell’s Nurseries Project will be creating a garden at the RHS Tatton Flower Show in July for which Christine has designed a 3.3m by 4.5m sculptural stainless steel gazebo and a mosaic. The garden will reference the King Canute legend about how Knutsford came to be named as well as raising awareness of the Trust’s project to record written and oral histories relating to the historic Caldwell’s Nurseries. The conversation turned to a discussion of the benefits of voluntary projects, which whilst being carried out ‘for the love of it’ can still be very demanding. It was agreed that the networking opportunities and CV building potential of such projects was very valuable, however, there are also times where paid employment becomes a priority! We also talked about the onerous task of seeking sponsorship (easier if linked to a charity), ways of promoting events and ideas for getting national press coverage (including the pros and cons of inviting a range of celebrities to your opening!). The RHS Tatton Flower Show is open to the public from the 18th to the 22nd of July and I look forward to both a visit and to sharing photos of Christine’s gazebo!
The next CRITgroup meeting will be on May 23rd (continuing at MadLab) and I hope soon to confirm and publish the subsequent dates running up to the end of the summer. We also agreed that it would be a good idea to plan a series of topics or themes for discussion as well as potentially inviting some guest speakers so I hope to have some more news on those proposals next month.
I was particularly excited about the opportunity to meet at MadLab this month as I have attended events there before and know it as a very creatively nurturing space. It was unfortunate that not many people could make it along this evening for various (pretty good) reasons so I'm hoping that numbers pick up again soon and we can keep going. Not to start off on too much of a downer however, those of us who did attend, all left agreeing that it had been useful to meet so that's still pretty encouraging.
Tammy Leigh returned and briefly shared some developments in her range of knitted wire jewellery which involved the inclusion of semi precious stones threaded onto the wire. Following on from her presentation of some pieces made using recycled materials at the previous meeting, we spoke more about this aspect of the work. During that discussion, we arranged for her to visit my students at Tameside College next week to talk with them about using recycled materials in their own work. I then asked people to look at some mock-ups I had made following suggestions at the previous meeting for the This Place Is book; a development from This Belongs To and a series of workshops run in Hulme. It was agreed that although I had probably done a reasonable job at being clear and concise in terms of the content, I probably hadn't allowed enough space for people to record more personal reflections. We then chatted a bit about possible tweaks to that and eventually came to the conclusion that I might in fact be looking at two projects, one formatted as booklet to hand out to people (probably locally) and eventually compiled into one volume and one printed more carefully to send further afield but to more specific locations. This seemed to make sense and I have since realised that the booklet format might also work really well in a workshop so there are more possibilities for developing those avenues too. Juan Armellini also joined us for the first time and spoke about his experiences using blogging sites to build an online portfolio. We discussed the format of blogs as opposed to other kinds of web pages and I suggested that a blog might not be the most flexible format for his purposes. We also talked a bit about how the design of the site must 'agree' with or support the content. Having previously helped Tammy with her site, I suggested that at the next meeting I could spend a bit of time with the laptop showing people how I build mine (very simply) using a browser based system not dissimilar from many blogging sites. We agreed that might also help give the session a bit more structure so that has become the plan. I have since spoken with the very supportive people at MadLab who have agreed we can use the space next month so we will next meet at 7pm on Wednesday February 22nd (2012) at Madlab, Manchester (36 - 40 Edge Street, Northern Quarter). We will begin with an informal sharing of practice and then for the last 30/45 minutes or so I will demonstrate how I build my website. If you fancy coming along but are not already on the mailing list, please drop me a note using the contact form on the main page and I can be sure we make time for everyone! Hope to see you there! |
CRITgroup
Creative Reflection and Investigation Talk Group is an
informal network for local artists and designers. The group meets every other month aiming to facilitate a pooling of
professional skills and knowledge to provide motivation, support and
social contact for those pursuing a creative (visual) practice in
Manchester. Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
