Following our summer hiatus, we met this month in MadLab’s temporary home at New Federation House, currently managed by Castlefield Gallery. The primary aim of the meeting was to review recent feedback from CRITsurvey 2014 and make some key decisions on the future of the group to make sure it continues providing motivation, support and social contact for those pursuing a creative visual practice in Manchester.

Our main concern is that we want to continue to see regular involvement in the meetings; not necessarily huge numbers or the same people coming every single month, but enough to provide varied and meaningful feedback discussion for those who do attend. We had previously tried to achieve this consistent interest by running collaborative and research projects, one of which culminated in a group show, as well as hosting a series of speakers. Whilst these had been successful in many ways, it was noted that numbers were starting to drop off throughout 2014. Feedback from the survey and analysis in our discussion tonight suggested that aside from practical reasons like timing, this might be because the format had become a bit too formal and structured. We also felt that some people who had dropped in to see what we were about found it difficult to engage with a group who was already involved in a project spanning several sessions. The main thing we concluded was that due to our focus on these additional activities, we had started to run out of time to for informal critique on practical work; the very thing we originally set up to achieve. Without wanting to make accidental political references, it was unanimously agreed that the key to the ongoing success of the group was in going ‘Back to Basics’ and refocussing on this critical discussion as the primary function of the group.  One suggestion was to have less frequent but longer sessions, possibly meeting for a full day every 6 months; however it was decided that meeting for the same length of time but at only slightly longer intervals would be more practical. As such, we shall be moving to a bimonthly schedule. We hope this will allow those who wish to attend a bit more flexibility in meeting other commitments as well as feeling that they can still be fully active in the group, at the same time as giving everyone a bit more space between meetings to make progress on their projects or develop their practices.

We also plan to be less rigid in formatting any other activities. Whilst we intend to continue supplementing our critical conversation with events such as speakers, topic specific discussions and skills sharing workshops, we will arrange these in a less structured fashion on a month by month basis. The bimonthly move should also make it easier for us to organise things such as gallery visits at times outside of the established meeting pattern. We agreed to stick to the Last Wednesday of the month 7-9pm standard as it was generally felt that there was never going to be a time or day where everyone could be present anyway and there was not a significant bias towards any other specific option in the survey feedback.

We ended the discussion on a positive note and considering there to be ‘no time like the present’ to act on our new convictions, we then spent a bit of time looking at some new developments from those present! James Sharp has been developing an extensive range of distinctive textiles products that he sells at crafts events in and around the Greater Manchester area. He is very responsive to feedback from his customers and has recently developed a leather-bound book to supplement his art journals range.  He brought one of these to show us and we were pleased, but not surprised, to hear that they have been selling well from his stall. These are also available from his online shop.

Given our agreement to adopt a bimonthly format, the October meeting will be skipped and we will next get together in November. We'll also give December (our December meetings tend to be all about the mince pies anyway!) over to more festive engagements and shall then begin a new year of alternate months in January.  The January meeting will be the first in the fourth year of CRITgroup and it is with optimism in relation to our refocused intentions that we look forward to welcoming many new and old friends to our conversations. We hope you will be a part of it!

Last month, with only a couple of Crafting by Committee participants able to attend, we had deferred our reflection on the project to March. Though it was still a small group, as everyone who came along tonight had actually worked on the project it was much easier to have a chat about how we felt it had gone. The general consensus was that it didn’t seem to have had a conclusion like our last project and hadn’t gone so far in allowing us to address our aim of questioning the difference between our respective practices, especially those of ‘Artists’ and ‘Craftspeople’. It was also agreed that having had a couple of participants drop out, though unavoidable, had affected the group and played a role in some lost momentum. Finally, we felt that ‘committee’ feedback had been taken quite a lot more personally than in Creative Whispers, possibly a little too much so in some cases, though some did say this had been personally useful in providing an arena to push work forward on an individual basis. Despite this being the case, it still hadn’t really performed the role we had hoped for.

The next question to address was in deciding what to do with regards to our proposed third and final project in the series of collaborations. As this would be largely a performance based investigation, we have agreed to pop it on a back burner for now until we have had a bit of time to reconfirm ourselves as a critical reflection group as our discussion of the Crafting by Committee project had led us on to question other issues, including recent low turnout. It was suggested that one cause of this is that some people were now finding Wednesdays difficult as it seems to be a favourite night for a variety of groups to meet, including other arts groups in Manchester, such as the Castlefield Gallery Associates Scheme. I asked if it was possible that the group had simply ‘had its day’ and that whilst we had got a lot individually and as a group from the sessions in the first eighteen months, that people had moved on with their practices and no longer found the sessions to be as relevant. Of course, this was part of why we had initiated the collaborative project in the first place, to keep things fresh and encourage enquiry in to a range of issues, however we agreed this may have eventually become a bit too rigid, rendering the meetings less useful to some regular members and off putting to those new faces who had come along and found us half way through a group project.

One potential solution was the suggestion to begin having bi-monthly sessions instead, though we will of course be looking forward to the next two meetings in April and May when we have guest speakers. We have agreed to revise where we want the group to go at the June meeting. Especially considering the very low turnout last summer, this may be a good time to reduce the number of scheduled meetings. Without wanting to sound too negative however, we did look forward with the intention to continue the group in some format and agreed it may not need wrapping up entirely, as long as we can devise a way of making it useful to members and possibly attract new contributors. We are quite keen on looking into organising another group show for October or November, though we would not link this to a specific project and actually just invite people to show work from their own practice. If we do go ahead with this, we agreed that an alternative venue might be more appropriate than MadLab for this sort of show. Though MadLab was excellent for the culmination of Creative Whispers, which became very much an interactive and workshop based event, it’s not really set up as a gallery space, or for the particularly successful display of work. We’ll discuss this further in June too.

Following this open and honest review of our current status, for which I was very grateful, we spent the second half sharing recent work. When Christine Wilcox-Baker arrived at the start of the evening, I had strong suspicions that this was going to be an interesting discussion courtesy of a busy and dynamic artist and was certainly not disappointed! First, she shared with us her most recent completed projects; work for Bollington Town and Cheshire East Councils. Christine designed and managed the construction of an ornamental arch for the entrance to Coronation Gardens, Bollington, Cheshire; a park with children's play equipment, storytelling and picnic areas. The park was opened in 1953 and re-designed in 2013 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth 2nd. She also designed and produced pencil illustrations for a story board in the park that tell a short history of Bollington and the site of the children's play park. 

From this work followed the opportunity to collaborate further with Cheshire East Council to produce an entrance gateway for Elworth Park. Christine enjoyed close dialogues with a blacksmith and his team to produce the work, with imagery and symbolism informed by intensive research into the parks' history including the original benefactors and local environment. This included reference to wheels of steam and truck engines and musical notation from a piece titled Alpine Echoes, which was played at opening of the park by Foden’s brass band. The work also makes visual references to the local cricket club’s fox emblem, salt crystal images inspired by local business and depictions of birds that inhabit the local marshes.

As if this wasn’t enough, she is now working on a sculptural bench for another country park and looking at ways of presenting information in an alternative format for a touring exhibition about village life affected by World War One in Holmes Chapel. This project involves working with local school and MMU media students to make a film investigating personal rather than political stories and she has been looking into the history of the local area, including why there seem to have been so many Belgian refugees! 

To wrap up, I briefly shared the completed canvas that I had shown as a ’work in progress’ in February. I reflected that I still wasn’t too sure of where this new tangent was taking me, continuing to encounter some issues with whether or not the work is bit self-indulgent and whether that matters anyway! It was noted that it’s refreshing to a practice to have time to be a bit experimental and work on things that you really want to do for personal reasons rather than feel driven to do for reasons of maintaining or developing your practice. I acknowledged that the new work came at a time when I had been experiencing some frustrations with a lack of opportunity to drive other work forward but also recognised that perhaps I hadn’t been pushing these areas as much as I might once have done partly because I felt drawn to produce some newer work. I have now started a second canvas inspired by the Peaceful Places photographs and have given this new thread the working title of The Serenity Series.

My questions about this work led then into a discussion on our intentions for our work, be that a show, representation by an agent or direct sales, and how this might affect outcomes when we begin to question where we ‘fit’ in the current art world. Those here these evening felt that attitudes may be changing as increasing financial pressures are placed on artists and institutions and that Conceptual art is not really going anywhere as a result. Maybe, it was suggested, the role of craft and skills in successfully realising the conceptual, as well as the onus being on the artist to produce work that can generate an income for itself (such as through sales of paintings and drawings) is coming back into focus. We also noted the role arts education has to play in this and that teaching practical skills may become increasingly important again in contrast to conceptually focused courses which lend themselves to a system of a conveyor belt get ‘em in, get ‘em out format.

Well, that’s your lot for March! We are looking forward to welcoming back Dave Wilkinson in April who will be sharing his work in astrophotography with us! Hope to see you then!

This month I was really looking forward to the opportunity for a freer session for a change, less constrained by attending to the specifics of the latest collaborative project, which we completed last month. I wasn’t disappointed! Though I have enjoyed the collaborations, both participating in them and being part of the discussions they generated, it was really refreshing to get ‘back to the roots’ of the group and just spend a couple of hours sharing and talking about recent work and ideas. It was good to see Colin Binns again, who fresh from a drawing session with Manchester Urban Sketchers, brought his sketchbook along.
The sketching meetings occur every three to four weeks and are connected with a worldwide network of similar groups aiming to connect and share places. They fix a location for an afternoon and get together to spend time drawing in the urban environment, sharing and discussing the outcomes at the end. Today the group met at the Manchester Museum, where many people focussed on drawing objects and artefacts, however Colin found he was looking out of the museum to the street scenes and other local buildings. He felt this was related to his architectural background and connecting back to previous practice, instead of some of his more recent painting work. When Colin had mentioned to me what he was doing in the afternoon, I decided to bring along my own recent sketches from the museum. It was interesting to compare styles and approaches, especially as we had both had very different purposes for the drawings.

Resident CRITter Kevin Linnane and Dave Wilkinson, who has been on our mailing list for some time now but for whom this was a first meeting, were especially interested as photographers in  the relationship between sketching and accuracy (or lack) of detail.  This led us on to a discussion about the role of the visual arts in interpreting and depicting reality as well as the artist’s decisions in emphasising certain features. It was agreed that though this might be less apparent in photography, the expressive is still present, especially when considering that the photograph is not the subject (think Magritte’s Treachery of Images). We discussed how this is sometimes achieved in post-production in photography as opposed to directly during the sketching process, which led us on to the comparative immediacy of film and digital photography, planning images and editing en situ as well as back in the studio.
Colin identified that his drawings are a method of investigating how to develop a balance between an architecturally accurate drawing style and his abstract paintings. Comparing his drawings with my own sketchbook work (completed partly as a demonstration to students and partly as ongoing research development), we agreed that though the outcomes are very different in style and approach, they exist for essentially the same reason. Colin will be using his sketches in moving towards mixed media work involving silkscreen.

As we had been looking at my sketchbook as a playground for new ideas, it was natural then to turn the discussion to my own recent, if unexpected, developments. Last week, I was delighted to hang the Peaceful Places prints at the Earth Café and I shared the selected prints with the group. I explained that as much of my work recently has been focussed on participatory events displayed (mostly) in online galleries, I had almost forgotten just how enjoyable it can be to get work out physically into a public display and that in the short time I was in the café hanging the work, I received very positive feedback which had been refreshingly welcome. This changed my thoughts around the project too; though the Peaceful Places series has been something of a tangent from my recent practice, I have enjoyed working with the images so much that I had already begun to consider making some paintings from them, and having experienced this response at the café I had been motivated to start a new piece.
The painting is a reasonably direct representation of a lotus in a Japanese Buddhist temple and I have been exploring the ‘peace’ theme further through the application of paint by employing calm, soft, almost meditative brushstrokes. I went on however, to question my motivations for this work, worrying that it was bordering on the therapeutic and explaining that I felt self-indulgent in producing it largely for personal pleasure. Though I feel strongly that I don’t want to put this new ‘tangent’ down and am enjoying making for makings sake, I also find myself questioning the purpose of it, uncertain of what it could be achieving in a wider context. Having said that, I am not able to explain why this matters and fully appreciate that the purpose of visual art is not easy to qualify, nor is it always appropriate to do so. Despite this, I seem to be challenged in applying this to my own practice.  Kevin suggested that this may be partly due to education though I suspect a lot of it has to do with my wider aspirations and self-expectations as well as it being quite a shift from my other recent work.

Kevin also commented that he noticed a similarity between my recent ‘discovery’ of a new element of work within an existing theme (funnily enough, also concerned with the concept of place) and his own recognition of a previously unarticulated key thread in his work. The group all felt that there were examples present in our work of deviations occurring before we returned to a core subject. Kevin described this as being part of a process of finding out what it is you do, a recognition of things clicking into place, feeling right and thinking ‘I can just get on and do it now’.
He has recently been looking at issues relating to place and space but after looking back through some older projects has realised an ongoing interest in rituals. This is especially apparent in two projects he shared with us exploring acts of pilgrimage and performance . He is now working collaboratively on a series of photos of pillboxes in Bury St Edmonds and is currently working out the relationship between the new and old work. The pillboxes are positioned in defensive lines along the railway and I commented that this seemed to relate back to Kevin’s previous interest in ley lines while it was also noted that there were links to military rituals. Kevin hopes to open the work up following this rediscovered direction and plans to look at military bands.

In summary, February 2014 wasn't our biggest gathering, especially with the notable absence of a few familiar faces but the content of the discussion more than made up for this and it definitely felt good to get back to the CRITgroup roots in an open and meandering discussion inspired by the new work of those involved! I am certainly looking forward to seconds in March! 

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.

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.

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.