Curious Books

This week the Curious Books exhibition, curated by Jane Millar, opened at Studio 73 in Brixton Village. I've got three books on display in amongst an eclectic library of hand-made and limited edition lovelies, including work from Okido magazine, Sophie Herxheimer and Tony Hayward.

Jane Millar outside Studio 73 (photograph by Sophie Hexheimer)

The private view is on Friday night. There'll be some poetry readings by Sophie and I think I'm going to be reading aloud a short story I wrote on the MA! Ooh-la-la. I might need a swift shot of rum to see me through. Come on down and show your support, and see some interesting and beautiful work (and provide a hip flask).

Magical Blinc

I am currently getting together a film and images from this year's Blinc performance. Thank you to everyone who helped to make it so fantastic this year; Alys Hughes, Casi Wyn, Afal Drwg Efa, Kevin Jones, Neil Mayston, and the whole Blinc crew. It was even better than last time and we are incredibly proud of how it went. I'm still floating!

In the mean time, here is a still from this year's performance (copyright Michal Repec).

Alys and Casi performing 'Action / Reaction' (photo copyright Michal Repec)

Blinc, curiously..

Let's hurtle towards the weekend in a wheel of light and magic; here are not one, but two helpings of stuff occurring in the very near future.

First off is Blinc festival, kicking off on Friday in Conwy with the Bridge of Light, the largest laser display in the U.K.

Preview still from the performance

(I was chatting to one of the Blinc crew the other day, asking him how everything was going. He said; 'Ah, it's getting there, it's getting there...and then it's here, you know what I mean'. I couldn't have put it better.)

Alys and I will be showing our Action / Reaction performance the same evening, with live vocals from Casi Wyn (times TBC). We will be performing on Saturday as well, so if you miss it on Friday all is not lost. There will also be a display of last year's project, 'Hiraeth'. Times and locations TBC.

Next on the agenda is Curious Books, an exhibition of handmade books at Studio 73 in Brixton Village, from 4th - 10th November, with a private view on the 8th (Friday); here's the press release from curator Jane Millar....

 Printed, hand-written, folded, collaged, constructed, informative, chaotic, poetic, photographic...many artists use a book form to express themselves....come and browse a collection of works, explore this unusual art form...and enjoy a piece of cake! You will find an inventory of rat-traps, books made from fruit, book sculpture, nail tip art, culinary poetry, kids’ magazines and cloth books.  Curious Books is a selling exhibition of artists’ books, limited editions, poetry, hand-made sketchbooks, object multiples, and more...this is the place to buy that totally original and collectable Christmas present! (Prices start from £2.50) Curated by Jane Millar for Studio 73, located in Brixton Village, among the lively bars, shops and restaurants.  Studio 73 showcases local artists with rolling exhibitions of original paintings, drawings, photography and prints; and also offers bespoke picture framing. 

I'm showing three handmade books alongside treasures from a range of artists, some of them Brixton natives, some from further afield. In addition to this, as part of Studio 73's showcase in their space next door, I'll be screening some animation and exhibiting some prints, so come on down. It should be a melting pot, but without any pots or anything melting.

Blinc Artists of the Day

...that'll be us, then!

Alys Hughes and I are Blinc Festival's Artists of the Day today. It's adding to my excitement! Take a look at their website for more info...the festival takes place on the 25th-26th October 2013.

Preview still from this year's animation

We will be doing a live performance incorporating dance, projected animation and sound on the Friday and Saturday around the town of Conwy (exact locations to be confirmed).

Keep an eye on the blog as I will update with more info as it emerges....

Sensoria Festival: Now Will You Listen

Just wanted to show you a photo of Furry People being read aloud by Juliet Ellis this Sunday gone at the Lantern Theatre, Sheffield, as part of Sensoria Festival's Now Will You Listen event. That's my animation in the background! Looks like it was a great event - I'm sorry to have missed it, but hopefully there'll be a repeat performance in London soon.

Photograph by Netty Boo

Blinc 2013

I'm collaborating with dancer Alys Hughes again for this year's Blinc Digital Arts festival, which takes place on the 25th - 26th of October. The theme this year is Action / Reaction and we are devising a dance, sound and animation piece which aims to highlight Welsh culture, language and freedom of expression.

For this project we are also enlisting the talented input of Afal Drwg Efa, Casi Wyn (TBC) and ironworks / crychddwr studios. 

We were so proud of last year's performance and felt it had the potential to go further, so being part of Blinc 2013 is a great chance for this to happen. Watch for more updates! 

A new term begins!

I'm excited to say I'll be trundling back off to Cambridge tomorrow, to run another term of the Illustration for Picture Books course at Hills Road Sixth Form College. There are ten splendid weeks in store, of drawing,  picture-making, dreaming up ideas and stories, and making books. I'm looking forward to meeting the new students and seeing what wonderful ideas they come up with!  

Flyer illustration by Sally Walker 2013

Now Will You Listen: Furry People - this Sunday!

This Sunday an eerie collection of stories will be read aloud at the Lantern Theatre in Sheffield, as part of Sensoria Festival. It looks like a fantastically spooky line-up, narrators including the likes of Richard Hawley, Reese Shearsmith and many more.

I've made an animation as a backdrop to 'Furry People', written by Michael Ward and read by Julie Ellis. It's a story about a pet shop, where the owner has a bit of a peculiar secret...and that's all I can tell you. You'll have to see it to find out!

For more information find the Facebook page here.

Nick Edward Harris - The Flood

A couple of months back I had the great pleasure of making a music video for one Nick Edward Harris, and his beautiful song 'The Flood'. Here is the finished film. It is out now and available to download as a single / video / b-side; find it, along with other treasures, on his website.

Nick Edward Harris - The Flood from Nick Edward Harris on Vimeo.

The Floating Shed

'The Floating Shed is curious. So curious that one day, because he couldn't see over his garden wall, he floated up up and away...'

Last month my friend Sara and I collaborated to make a children's installation, The Floating Shed, for Womad festival. We invented a story of a curious garden shed who decided to see what was beyond his garden, and brought it to life by building the shed, complete with cardboard windows, and asking the children at Womad festival to help us imagine everything he had seen on his travels. We got them to create cut-out silhouettes of these things and hang them in his windows.

        

It took a lot of dreaming, nattering, tea-drinking and practical research to work out what we wanted our shed to look like. We even visited some allotments in Brighton and were hugely inspired by some beautiful sheds we saw there.

This shed wall is made entirely from plastic water bottles...not so clear here, but they reflected beautifully in the sunlight. 

We spent weeks talking through ideas, making mini-shed mock-ups, and playing around in Sara's studio with the structure of the shed.

An initial shed doodle by Sara

Making baby sheds

We wanted our shed to be 'flat-pack', so it could be assembled, disassembled, packed away and transported as easily as possible. This took a bit of experimenting to get the shed itself roughly how we wanted it, though we both agreed that this could be treated as a bit of an experiment (albeit a safe one, as it was a public installation), and that we'd learn on site what might need tweaking in future.

After working out the structure, we devised a labelling system so that we could take it apart and put it back together again as easily as possible.

Armed with a drill, a spotlight and a good dose of stamina, we reassembled the shed on site on Thursday night, and from Friday it was all systems go. We ran the workshops as drop-ins and kept the instructions fairly specific. We really liked Womad's description of the shed in the programme, which simply said 'Be part of the interactive Floating Shed', and sounded inviting and intriguing.

It was a great success - the children loved exploring the shed, imagining what he'd seen and choosing how to display their silhouettes. They loved the hands-on experience of being able to actively contribute to the shed and wander through it (we devised a simple series of entrances so they could go inside), and some of them really seemed to engage with the storytelling aspect of the project, which was what we hoped for. If they'd done a silhouette already, we asked them to develop the story by writing a few words about the shed and how he carried on his journey or what happened on his way to Womad...some of the children practically wrote novels!

We also had a fantastic floating shed team to help us - our wonderful workshop assistants Claudia and Tais (pictured with us in the shed), Sara and Claudia's respective partners Daimien and Paul, and of course their boys Robin and Tom.

We think the shed has got further to go and more stories to tell. Who knows where he'll end up next?