Dehydrated Food and Drawing in the Dark aka BLOW ME       

24th September 2015

It was the first day back to Bower Ashton for the second year of my MA Multi-Disciplinary Print course with the introduction of the new module 'Developing Practice' looming and I was feeling like death. I had a temperature, headache the size of Alaska and a voice not unlike Barry White's smaller brother (no beard to speak of though). These ailments, combined with my lack of creative direction, did not fill me with confidence for the start of the new term. So wracked with delerium my mind began to wander back to some of my art based endeavours over the summer and as I have been away from my blog for what seems a century, let me enlighten you.

Over the summer the artistic enthusiasm i had built up had leaked from my body like an ice lolly melting on the hot pavement, however, still being a "Spike Associate", I took advantage of the variety of seminars and exhibitions on offer and attended the 'Fluid Medium' performance and life drawing class at Spike Island. The performance workshop was preceded by a tour of the gallery and the other exhibitions. 

Reto Pulfer: Gewasserzeiten 

4 July - 20 September 2015

The first exhibition was a large scale multi faceted symphony by the (self taught) artist 
Reto Pulfer. http://www.retopulfer.com  Gewasserzeiten literally meaning water-times, was an eclectic mixture of styles and environments, with a large fishing net structural installation alongside hanging bells, ribbons, dehydrated food (yum), textured ceramics and watercolour paintings. 

Reto Pulfer - Gewasserzeiten 2015

Pulfer's Raku pottery collections were rather unpredictable in texture and quality, appearing haphazard, but were a colourful and unusual interpretation of this Japanese ceramic technique.

The technical standard of his work, particularly that of his hand drawn imaginary and recollective watercolour maps, I found challenging, but these subtle colour pieces were again intensely personal (parts of this work using paper sword sculptures made when Pulfer was a child). This exhibition culminated in sensory overload when accompanied by Pulfer's own ambient soundtrack.

The Foundation Patrick Staff (2015)

Patrick Staff: The Foundation

4 July - 20 September 2015

The second exhibition was 'The Foundation' by Patrick Staff. http://www.patrickstaff.co.uk His new film installation exploring 'queer-ness', was inspired by the work of 'the Tom of Finland Foundation' the legacy of Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991) and his catalogue of homoerotic art in a post-war gay culture. 
The Foundation's ethos is "to educate the public to the cultural merits of erotic art and in promoting healthier, more tolerant attitudes about sexuality".

Staff's work was challenging in the extreme. Imagine the scene - one walks through large black rubber curtains to be confronted with a large scale grainy film of an older man being fellated by a transgender youth. Staff used staged and documentary film footage which was cut together to give, in my opinion, disturbing depictions of intergenerational gay relationships.

Following the bombardment of angst, cocks, tongues and attempting to find inner peace, it was time for the life drawing and performance to begin. I was using my Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey, dumb and dumber 2003) thumb sucking mantra 'find a happy place' by now. 

Susie Green: Fluid Medium

31st July 2015

Fluid Medium was presented by the artist Susie Green http://www.susiegreen.co.uk. 

She was a participant of 'The Syllabus' programme (a partnership between Wysing Arts Centre, Eastside Projects, New Contemporaries, S1 Artspace and Studio Voltaire and a self confessed 'introvert' by her own admission.

Susie Green, beautiful and curvaceous,  stood in the middle of the room and talked of her life as an artist and life model and of her lack of confidence. It appeared that her artwork was an attempt to 'get inside' the mind of the woman who was being drawn naked, with her secret thoughts and who appeared to the audience as an object but who didn't wish to be objectified.

Therefore, with my memory of the enormous blowjob still burning onto the back of my eyes, I found myself in the dark with a group of strangers. I was embarrassed to the point where my toes began curling up like the feet of the dead witch trapped under Dorothy's house in the Wizard of Oz. We had to snuggle up close to Green and trace the outlines of her body in the air using our fingers. Then using the person next to us as an easel, we taped paper to any vaguely flat bodily surface and drew her figure with charcoal (the soundtrack to our tentative scribbling was the artist with her microphone appendage, gently explaining how she felt whilst we were capturing her on paper eg. what she had done the night before, who she had slept with, shopping lists etc.etc.).

Once we had all been 'the easel' and 'the artist', we all then produced a paper cut-out of a part of the artist's body (think Matisse - but leaves never looked like this baby!). 
All of the stencil cut-outs were piled on top of her whilst she lay in the centre of the room. It looked like a crazy iceberg. I made a torso, which was placed on top of the recumbent model and her microphone, where I assumed her torso was. I couldn't tell. She then asked if one of us would like to draw on top of these segmented jigsaw stencils to tie the pieces together. Picture this scene, in the darkness the room lit by a spotlight, I am straddling a naked woman with a microphone trying to work out her arse from her elbow. At one point (and I'm not proud of this), I squeezed a lump which was sticking out and asked if it was her head to which she replied 'No, that's my left breast".

My memories of that day still haunt me. I can see the relevance and the excitement of using a variety of mechanisms to capture the human figure and as a collaborative and immersive workshop it was experimental. However, I doubt I'll be drawing in the dark for a while.

Fluid Medium - Susie Green 2015  (Me as an easel -left)