As the title suggests above, there has been some increased activity art wise and art business in general. I have still got my studio within the old church but the students moved out during August and as a whole in Sept. This last push was made by Blackburn is Open as they believed the cubicles would have been taken over by other artists, but this wasn't the case.
So, the students moved into an old shop in Preston city centre that is owned by the uThink art company and they were excited by this as they thought it was a permanent position but alas, it wasn't to be. They tried to get me involved with the venture but I saw the flaws from the beginning and distanced myself away. This resulted in my lonely tenureship within the church and my becoming in the role of guardian of the building.
The students finally got thrown out off the shop because of a Black History Month exhibition in which I made two pieces called 'Nigger Queer Cunt" which was three typewritten squares of each word repeated until eligible. The concept was to purge each word from my mind and to highlight the obvious contempt of the gay community within black and Caribbean culture. My work wasn't shown and I haven't had any feedback. I discussed my piece to the gallery owbers and they were pleased with the outcome but I think the conclusion to the work spoke for itself.
As well as this work, I was involved with an exhibition held in Sheffield called Play by Sharon Mossbeck and Michael Borkowsky. This show was based on computers and computer programming based artworks and for this one, I exhibited two of my dot matrix drawings. My participation with this show was quite surprising as I have never met either of the two and it was Sharon who saw my work on facebook. She liked my work and suggested that I took part and I'm glad I did. I couldn't go to the opening night as I was involved with another show in Manchester as part of the Free For Arts Festival 2014 - Free For All Exhibition.
For the Free For Arts show I continued the 'the first waves of nothing' installation piece. This is the continuation of the edited prose that I have been working on through the summer and is now reaching its zenith. I basically retype the prose within the gallery where I am exhibiting and with this, the prose evolves with each sitting. I have now exhibited the piece at least three times now and together with the original, I have now five editions. The latest edition was typed at the FFAF exhibition and now is on show at the Soup Kitchen event called Malentandu-Nous magazine. This event is on tonight and I wont be typing the work here as this part of the project has finished and part two has been started.
So with that being the art activity, I have been involved with an ad hoc gallery within the old church which I have called the Corridor. I have had three exhibitions that are a month long. As I work in the studio, I leave the front door open and the public wanders in and I interact with them. I have shown the Lucien Fellowes work with the rusty nuts and bolts and the large scale road side markings, an open/varied exhibition with work that had been left behind by the students and lately, work by a guy called Ted Lynch and some of my assemblages.
The building now holds events such as a Halloween Ball, a rave and this weekend, Back to Blackburn starring Dave Haslam and Wayne Hemmingway. I have had work damaged in both of the former events and I had to take work down for the latter for some reason. I just hope I don't have work damaged at the weekend. There is a committee now involved with the church in which I am involved so I will push the gallery and have my say about the recent events. It is getting quite interesting now as they are so many people wanting there input with the building. I'm just glad that the building is being used and not just shut up, stagnating.
Oh, and lest I forget...Papergirl has now moved to Blackburn. This is the project by Alex Gallagher who sends out invites to artists to create and donate work to her so she can deliver these to the general public in the style of an American newspaper boy. This project has been carried out in Berlin and in Manchester. I visited the Manchester version a few years ago when I was studying there, I participated in the Blackburn one. The exhibition for the Blackburn one was held last week and the handing out of artworks is this Saturday so I look forward to the response to locals from a northern town to free art.
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