Friday, 10 September 2010
Gary Mills - About My Work
The drawings displayed in this exhibition were inspired in the first instance by the great pop-era illustrators, with whose work I became familiar as a child. The styles of Arnaldo Putzu, Ivan Rose, Bernard Fuchs and Bob Peak could be seen in all manner of advertising, movie posters and book jackets before falling prey to the whims of fashion. The particular respect for process that these artists were able to communicate is sorely lacking in the illustration of today, where faux naive trends and an over-reliance on software are seemingly of greater value.
A basic initial study (taken from a screen grab of the 1974 film The Internecine Project) lead to more drawings, and eventually, in a bid to stave off the potential internecine damage that my woefully brief contribution would bring to bear upon my collaborators, an audio piece was added.
In the spirit of both the cut-up re-imaginings of Burroughs and the sampling sports of modern music, around 50 or so audio clips from the above film were assembled. A new, partially musique concrete-inspired soundtrack piece was then created using the clips - Follow The Instructions On This Card/You Know Something? - as a study of moments taken out of context, a drawing together of both a pencil-drawn instant and the isolated line of dialogue. The general theme aims to prompt a concentration on how these moments can be re-appraised through an alternative rendering, or the ways in which a re-arranged narrative can suggest another story altogether.
With acknowledgments to James Coburn, Ken Hughes, Geoffrey Unsworth and Roy Budd
Becky Lawrence - About My Work
My work explores a specific memory of my past. My grandmother was a very practical woman, and as a child, instead of toys, she gave me her collection of recycled buttons to play with. I have felt subsequently that she sealed my fate as a textile designer, as these memories have been a recurring theme in my work throughout my degree and ever since. On her death I re-acquired this collection and have continued to work with the buttons, recreating the entire collection using silicone moulds and resin. The pieces displayed in this exhibition are work in progress and a step away from my more commercial collection, the intention being the creation of my own archive responding to my grandmother, my memories and textile heritage.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Gillian Horne, about my work.......
The Shock of the View
Shrines and memorials; the means by which we remember the dead have always interested me, but this body of work came in response to seeing a young man who had been injured in Afghanistan laying a poppy for a deceased friend, one bitter Armistice Day. Witnessing this grief and damage made me realise that the names on my village War Memorial were real people who had likewise been mourned by their friends and I wanted to extricate them from the list and see them, as they had been almost a century ago when they, their families and friends had been similarly young.
It has been said that the First World War is monumental through the way in which while belonging to a period so distant, it is yet so recent that many of us have close tangible links, through uncles and grandparents. As the research progressed I could link the dead to neighbours I had known for much of my life; tantalising links. Working through census records I also linked family names on the memorial to those grumpy old men and women who spoiled our childhood play, they were the brothers, sisters and wives of the dead, the lucky ones, who had once been young and survived to old age.
The work in this exhibition is devoted to seven men from The Northamptonshire Regiment who died in the early stages of the war when men were still recruited into their local regiment, often with their friends. I concentrated on this regiment because of the proximity of the exhibition to the barracks and the knowledge that it is possible to just about see the barracks and the exhibition simultaneously. I have grown to enjoy the company of these individuals and have in a small way gained an understanding of the effect their loss had upon the village.
Gillian Horne
Much of the initial research for this work was done at the Northampton Records Office and I would like to acknowledge and thank them for their kind permission to use images and text from wartime newspapers.
Shrines and memorials; the means by which we remember the dead have always interested me, but this body of work came in response to seeing a young man who had been injured in Afghanistan laying a poppy for a deceased friend, one bitter Armistice Day. Witnessing this grief and damage made me realise that the names on my village War Memorial were real people who had likewise been mourned by their friends and I wanted to extricate them from the list and see them, as they had been almost a century ago when they, their families and friends had been similarly young.
It has been said that the First World War is monumental through the way in which while belonging to a period so distant, it is yet so recent that many of us have close tangible links, through uncles and grandparents. As the research progressed I could link the dead to neighbours I had known for much of my life; tantalising links. Working through census records I also linked family names on the memorial to those grumpy old men and women who spoiled our childhood play, they were the brothers, sisters and wives of the dead, the lucky ones, who had once been young and survived to old age.
The work in this exhibition is devoted to seven men from The Northamptonshire Regiment who died in the early stages of the war when men were still recruited into their local regiment, often with their friends. I concentrated on this regiment because of the proximity of the exhibition to the barracks and the knowledge that it is possible to just about see the barracks and the exhibition simultaneously. I have grown to enjoy the company of these individuals and have in a small way gained an understanding of the effect their loss had upon the village.
Gillian Horne
Much of the initial research for this work was done at the Northampton Records Office and I would like to acknowledge and thank them for their kind permission to use images and text from wartime newspapers.
Friday, 3 September 2010
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