Off and running

Just about to go and collect the work from the studio and deliver to the gallery...hopefully all will be at least touch dry! The genesis of this project goes back quite a way... some earlier pictures, not of uniform size and on board, with significant amounts of collage and yet based on the notion of each representing a location nearby were started in the early 00's. The picture above was taken in the Art School at Derby where 4 or 5 of these earlier pictures were exhibited around 2004 or 5.

My decision to exhibit the photo/text pieces as postcards in traditional postcard racks creates quite a bit of additional wall space in the show. I'm tempted to dig out some of this earlier series as a counterpoint to those on display in the larger room. We'll see how it goes in the gallery...

Here's the Invitation!

If you can, please come along on Saturday 16th July from 6 to 8pm. More details from the Tarpey website

Beginning of the Endgame

It's that Beckett moment... yesterday I revised four paintings, discarded one and let three be. The addition of copious amounts of Liquin should ensure they dry sufficiently to be transported from the studio to the gallery next Monday morning. Some fifty seven canvases will be pared down to the forty five that will make up the body of substantive work. I am awaiting delivery of the forty five postcards that will be the bigger part of the 'backroom' and of the three racks on which - appropriately I think - they will be displayed. In addition there may be two or three other minor 'surprises'. The studio has a fresh, mildly Scandinavian air to it now...three larger canvases sit on the walls - part of the series of 'Conversation' pieces that started two year or so back and will probably continue for another year or so. For the moment these have given me, as of yesterday afternoon, a strong sense of release...

Stubborn Brutes

There are always pictures that allude you...the ones that just won't come right whatever you think to do with them. Here's the small clutch of paintings from this project corralled together as the 'stubborn brutes' yesterday. It's a holding pen for radical surgery that some of them are getting today...

Finishing Touches

Some twelve canvases seem to be evading the finishing touches...and yet they must be done in the next two days (given adequate drying times)...so away to the studio...

The video piece and the signs that must be prescient?

Here is the link to the video piece I have made about this project. As they say Stateside - enjoy!

I've also noticed that over the past month or so shiny bright new signs have gone up at strategic entry points into the District...this is something that has never previously been on my radar - and I doubt we had any such items in the past unless I've been very unobservant as I've been going around. So in addition to my own, low key and esoteric, campaign to attract attention to this small corner of rural England the good burghers of NW Leics. have stirred themselves (as well as using our taxes!) to draw attention to the area. A good omen maybe?

Reaching the Endgame

There is now only a month or so until the exhibition opens! Hence the rather infrequent blogging - getting on with the completion of the project has taken priority of late - alongside a busier than usual schedule occasioned by the examination season in Higher Education. Some thirty two of the canvases have now been 'signed off', documented and packaged. Another twenty five or so are in various states of completion (more than enough though there are versions of several so that when they get to the walls of the gallery some selection can take place).

A decision has been taken as regards the photographic material in conjunction with Gallery Manager, Luke Tarpey. Rather than select single images from amongst the many to be displayed in the second space we have arrived at an idea of selecting short text extracts from the District Handbook that has served as a catalyst for the project. This is the 1977 edition that contains brief and mildly eccentric (certainly by current mores) descriptions of each location. One image from those shot in each location will be juxtaposed with the description text and an A4 panel presented for each of the 45. This is a fairly substantial additional task though not as demanding as I imagined it might be (I have made 27 over the past two weeks since we took the decision). There are however a few villages and one town - Coalville, the largest of the lot - where the pictures taken to date simply don't provide sufficient material from which to select. So back on the road in the next week or so!

I have also shot a short video piece about the project that - if I can master the technology - I may try and append to this blog.