Part of an ongoing collaborative project

White kite with the word 'vista' being flown as part of a collaboration with Laura Griffin - St Werburghs Mound Bristol, December 2011

Black kite

Black kite (2011), Ripstop fabric, carbon fibre tubes, Dacron line, shock cord, Dacron tape, binding tape.

 

She flies!

White Kite (2011), Ripstop fabric, carbon fibre tubes, Dacron line, Dacron tape, binding tape

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At 2m from wingtip to wingtip this roller is much bigger than normal. On her maiden flight a strong gust of wind broke a spar - time for a quick redesign and then up in the air for a proper test flight at the end of the week.

White kite

White Kite (2011), Ripstop fabric, carbon fibre tubes, Dacron line, Dacron tape, binding tape

I have just finished this large white kite (2m wingspan and 2m high) - I feel the need to make an identical balck kite and fly them side by side.

Kite forms

Kite Form 2, 2011, Textile, withies, bamboo, cord, cotton tape, angling swivels and foam rubber, 210cm x 295cm

Kite Form 1, 2011, Textile, withies, cord, steel pins and foam rubber, 200cm x 130cm

Preparatory charcoal study

Study for oil painting (digitally adjusted), 2011, charcoal and chalk on paper, 80cm x 100cm

Chilli bacon and tomato on toast

Created this today for lunch. Very cheap and quick to make. Delicious. The recipe makes enough for two.
Ingredients:

• A generous handful of chopped bacon ( I used a cooking bacon from Sainsburys - packs of odds and sods of smoked and unsmoked bacon bits that are as cheap as chips).
• Half an onion or around 4 shallots, chopped.
• Pinch of chopped chilli (not too much just enough to add a little heat).
• About a heaped desert-spoon of fresh chopped thyme.
• Large ripe tomato, chopped.

Heat a dash of olive oil in a pan and add the bacon. I use a high heat, work fast and stir often. Cook for a couple of minutes or so and then add the onion. Cook until the onion softens and the bacon starts to brown a little. Add the chilli, a little salt and a few twists of fresh ground pepper. Add the tomato and cook for a minute longer. The aim is not to overcook the ingredients so everything looks plump and fresh. Pile the mixture on hot buttered toast and eat immediately. Nice with a mug of tea - it would also be lovely with a crisp white wine.

Family propaganda

Magnum photographer, Martin Parr wrote (Guardian, 24 August 2010), 'Most family photo albums are a form of propaganda, where the family looks perfect and everyone is smiling: we try to create fabrications about who we are.' In these works I explored an image from my childhood.

Beach I, 2010, Manipulated inkjet print (washed and oven-dried), 15cm x 10cm

Beach II, 2010, Manipulated inkjet print (over-painted, washed and oven-dried), 15cm x 10cm

Beach III, 2010, Manipulated inkjet print (over-painted, washed and oven-dried), 15cm x 10cm

hh:mm:ss

hh:mm:ss 2011, Three clocks, 24.5cm dia.

Three adapted clocks that together make one contemporary timepiece.

Preparing for a painting

Photograph of Bethany re-composed and manipulated in Photoshop

 I took a series of photographs of Bethany and selected this thoughtful, reflective shot for the subject of a new portrait painting. The manipulation below is not part of the preparation for the painting but interesting what can be done with a standard filter.

Interesting and pleasing effect created using a Photoshop filter

Voyeurism and surveillance (Cuba) III

Untitled (Cuba), 2008

Voyeurism and surveillance (Cuba) II

Balcony I (Cuba), 2008

Balcony II (Cuba), 2008

Balcony III (Cuba), 2008

Voyeurism and surveillance (Cuba) I

Guantanamo, 2008

This photograph is a detail pulled from a photograph taken on a long lens several miles from the Guantanamo US Naval Base.

Voyeurism and surveillance (Couples)

Montmatre Café, 2009

Cordoba, 2009

Lower East Side, 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (Spain) II

Perfectly Plastic, 2009 (Alcazar, Seville)

Voyeurism and surveillance (Spain) I

Meeting I, 2009 (Granada, Spain)

Untitled, 2009 (Alcazar, Seville)

Voyeurism and surveillance (Paris) III

Untitled (Paris), 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (Paris) II

Crossing (Montmartre) I, 2009

Crossing (Montmartre) II, 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (Paris)

Romance (Paris) I, 2009

Romance (Paris) II, 2009

Voyeurism and surveillance (New York City) II

Untitled (New York), 2005

Voyeurism and surveillance (New York City) I

Jocelyn Wildenstein (New York),  2008

 Untitled (New York), 2008

Untitled (New York), 2005

Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

Perivale, London Underground, 2010

Voyeurism, surveillance and the camera was the theme of the 'Exposed' a show at the Tate Modern in 2010. It is a subject that interests me. Over the next following days I will post my own photographs that explore this theme. . They are moments in lives, fragments of stories. They are also invasive as all of the photographs have been taken without the subject's permission. Together they 'explore the uneasy relationship between making and viewing images that deliberately cross over lines of privacy and propiety.'

Northanger Mansion

Carnival of Souls, 1962

There’s a lunatic in the attic
And he’s smiling to himself.
His mind is quite distracted
With dreams of faded wealth.

Below him in the ballroom
The guests in grim embrace,
Shuffle unsteady dance steps
In gowns of rotted lace.
Their threadbare evening slippers
Trail dust on rotting boards.
The music stopped long ago;
The clock is left unwound.
Empty eyes and wordless mouths,
They orbit without a sound.



There’s a lunatic in the attic
And he’s happy to be king
Friends of his imagination
Pay court and laugh and sing.

And all the while his mansion
Is shuttered to the light.
The world within is closed without.
The locks are rusted tight.
A forgotten world, the world forgotten,
Northanger stands neglected.
There’s only dripping water
To mark the slow decline,
And in half –remembered ritual
The guests mark out their time.

There’s a lunatic in the attic
And he’s smiling to himself.
His mind is quite distracted
With dreams of faded wealth.

There’s a madman in the garret.
He agrees with all he says.
He’d love to be your friend
If only you would stay.

John Steed, 2011

Life drawing

Life drawing, 2007, charcoal on paper

Standing nude

Standing nude, 2010, 35cm x 28cm, pencil on paper

Reclining nude

Reclining nude, 2009, 65cm x 59cm, pencil and charcoal on paper

Now Gone Was

Now Gone Was (installation) 2011, 2 minute video with sound

Time travelling

Time machine: one direction, no reverse (I) 2011, chair, books, clocks, dimensions variable

Time machine: one direction, no reverse (II) 2011, chair, magazines, clocks, dimensions variable

Time travelling in both directions 2011, chair, books, magazines, clocks, dimensions variable

Peake's painting

Seated figure, 1939, Oil on board, 107 x 55.8 cm

For many years this painting by the author, poet, illustrator and artist Mervyn Peake hung on my office wall. Now it is on the Your Paintings website created by the Public Catalogue Foundation in partnership with the BBC. The website is part of a project to catalogue and photograph every oil painting in public ownership.

The myth of photographic reality

Cathy, 2010, oil on canvas, 60 x 60cm.

‘Cathy’ is a painting of a photograph. More accurately it is a painting of a cropped printout of a colour-adjusted scan of a faded colour photograph taken around 30 years ago. In this work I set out to explore the myth of photographic truth. Patrick Heron said[i], “The primary purpose of art is that it determines, or dictates, what we see.”

In the linked text I argue that in representing the conventions of the photographic image in a painting, the viewer can see photographic realism as a style, that whilst so dominant that it appears natural, is in fact as artifical and arbitary as any other representational convention.

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[i] BBC documentary ‘Henry Moore: Carving a Reputation’, 1998

London building site

Manipulated inkjet print, 15cm x 10cm

Manipulated inkjet print, 15cm x 10cm

Hans-Peter Feldmann

Hans-Peter Feldmann. Una exposición de arte from Museo Reina Sofía on Vimeo.

I first encountered Hans-Peter Feldmann at the Reina Sofia, Madrid. I found his work exciting, inspiration and absolutely in tune with my aim to create a practice that is

• based on observation of the everyday,
• and is fun, playful and humorous.

  

Manipulated inkjet print

Gloucester Warehouse, 2011, Manipulated inkjet print, 12.2cm x9.6cm

This dilapidated 19^th century warehouse in Gloucester Docks awaits redevelopment. The exaggerated colours are produced by a long night exposure. The inkjet inks are manipulated after printing though a process of wet brushing and heating.

Flick

 2011, Oil on canvas, 100cm x 100cm

Flick is a study of a still from a feature film (La Double Vie de Veronique). At twenty-five frames a second, each image is bracketed by blackness and only fleetingly lingers on our retinas. The fleeting moment is paused and becomes meditative and takes on a narrative that is different from the original narrative of the movie. Influenced by the 2007 Hayward Gallery show (London, UK) 'The Painting of Modern Life' and by the work of Wilhelm Sasnal, Johannes Kahrs and Judith Eisler in particular.

Woman In Red

2009, 30cm x 40cm, Giclee print on German Etching paper.

Taken from an apartment in Montmartre, Paris late on a spring evening. I like the dynamic blurring of the image that has created an abstract expressionist quality to the photograph.