Postcard imperfect

Above are scans of some of the postcards i've been buying from ebay. 

All of them show a scene linked to deforestation and land clearance.

(clockwise from top left)

1 - Coffee sacks being loaded onto a cargo ship in Brazil

2 - Felled trees for timber in Arizona

3 - A log jam caused by low water levels in the dam in 'Sawdust City' (Eau Claire), Wisconsin. The trees were felled upstream and floated down via a manmade flume that was caused by water pressure and gravity from the dam.]

4 - Water Street Bridge, 'Sawdust City' - the main bridge road that improved exportation of commercial products

Postcards are a way of inserting oneself into a narrative, in one of two ways:
1 - as the person who writes the postcard, you are the one 'away'; who is exerting some sort of ownership of an experience space by telling others about it.
2 - as receiver, who hears of that related experience and can imagine it form afar.
Either way; you are both in a situation that tells of a removal from the evryday and normal happenings. You are tapping into a demand for what is not yours: this in some sense is an exploitation of another place or culture (that doesn't mean bad exploitation by the way):
The postcard can be a vehicle for expressing a want for something that is not yours; it is a demand.

Demand in the commercial and manufacturing world often leads to exploitation, of either people, animals of land.

(I've thought about postcards often before, and what they signify; the photographing of their subject, the writing of them, and the receiving of them. This is an old post I made about postcards: http://battle-sponge.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/postcard-perfect.html

*

And below are all the main products in my studio that are produced abroad in areas that are heavily deforested to do so.... :(

DEFORESTATION

Storyboarding for a low-fi film/immersive filmic installation i'm making

Hinting at the fact that the ground you own, and ground you work on, the ground you walk across, has an impact on something bigger than you; on an elsewhere and other people.

I'm working on developing my past project I Wander Weather (which is a filmic installation and event that looks at walking as a way to experience both the physicality and the social histories of the natural world).

My development is turning the basic installation structure and some of the ideas about physical experience being linked to immensity of experience, into a project specifically about deforestation.

The aspects of deforestation that I am focusing on (the implications of it, and social difficulties associated with it) are:

Food security

Food sovereignty

Globalisation

Other effects on local and indigenous communities (slave labour, cultural exploitation etc)

Habitat degradation (due to erosion etc)

I am looking at how consumer demand in developed countries fuels deforestation.

This is because that's the only direct experience surrounding deforestation that I have known. I have obviously seen land clearance and deforestation in places near my home, and this is currently about to happen exactly outside my house, due to human demand for burial sites on local wilderness land. I have been to a meeting of the group that is campaigning to save the local wilderness and have it classed as a nature reserve.

I am particularly interested in effects on indigenous and local communities. I can however only speak for my very local, very low scale versions of that: because I live in a city in a developed country where none of us have to rely on the local forest areas to supply us with food or jobs. So the message wouldn't sink so deep for an audience that lives beyond my postcode area - and even then we'd only be worried about the local wilderness as a space for tranquility and preservation of habitat for a few butterflies and insects etc. I obviously find that totally important, but I don't think the importance translates to the masses. 

I also cannot attempt to make any specific comments on effects on, or exploitation of local communities in deforestation areas such as Brazil, Peru, Equitorial Guinea, India, Kenya or Bulgaria. To do so would be exploitation in itself because I know nothing about it, other than what i've read. I can't claim to be a voice for such communities.

Nor can I say much about local communities' impact on deforestation (such as subsistence agriculture, slash & burn farming, bushmeat hunting) - many of which I am aware are in motion because of demands from developed countries.

e.g Petrol industry has attracted many locals to urban areas of Equitorial Guinea leaving remote agriculture with a minimal workforce.

SO - i've decided I'll draw attention to the demands of people like me that affect those communities and those forests: by making a point of the large amount of everyday products that we consume that demand deforestation and forest degradation.

The video above shows how Brazilian authorities are trying to, and succeeding in, halting deforestation.

And above is a great documentary about the Amazon, that we may not be aware of

And this video is just great

And above is a beautiful and sad song by Aussie musician Tully about the wrong choices humanity is making for the environment.

Why I like certain sculptural elements and why I like fabric.

Still trying to work out the reasons for choosing certain materials and sculptural elements. 'The art world' isn't really my audience, but I guess sometime you gotta try to justify your work within an aesthetic OR/and theoretical framework to make it sit nicely with arty people, in the hope of getting some more exposure... so for my evil plot of bringing seriously ecologically concerned but very accessible and attractive art to the masses, and for ecological art to be taken seriously as a communication method for environmental concerns and climate action info.... I must cover my back in all situations!

I wanna make pragmatically beautiful instances of communication about our species' position in the natural world.

So I think there are probably three main reasons to choose certain sculptural or visual configurations, elements of materials.

1. aesthetics

2. message and connotations

3. materiality (largely this is because the artist themself is interested in the material, and enjoy working with it

I pick, in this order: 2, then 1, then 3.

And the shapes, arrangements, and elements I like are:

- thresholds,

- arches,

- pits,

- caves,

- tents and dens

- canopies and rooves

- sheltering structures of any sort

- drapery and swags of fabric

- and any arrangements that create or indicate a space for either flow/movement or remaining decidedly stationary/reflective/beings slow

- any arrangements that let you choose a path through a space, and sit down, lie down, jump, climb etc.

- stuff salvaged from skips that  is big or intact enough to offer obvious re-use potential (card, wood, glass, bricks, fabric)

With all the above things, I want to learn to create narratives (pre-ordained or open-ended - but probs the former) with the help of

- absence

- space 

- gaps 

- presences

- ephemera

I don't much like Phyllida Barlow's attitude to her role as an artist, but I do like what she's said about why she likes making such large sculptures with hefty and hard to work with materials, about the fact that preliminary drawing are pretty useless and it's actually the making of the work that needs doing:

'Thinking and doing become synchronized. Time becomes a material"

She also said that the installing of her work is "a highly performative act". - This could be useful if I ever decide to communicate to an audience about waste and excess and our responsibility.

But one thing that Phyllida Barlow said that I think it bloody annoying is this:

"concern for the audience... attracting and audience... is something I find repellent"

Well then why did she ever say yes to her exhibitions in galleries? What a waste of an important public feedback platform, and an unbridled activism/demonstration/discussion opportunity.

I think her outlook is so disconnected from the concerns of real human life. And certainly now, we don't have the time or money (socially, economically or environmentally) to waste such massive exposure opportunities. If an artist is annoyed about audiences seeing their stuff, then I can't see how they can oppose the UK Government spending cuts in the arts.
I helped the Mexican artist Pedro Reyes on a project two years ago, and he said he liked his role as an exhibiting artist for it's opportunities to experiment with human behaviour and understanding. The exhibition space is the only place in the world where you can get away with just about anything that you couldn't get away with, or find the audience for, in everyday life. You have the chance to operate situations and suggest ideas for real life.

Anyway - there we are. More thinking about space, materials and audience.

Onion skin dyed found fabric, batik lettering

The availability of the fabric here has dictated the shape and size of the piece. I've sewn bit together to create a canvas. It echoes an animal hide shape, and with the dye, the beeswax batik method and the sort of scratchy caveman-ish type, this sits in my imagination like a native American Indian entity.

Work in progress

Shrivelled banana

Flow 

Black bean screen

sketches

Above are some sketches for a sculptural thing i'm thinking up. It comes from a mix of tipi designs, banana leaves, insect anatomy and the practice of American Indian of gutting their dead ponies in winter, and carrying the hollow carcus on sticks on their shoulders across the wilderness, but with the tribe's kids inside the dead pony to keep them warm.

My favourite location in Home and Away - the bridge behind the Braxton's and John Palmer's houses.

Will you sit under the banana tree with me and think about what we've done?

Been trying to work out some installation designs, and then decide how I might want them to be participatory and immersive, and then wondering whether they will end up being performance art. Then I was thinking...performance art can have different aims:

1. Open-ended participatory; user led. Who knows what the audience will do or deduce.

2. Pre-ordained, instructed participation; with a view to telling a specific story or creating a specific perception or message.

I'm pretty much going for the second one - I want people to receive a certain message (about environmental stewardship and not being passive), but on a personal level and in the context of their own lives.

I've been collecting rubbish, of course... and making a start on trying out an installation i'm designing which is about rituals of fantasy, and mindful engagement with your fantasies vs. mindless complacency that can easily occur in our downtime and leisure time.

And then I began thinking about what making things with rubbish actually looks like.

 Materials choice and arrangement choices are often based on aesthetics…

But I find I always like art where the parts broken down and you can see different raw elements and materials, and joins and breaks in the piece. 

I also prefer to make things myself (tables etc) and I can’t do this from scratch, it must be waste stuff. So – this means making installations from deconstructed human objects, and re-building or reusing them. I want art to convey a meaning, with elements of awe, but show a process that any viewer can understand; that they could use themselves to make their own visual messages. E.g anyone can pick things out of a skip and that's the great thing!

It’s especially important that children and teenagers feel enchanted.

I showed my website to Kelsey and Remi, the two girls I look after who are five and six, and Kelsey was amazed and so excited (I got four smiley faces!) and kept saying 'fantastic'! So that's great - i'm communicating with one part of my target audience! I think the colours and bold text and pictorial and character pieces work there.

Dom under the banana tree

Picnic dinner in the studio, courtesy of Dom

Saturday night after dinner studio time

painting whilst watching Greenberg. sweet film.

black bean dyed screen of wonder

monoprint detail

slightly tidier paint collection

And below are some sketches I did back at home the other weekend

Great scene from an old Home and Away episode

And now we must say a fond farewell to our friend Freya, as she embarks on her trip to Australia...
We will miss her so x

Back in the heartland

Wild spirit magic

Two weekends ago I went home to Herefordshire. Dom and I went, to see my parents and my sister, and to go to the Hay Festival. We saw two talks there by two authors; Helen Macdonald and Robert Macfarlane.

Helen Macdonald is the author of H for Hawk; an amazing book about grief and training a hawk, and the need to disembody yourself and assume the characteristics and behaviours of something or someone else in times of emotional breakdown. This was perfect for me to hear, because firstly I agree with this as a coping mechanism, and secondly because I imagine myself as a specific other person in a specific other place often, (Lone Cowgirl in the Swaglands) to be able to imagine a place where people care about the environment, art is non-judgmental and free of commercial marketry, and there’s actually physical space and space in daily life to use our brain for it’s imaginative powers rather than functional Capitalist working world orientated ways.

Robert Macfarlane was brilliant to hear speak, because his book The Old Ways was the complete reason I wrote my dissertation at uni. That book made me realise that issues of our relationship to the natural world don’t have to be boring, over-adventurous or cheesy, they just ‘are’ – we just are related to it by the fact we have a language faculty and a physical body. As soon as we realise this its easy to feel connected, even if you live in the most urban, greenless place ever.

At Hay, Macfarlane spoke about his new book Landmarks with author Horatio Clare, which is all about the intense specificity of our colloquialisms and vocabularies that have been made to describe features of our lives in the natural world. I think this is important because those experiences are very delicate and detailed and we can’t use (as I say in my dissertation) language to portray this, but we might as well try!

Also – I hung out with my Queen, Clarrie. And my crazy but extremely beautiful Norwegian Forest Kitten, Tsonga. I shall paint him. He’s so wild.

I was walking round the garden at home which is looking very chic! Mama has made all these arrangements between grass, stones, pebbles, vessels, plants, elevations and slopes etc. They look to me like little worlds. I took photos of some which I will use for making paintings of the Swaglands, and then develop into installations made of artefacts; of architectural representations of cooperative human behaviour with nature and of openness to elements; the extension of attitude to built form.

Lastly – there are loads of animals at home! Look! And that’s not even half of them!

It’s a menagerie.

Sweet Clarice

Snail :) and Mama's black/white stone that she picked up from the water underneath The Bridge (as in the bridge between Denmark and Sweden!)

This little founatin is Grandma's. It was in her garden in Horsham, but Mama has it now.

It reminds me of a friend I met in Bosnia called Josip - it seems to have the same attitude as him!? headstrong but approachable.

Mama's Easter Island moai!

baby me with Mama. And an early artwork of mine, which is a french church! Someone reportedly offered my parents good money for it!

One of my more recent artworks! I guess not that much has changed.