Exhibition Time

I think there will be more to come on here as we reflect on our days together.
We haven't got the sound piece we made on, or the video time lapse of us working.
But for now, there is just my poster to get on here and this to print out for people to read at the opening. I am really tired, but really pleased with what we have managed to do.

Conceal Reveal

The bricks were progress, they are so beautiful! After all the building and rebuilding we laid out our relics in order of importance. This was funny, we took turns to choose and used all sorts of criteria. We hid them away whilst we were building the final cube, the best things were at the bottom, near the centre and vice versa. I marked them in chalk on the outside.

I like this thing we made, it doesn't give much away.

Today we've bee writing about what we've done. First we wrote the exhibition text, it's at this point in a project we can start to see the path we've taken. We also made posters to explain. You made Sheet 1, which is an official-looking step-by-step instruction sheet for collecting and cleaning relics, including hazard warnings. It is quite black, it looks like your work. I made Sheet 2, Relic identification. It shows photographs of all the relics, with the descriptions we wrote yesterday, plus the number location mark to you can see where it is in the reliquary. It is very white, it looks like my work.
You're off getting the posters printed as I write this. We've made this blog public now.

Last day things

At the end of day one I was feeling quite anxious. We had spent the first part of the day walking about and gathering materials to work with. We kept returning to the need for bricks - but a phone call to Ibstocks had put us off finding some for free - so we were looking at buying them piece by piece. We had explored the ABC cinema site, and then decided to excavate some of the relics to be found there - bricks, bits of old pot and ceramic.I wanted us to have a costume of some kind, returning to my comfort point - I find costumes make me feel better. Maybe its part of my disguise, I find it easier to work in public with some kind of protective cloak. We chose quite domestic looking outfits really, aprons and protective gloves, this seemed appropriate as we were collecting broken bits of crockery.We collected the relics from the site and returned to the AirSpace back yard to set up a work station to clean and clear up the materials. I like the way it became quite a contemplative activity, we spoke in bursts, sometimes about the work and what we were doing, but also about all sorts of things.Overnight I though about what we had been doing, and realised that the conversations had were very important.
We arranged that I would go and buy bricks in the morning for the building of our reliquary. I like the idea of using bricks for something which is usually ornate, and overblown.
An amazing thing happened - you met someone who told you that there were tonnes of bricks at the Spode site we could use, so I went across there first thing Thursday morning to get some.
It turned out that these were part of the BCB show, and they had too many, so we could choose from an array of different coloured and differently made bricks. We had discussed using overfired dark coloured bricks, and there were some there that there were perfect. They were called Weinerberger bricks and ranged in tonal colours from black through to purple, and even gold.
We lugged them back to the gallery. Somehow having these weighty objects in the space felt good, we are getting somewhere.We talked about the shape that the reliquary could be, and thought that a domed one might be good but hard to build. We marked out the circle on the ground, and then set to work on building.We tried a range of formations. The structure started to resemble a bottle oven, something which I was a bit dismayed at. Images of awful civic public art flashed before me...We finished it anyway, and then took a break for lunch.On return from lunch we started to work on a block version. We had discussed the Muslim Kaaba, and the idea of pilgrimage and religious celebration of deities hair. I wonder whether that big black box affected us in some way?We tried a small footprint, and then a larger one, and eventually hit on our favoured shape, and rebuilt for perhaps the fourth and last time. By then we were both getting quite tired, not being used to this sort of labouring...Once complete we had just enough time to get changed and head over to the Spode site - for the grand opening of the BCB where your eels will be revealed.
So now, here we are this morning, we need to make a poster which explains our piece, and print out and finish this blog, and tidy the gallery. Better get on with it...

When I arrived today there was a press visit in full swing. That was strange, they were here to see what we were all doing, but none of us quite expected it. I'd never been there before and we hadn't even started. I kept quiet.

I enjoyed looking around your building, I like that all your studios feel like real rooms, with bits of alcoves and wallpaper and fake terrazzo and real parquet. Most studios are chopped up large spaces.

I felt a little lost earlier today, as you say, a known sort of unhappy confusion that comes before you find a way. Scavenging is a good activity, it was good being in the rubble. We bought special dentists tools and aprons and a cloth in preparation for inspecting and cleaning up our finds. We documented them with note cards. We'll draw them too, to help explain how one goes about making a reliquary. As if we know.

I've just remembered my tutor Alison telling me that in some Arab countries, there's a belief that the most precious things are to be hidden away from sight. So that if you had, say, a treasure chest, the best things would be at the bottom, only brought out for the best people. The value of the thing rests, in part, on how many people have seen it - things might somehow be debased by a look.

Tomorrow we'll have some bricks. We will build something fit for our hoard.

First Day

This feels like a residency to me, in the way that for the moment (right at the beginning of these 3 days together) I feel confused. Having done a number of residencies now I feel that this confusion is only the usual way of things. If I still feel confused tomorrow then I will worry.
So far we have wandered around a little bit. I have showed you the ABC cinema site which I have had a real interest in for quite some time now, due to its location in the Cultural Quarter. It was demolished to make way for Tesco.
We started collecting fragments of tiles and other bits of pottery from the mud, and looking at the plants. You said some of them look like wade, which can be used to make indigo.We talk more ab0out reliquairys, and I mention the black box in Mecca, where Muslims go on pilgrimage, and how I imagine a reliquairy like that.We think about putting these treasures we care collecting into a reliquairy. Also noting where we find them. Perhaps we can draw some of them first for the poster and classify them?
Also I show you the stick-up folder from Spode, which is like a manual for how to do something.
I like manual's and would like to make a manual for whatever we do here. Perhaps a manual that says - this is how you make your own reliquairy, or not even a manual? Perhaps a poster?
We talk about bricks again and how to get hold of some. You ring up a local brick manufacturers but they don't seem too interested. We decide to try to scavage some bricks from the ABC site, and see what comes from that...

I do, I definitely have reliquaries... I live in one. Yesterday was a brass polishing sort of day - my collection isn't always as precisely laid out as that, I move it around a lot. There are shoulder bones from the Thames foreshore, a big seed from Fiji, lots of different stones from lots of different days. I find it funny to lay it out like a museum, it makes them seem important.


I have little boxes from Great Great Great Aunt Nin's house. Inside the one above is a tiny parrot feather and a sequined bunch of grapes from my Nana and two coins, one from Japan and a cent from 1939.


This one has a small bundle of stag hair, two brown feathers, a bee (dead), a pussy willow paw and some pins. The box is very black and very old.


This one has always been around. I put my Nain's pearls, watch and brooch in it. Also there are a few more coins, from Japan and Europe, dated 1951. A tooth (maybe mine, maybe my Mum's, maybe anyone's. Not sure. It is in the box, it goes in the box) and another silver tin that smells of a powder from Japan. The archaeologist I met on Saturday was talking a bit about Saxon jewellery, he said it would quite often be cut up to be divided amongst descendants. I feel a bit of pain about that, I can't imagine doing it and I wonder whether the desire to have a piece of it was more emotional or practical. Probably both. Somewhere partially underneath the Saxon plots he'd found neolithic quernstones, purposely broken. I've heard this referred to before as the ritual 'killing' of objects, which may be laying it on a bit (for something so very old and unknowable), but I can't quite shake the idea.


My kitchen is a bit like yours, the bottom shelf is mine, it's quite orange. I have too much turmeric.

My Shelves

My shelves are a lot messier than yours: I have collections of things which mean something to me, and books, and plants. Your shelves are very neat - and somehow look similar to your work.
These are begonias which I just potted yesterday. A collection of pine cones from all over the place, these are my souvenirs. In the bell jars there is a collection of bits and bobs, things that I am keeping - but not sure why: two shells, a rusty key, a piece of broken pottery, a button. And the other bell jar, a moth - turned bronze by Victoria Lucas - an artist that exhibited in the gallery once.
I like being able to see everything. Even in the kitchen I have only one cupboard which is under the sink, and everything else is on view.I suppose it might look a bit disorganised, but I know where everything is.
The trinkets, and ornaments around the house are on the whole of little or no value I suppose. But they remind me of precious things, and that makes me think of a display of reliquaires which I saw in Prague a few years ago. I am sure you know the sort of thing, but anyway they were ornate but strange things - in different shapes and sizes. Ornate 'houses' for important relics. The materials used suggest the importance of the collected things - gold, pearls and precious jewels: containing snippets of hair, clothing and other personal items belonging to individuals.Looking at the description of the 'reliquary' it says it is essentially a box. Maybe my print tray is one? It has a lot of small items inside. Do you have anything similar? Is this a bit sentimental? I suppose for some reason I think about my house burning down, and everything being lost. I can smell smoke as I type this.

Tick tock. I like that picture of the swaddled eels!

I was in Redcar yesterday and on the beach was this bit of a house, or something.

You made me think of my own shelves, so I took a picture of them too. What are yours like?

I'm coming to Manchester on Tuesday evening then I'll get the train to Stoke on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, probably arriving late morning each day due to peak fares. Sound ok? Should be fun...

Next week

I can't believe we only have until next week, and the show will open a week today!
It feels crazy.
I went for a visit to the BCB site, and saw your work wrapped in plastic for protection from the dust.
Something suddenly struck me, which probably seems obvious, but bricks being ceramic hadn't ever really crossed my mind before.
Being interested in architecture and buildings, the solidity of bricks seems like something interesting to explore.I was looking at ceramic items in a local charity shop - which remind me of homes, like bricks.

Tools... Yes, that's a nice definition, pure and simple. They're more than that too, they're instances of physical thought. A thing to make/prevent another thing happening. I was thinking about them last year when I made one of the pieces on show at Spode. It's an eel-bob. So what someone would do to catch eels, they'd sew together a clot of worms with strong thread, when the eel bites, it's backward teeth get stuck on the thread. This thing is lowered into the water using rope, but eels can climb up rope, so you have to knot a funnel thing into place so it can't get past. I just enjoy that step by step logic of people learning how to do things, working them out. For other people (or maybe the same people, I don't know), eels appeared out of nowhere, so they thought they must grow from horses' tail hairs falling into streams, an idea like that feels like a sort of tooling up too.

I'd like to visit the garden festival site with you, that'd be nice.

Yes the image of you - hope that's ok. I hadn't thought about that really. Because of the type of work that I do, and the way that I feel the artist's narrative is important within my activity means it seems important that I am physically located in the work - often through documentary photo.

I think it is funny that you changed the colour of the blog from white on black to black on white - says a lot. I tend to stick to the former, though I have heard it is hard to read for people with dyslexia. Also, maybe we wont ever make it public? I am happy to, but don't want that to affect the conversation, as that only suits one of us!

Perhaps while you are here we can walk up to garden festival site and have a look? Funnily enough that project resulted in a commission to lead the Factory Night for Rednile. I am sure it will be an amazing experience.

Tampering around the edges.

The black blog seemed a little doomy and angry, so I changed it, you may wish to change it again.

B to A

It was interesting to be in Stoke for such a brief but intense day. I was exhilarated by what I'd seen at Spode, such a vast empty space but quite a long way from a blank canvass, it has such a weight of memory on it. I think we managed to come quite far in our 45 minutes, towards seeing where our practices intersect, or perhaps repel each other. I think there are lines that excite us both, marked by flashpoints of opposite character. I think that tendency to identify our stark differences comes from the short timespan we're working within, we're desperately drawing up lines to structure a nebulous thing that doesn't exist.

It's true to say a real difference is that you work things out in public, you like to put things out there and see what comes back. I'm more contemplative, I'll go over things before I release them. But I do draw things in, I learn, sometimes there are people I talk to who leave me feeling buoyed and inspired to the point of white noise. I'm fairly private though, I wonder if that was in your mind when you added my photograph to the blog. You appear regularly in and around your work, I don't, it feels strange. It's private for now, but we know the intention is that this will form part of the work. So are we having a conversation or performing a conversation?

Permanence and ephemera. I think in it's purest form our project will turn out to be about this.

You were telling me a little about a garden festival that happened in Stoke. I'd really like to know more about it. You said it was the last biggest thing that ever happened there... I'm interested in that sense of rise and fall, this temporary blooming that you're still finding remains of in brickwork terraced lawns. I've just found out that I'm going to attend one of Rednile's Factory Nights next week. We'll be going to an Ironstone mine, walking along the shore, then visiting an archeological dig of a Saxon burial ground in Redcar. I'm ecstatic. I'm sure it will be in my mind when I return to Stoke a few days later.

I'll have a think about mapping my processes... they change.

I've mentioned to Zac that we'd like some bricks, some paper and some ink cartridges.

First Meet Up - you and i

From 28th - 30th September, you and I will be working on a collaboration within the AirSpace Gallery, the results of which will go on show in an exhibition 'Stick Up' showing 6 such pairings as part of BCB.
The first contact was you to me - an email opening the conversation.
We set out what we are not interested in, as well as a bit about Stoke-on-Trent's problems.
We decide to meet on Monday, when you were coming up to Spode to install.
We manage a short but fairly intensive pint, where a lot of ground is covered.
We talk about gaps.
I am interested in gaps, and feel that artists often operate in gaps. you talk about 'tooling' and I notice an area where I am lacking in knowledge. I look it up - Tool: A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. Is this what you meant?
In the description of process and material I know I am not usually concerned or interested, but feel differently now that I am to work with someone who may be more used to and concerned with this sort of thing.
There seem to be a lot of points of departure within our two working methodologies and I suggest it might be an idea to try to 'map' how we usually go about developing an idea. It might be interesting to see if, though we work with different material and with a differing ethos, maybe there will be some crossovers?
During the conversation some themes emerge (mainly from our differing approaches).
These are:
permanence and ephemerality
solidity and disappearance


We also discuss the need to 'preorder' any materials that we might like to use within the collaboration. It seems bonkers to order materials before we really know what we are doing, but we wonder if we might be able to select a material that might represent each of us and our working practices, or if there might be something we would like to work with.

You talk about the responsibility of working with a material like ceramic, which I find really interesting. You say that whatever you make can potentially survive and endure for hundreds of years. Much of what I do involves temporary intervention or an event which means it is over quickly. Here again we are opposites.
We decide that a material for me could be paper. And a material for you could be brick. These materials also feel like a good starting point.

The final thing we discuss is that much of what I do as an artist is public - even the working out and thinking process happens out in the public, something which I find important. Revealing processes and being responsive is very much part of what I do. I keep a blog which explores my experiences in quite a reflexive way. You express that this again is opposite to your way of working. When writing, you like to deliberate and reflect on what you are writing before putting it out into the world.
For this reason this blog is set to private - different to my usual way of working. I wonder if it will ever escape.
I will try to map my working methods over the next few days and get back to you.