Current work

“Gamers confront one another in contests of skill that reveal who has been chosen – chosen by the game as the one who has most fully internalized its algorithm”

- Mackenzie Wark, Gamer Theory

A distinct lack of blog updates belies a similar lack of productive art work.  Sadly I’m starting to fall into the trap of working 9-5 and then spending my evenings recovering or pursuing activities specifically to compensate for the fact that I spend 8 hours every day doing something I don’t want to do.  I’ve noticed that I have spent a great deal of money on video games recently.

I’m trying to break out of this cycle by working for its own sake, e.g. videoing my journey to work, keeping a record of my interviews with the mental patients I see each day, creating podcasts etc.  There are a number of small projects I want to work on and it is just a matter of devoting attention to them each in turn in order to finish them off.  I’ve realised that I’m less interested in mental processes than I am in patterns of behaviour, and, specifically, the way in which we can perpetuate destructive patterns even when aware of their impact.

I have to prepare new work if I am to submit a portfolio for MA courses following the end of my training contract, and membership of Northern print should give me the facilities to get a large amount of work done in a relatively short space of time.

Group show in June

Currently working on a number of small-scale pieces for inclusion in a show at 42 New Briggate in The Leeds in mid-June. The concept I’m working with is that all the pieces must be created in, or take their materials from, an office environment. Images of works in progress when I get round to finding out how to embed images in the blog properly..

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- “Office artworks” by Ellie and me. A3 poster, newsprint sheet, two sided, large image on one side (keyboard drawn on post its?), other side 9-12 b&w images of existing artworks made out of blu tac, post its, rubbers, paper clips etc

- Sol LeWitt Typeface; draw on several sheets of A4 graph paper & then cut out/glue together into a single long strip (or two shorter strips – see how it looks)

[I thought it may be better to combine these two, so one side is the photos and the other is a copy of the typeface]

- series of photocopies. Must decide how this is to be shown. A book is the obvious format but there is the resulting problem that a) people are less likely to pick it up and look at it and b) it is easier to steal and would be a one off

- I’m currently recording the hold music from my innumerable hours spent waiting on the phone at work. We’ll record very short snippets of this music into MP3 format and give them away on 3.5 inch floppy discs.

Leading on from that is –

- internet page which is a gif of static, as if it is an empty/off page

essentially on commentary on the fact that i use the internet loads but there’s nothing of real consequence on there..