Monday 1 September 2014

In response to Russell Hill

The wall of toothpaste at Baltic 39 galleries cannot fail to have an impact on every visitor, the smell is overpowering and pervades the air throughout the building.

Created by artist Russell Hill, it is part of a portfolio where everyday objects and consumables are transformed.
http://www.russellhillonline.com

It evoked memories of bedtime routines and childhood. For part of the MA Summer School we were invited to respond to the piece, again using a limited selection of materials that included some very unlikely domestic objects.








Daniel Buren at Baltic

The ever changing light levels in the gallery interplay with the Buren installation on the huge vertical windows. The colour and light combined with the architecture and space have a powerful effect on the meditative quality of this work. Every view creates an new abstract composition.








MA Summer School for Artist teachers at Baltic

Using the Baltic library point for an artwork, materials were restricted to a photocopier and paper with a few found objects. It was a challenge to create something that considered both the space of the bookshelves and the image on a page that was randomly generated by a dice game.

I was intrigued by the text on the page and the Jeff Wall photograph that was my random selection. I used the photocopier to reproduce the image and weave together the image and text. Further photocopies of the resulting structure generated various compositions. I selected three compartments at the back of the library to site my construction, creating peepholes and weaving the whole together with a ticker-tape of text from the book itself.

I hoped to explore the notion of text and image being interlinked drawing the viewer into a new world of the imagination.