THINKING SPACE APRIL 11TH, 2024

It was so busy last year, I realise that, after clearing out so much artwork, the spring cleaning, I now need some space just to think. I have filled yet another notebook with thoughts and ideas, some of which are proving useful. There are a couple of things which I really want to progress with and have been writing proposals for but, otherwise, I feel that this time of mental nomadism is really worthwhile.

Spring Cleaning February 29th, 2024

Clearing out old blog sites, working through all that stuff on the computer that is slowing things down and is very obviously no longer needed, throwing out old artwork and drawings that I am paying to store, labelling all my sound recordings correctly, downloading from my phone, numerous SD cards and maybe, even, reducing the 80 odd identical black journals. (Not sure about this last one!)

Then I hope to re-energise my whole practice. It is bogged down. And bogged is the word for my current very watery situation. Just spent a week in Normandy meeting the artists from last year's collaboration and it rained every day except coming home day. It was a week for growing thoughts rather than producing work although I did a little bit of sound recording.

Having ended Hatchery Artists last year, I still have to sort through certain things. It was great while it lasted but now I want to concentrate on my own practice. I decided on October 11th, 2023 that I would make no new work for a year but develop things I had already 'finished'. Prompted, of course, by my throwing out sessions, it has been a good evaluation.

Looking forward when now I have finished looking back, I am applying for residencies and exhibitions with the new approach.

January 17th, 2024

Time for an evaluation, a review of the past couple of years rather than blindly going forward. 2022 was the year I took time out from the everyday to embark on a narrowboat journey as a self-directed residency. Although cut short for a family emergency, it yielded so many ideas. 2023 was the year of residencies, firstly Lode, a solo project, followed by Traversée, both at Broadway Gallery, Nottingham where the support of Near Now was crucial. The Traversée residencies were a collaboration with Hatchery Artists and Le Labo des Arts, Caen, France - Le Labo provided much support. Traversée2 took place in Caen with an exhibition at Saint Nicolas and Traversée3 followed again in Nottingham at Broadway Gallery. The cultural exchange enriched horizons in many ways and I am hoping for more exchanges.

Watery Ways/Bleak Place

This was my summer, self-directed residency for which I used a Wordpress blog site. https://chriswright.wordpress.com/2022/05/07/watery-ways-bleak-place/

Images can also be seen in the gallery here.

On May 7th, 2022, I wrote

‘This is a self-directed and unfunded residency. My intention is to spend three months on England’s waterways, travelling by narrowboat. It will be a testing space that will inform the development of new work through expanded use of materials with a focus on the waterways environs. Embodied within the potential new ways of working are ideas of sustainability, care of self (well-being) & care of the environment. 

I began travelling on April 20th, 2022 and headed south on the River Soar and am now on the Grand Union Canal at Cosgrove. Why wait until now to write? The title of this residency includes the words Bleak Place and it is this bleak place that has prevented me from doing much more than keeping a diary and taking pictures. The world is in turmoil and I have been bowed down by it. Yesterday, I walking in the water meadows in search of the Rive Tove. I heard my first cuckoo of the year and began to have a little hope. So whilst I cannot forget everything that is happening, I acknowledge it all and will try to find ways to exist alongside it.’

It is now January, the residency was cut short after 6 weeks due to unavoidable family illness, but I have an enormous amount of work to develop even in that short time. I am now beginning to process that work.

Art Etc. No. 30 Jan 2022

Starting the New Year with a Hatchery Artist challenge. 31 pieces of work in 31 days. For me, it is a chance to play with materials and process and gather ideas together for the future. Hatchery Artists, now unfunded but I will apply again later in the year, have gathered two new artists for the challenge so we are now 10, that is 310 new works. These can be seen in the blog at www.hatcheryartists.com

I am also posting on Instagram to try and improve our profile and it is quite a challenge as I don’ t use it much but I understand that I need to engage with social media more. I draw the line at facebook, sorry, meta, though. It has been quite a learning year with all the Hatchery professional development but I have done quite a few courses, the best being the VR day with Kerryn Wise from my NearNow studio. The next course is on Instagram reels in a couple of weeks time.

I am beginning to have a clarity about my practice and its position between social engagement and contemporary art. It is quite another challenge to keep on track when the commissioner doesn’t always appreciate the contemporary art side. Using sound lends itself perfectly to social projects but it tends to be the presentation of those projects which causes problems.

It is interesting that in the first three days of art challenge, I have not included sound. Perhaps it is because it is always raining!

Maker Fair, thoughts

Today is the first day of the Maker Fair at Artcore Gallery, Derby which I am doing with Hatchery Artists. It has been really interesting as I don’t make things to sell. The whole process from deciding what to make, how to make it, when to make it, doing it and then presenting it, packaging it and pricing it has been a steep learning curve. Still haven’t done the pricing bit but, well, it doesn’t start until 5pm. Have I enjoyed it? I enjoyed the making and I probably enjoyed the process as it was new to me. I have not yet worked out how to manage the speculation of what to make/sell/ might sell. I guess that would come in time. One thing is clear though, as a diverse group of artists, it will be good fun to actually meet up and do something together.

Art etc. No. 28

                                                        

 

The situation demands an alternative response, to life and art. This is how I began the last letter. I didn’t think it would still be happening. It is becoming normalised. I have now begun to think of these not as newsletters but as letters, a connection to the outside where contact has become more fluid, words spoken in Zoom, a few lines within a thousand WhatsApp messages exchange.

 

But things have happened, online exhibitions gather thousands of viewers rather than the usual small numbers who go to galleries. Artist talks require new skills, a steady look and eye contact with the imaginary audience but there is an audience, and one that can listen later, at a time of their own choosing. 

 

The art group, Hatchery, which began as a solo self-directed residency, is now Arts Council funded. Its aim is for artist development and mutual support, with creativity at its heart, trying to provide for a sustainable future, ending the Covid year as better artists than we when we began. 

 

I have been lucky, I have had support in different ways from organisations such as Artcore, Derby and Near Now Studio at Broadway, Nottingham as well as ACE. I have also had a really productive 2019 to build on. 

Created as part of Hatchery Artists She'd 2 exhibition hosted by Artcore, Derby,

 

My favourite piece from this year has been Slow Flow, a one minute film that was accepted by Kerry Baldry and her ongoing volume of films. Earlier volumes, in which I had a couple of films, are archived at the British Film Institute. Kerry has done a tremendous job but is now stepping back through illness. This very short film is no longer or shorter than it needs to be, it epitomises the quietness of the environment as well as the calmness my days passed with. Unity is created by the reflections that entwine with the real as the feather passes. Happenstance, here through the feather falling in the water near me, is a major feature of most of my work, that and seeing opportunities everywhere. Through the Covid situation, I have had to think more carefully about how I make work. Previously, I have used the impetus of the new as a bouncing off point. Now, I have had to dig deep and look at what is around me more closely. Water mostly! It is hard to get excited about the familiar. However, I have used running and walking as a link to my location thus creating a changing space. The second image shows the Mermaid’s Pool on the slopes of Kinder Scout where I used a hydrophone. It makes life easier than the cling film and condom method I used to have to use. Was I hoping to hear the mermaid who lives in the pool and appears only at midnight at Easter to grant eternal life to whoever sees her? The connecting of the real and the myth seem so emblematic of today. 

This underwater recording is made below the summit of Kinder Scout in the PeakDistrict where lies the Mermaid's Pool.

Finding ways to change/alter/manipulate/compose sounds has been a challenge as well as finding ways to record. Following on from Early Birds, a keyboard and birdsong piece, I have just finished another very short piece called Angry Gulls with Duck, Crow and Clarinet. I think this will be a continuing strand. 

 

Drawing has long been part of my practice and these miniature drawings are the result of using sanitiser and thermal paper as a basis. The shapes are not controlled but flow from the chemical reaction whilst the pen drawings highlight shapes that may or may not suggest something else.

 

Drawing 2

Drawing 2


Art etc. No.27

The situation demands an alternative response, to life and art. We are all doing it differently. I am trying to look at it as an opportunity, a space that can be filled but doesn’t have to be to allow time for mental wandering and wondering letting thoughts and ideas to swirl around. 

 

In December, I was selected to take part in a residency in Vadodara, Gujarat by Artcore, Derby, UK. The results of this have already been shown in India and were to be exhibited in Derby in April. With impeccable timing, this had to be postponed and as yet, do not have a date. I am aware how everything will have changed with the length of time we are unable to freely move about. 

 

To keep links, discussions and critiques going, I began a self-directed residency called Hatchery and invited others to join me. There are now ten artists, mostly UK but also Canada and Italy, who meet through Zoom once a week to talk about virtual gallery visits, artwork progressed and general ‘how things are going’. Our What’sApp group is lively!

Work 10 copy.JPG

 

For me, this self-directed residency is to prioritise my creativity, not just artwork. Recently, I have had to do temp. work to sustain myself and this is an opportunity to have space and time (if not money). I have been using materials to hand and this limitation has produced a lot of experimental work that do not align to my usual practice. Melting oil pastels to create 3D landscapes, making Modroc casts, printing with bulrushes, making chalk drawings on cardboard and painting lines with the only colour of paint I have which is black as well as things like filming a feather drifting in the water from a kayak and exploring spectrograms after a night time recording. Some of this was in response to the 12o 30day artwork which was a challenge, even Here, I decided to think about the ideas and do the work quickly, not following the brief but being very actively creative and I thank the organisers for the effort they put into this. It must have presented huge technical difficulties.  It was important for me not to limit myself and although not everything worked, it was the action of making. 

 

Work 14 copy.jpg

 

This mind map was created throughout the 30 days and has become a springboard form which to leap. In itself, it is not important, it is the one that comes next which will be life-changing. 

Work 29 copy.JPG

 

Next, Hatchery is being supported by Artcore in an online exhibition called She’d. So called as it refers to the space we have carved out for ourselves to make work and, coincidentally, we are all female in the exhibition but not in Hatchery itself. This includes seven of the artists and the first events are in June, 11th and 25th, with artist talks. The exhibition itself opens on July in two parts, 3rd and 17th. I am so grateful to Artcore for their generous involvement. 

 

 

 

 

 

See Hear

Exploring the audio that is my practice, this blog delves into the thinking behind the works to encourage dialogue whilst helping me unravel my thoughts. 

See Hear

It is right to start the New Year, and a new decade, with a new blog. Having reached number 26 with my earlier one, Art Etc. it feels that this is the time. Here, I want to concentrate on art practice which includes my research as they are inherent to one other. Primarily a sound artist, I do not exclude other media but develop creativity across disciplines.

 It has been a good year for me culminating in the Artcore Winter Narratives Arts Council supported residency in Vadodara, India (blog – artcoregallery.org.uk > artist residency > Winter Narratives > Dr Wright). I arrived home on the 21st of December so it is still very fresh. It was perfect timing and the progress I made points to an excellent beginning to 2020. 

Making an exhibition from new work in just 10 days meant little time for procrastination. I went with ideas and a proposal that was, essentially, a methodology but I wanted to have a very open mind and create something that could only be created there. My thoughts are that to make something on a residency that could be done elsewhere means that you might as well stay at home. The work I made was borne out of the experience and pertains to the location but it is not necessarily site-specific, although certain drawings were. This will be tested when it is shown at Artcore in Derby in April. I rediscovered my pleasure in using drawing as a means of experiencing site although sound was my main medium. 

My intention is that knowledge and understanding of what I have achieved this year will unfold with time and impact on my thoughts and ideas.  

Exhibition, Vadodara, India

Exhibition, Vadodara, India

Art etc. no. 26

Recording in a giant barrel in the no longer used for distilling Distilleria de Giorgi, San Cesario di Lecce. Image by Francesco Michi.

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Art etc. no. 25

Threads of making, writing and play have become knotted into my practice which is very apt considering my collection of lost knots which subsequently all became woven into a rope of a tentative and ambiguous nature. I have become obsessed with the idea of sound as time and return over an dover again with the question ‘can you hear a stalagmite forming?’. It is the notion of time slowed down to thousands of years both in the process of formation from the raindrop percolating through the rocks to the permanence of the stalagmite. It informs my practice of humming with its ambiguity, its initial tenuousness to its longevity, its changing of state allied to its location, environment and its relationship to time. These things can be applied to any sonic environment (as they can to any environment) especially in relation to the listening process. This direction was explored during my Summer Lodge residency at NTU and I seem to be moving into sound performances. Hopefully, these directions will be fruitful but at least they will be fun.

I now have a digital studio at NearNow in Broadway, Nottingham which is arts-council funded. It is a lovely place to work though it is not open every day at the moment.

Over the past few months, I have seen and heard some interesting things. Bruno Latour at the University of Leicester, Lis Rhodes at Nottingham Contemporary, Alchemies of Research conference at Birmingham School of Art to name a few.

No images with this post - my computer was restored to factory settings and working from my hard drive and I haven’t yet worked out how to download the photos. But hope they are still there!

Art etc. No. 16

Art etc. No 16

I am working hard to build my website at www.chriswright.co.uk. A bit a day will keep the temper at bay! However, it is getting there though probably will never really finish it. In the meantime, just found out that In Cammino Verso Il Silenziowas published three days ago which is a really nice feeling. It includes my essaySound, time and self, moving through the aural landscape. This explores the interactions of perceptions of sound to the notion of silence, the heard and not-heard, as dynamic relations that influence the space of sound. My argument is that the construct of time, closely linked to the routines of our daily life, becomes an anomaly when experienced in the space of underground and constructed silent spaces. Thus indicating that the intricate layering of sound, human experience and space is directly related to the moment and creates a sonic landscape governed by natural and unnatural events.

 Scritti di: Michele Ammirata, Silvia Badon, Michele Bartolucci, Michele De Gregorio, Agostina Giuliani, Andrea Laquidara, Mario Mariani, Caterina Marrone, Andrea Taroppi, Chris Wright.

 

 

 

 

Art etc. No. 15

I have become a nomadic artist in the sense that I am now studio-less, it feels very strange. I am sure I will miss the community of artists as well as that space to work in. It is going to require extra efforts to keep up a network. I see artists’ communities as mutually beneficial, being able to support, commiserate and rejoice without rancour. I do see the change as an opportunity however, and that is helping me. The future is unknown, not tied to a particular space but perhaps finding a project space if I need one. I am already part of a three person crit. group who meet every month or so to discuss our work and think about what opportunities we can create. In fact, it is all quite exciting and have begun applying again after a month’s break as well as building a website which is endlessly traumatic.  

 

The future is going to be fun, productive and challenging.