'Basf Tower and Labouring Women'. 2010 Screen print on Fabriano paper, variable edition. 140cm x 160cm
'Basf Tower and Labouring Women'. 2010 Screen print on Fabriano paper, variable edition. 140cm x 160cm.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Monday, 1 November 2010
After London
Survival shelter built for the show after London to house the archive!
After London - How we learnt to survive
4.11.10 - 21.11.10
Sassoon Gallery
213 Blenheim Grove
London
SE15 4QL
http://www.thesassoongallery.co.uk/index.php?/projects/news/
After London: How we learnt to survive is an investigation into how we might survive at the end of the world. Taking an imagined apocalypse as its starting point, Sisters Burn have collected advice, thoughts, musings and more abstracted reflections on how we could survive when everything is gone. The project will be centered around a community- generated ‘apocalypse library’, where visitors will be able to digest an archive of information related to the idea, housed in a survival shelter desinged and built by artists Jaimie Barker and Chris King along with architect James Binning.
After London is set to be a fascinanting, educational, collaborative arts project concieved by curating collective Sisters Burn. The project is the next in a series of experimental exhibitions taking place at Sassoon Gallery in Peckham. The exhibition will open on the 4th of November with event weekends occuring throughout the month.
Ecstatic Labour 2010. Hand screen printed pamphlet. Edition of 100. Available in Donlon Books http://www.donlonbooks.co.uk/ and http://www.bookartbookshop.com/docs/opening.htm in Hoxton in London, Grotto http://grotto.manchesterscreenprinters.com/ in Manchester. Also on sale in www.koenigbooks.co.uk at the Serpentine Gallery, London.
Ecstatic Labour 2010. Hand screen printed pamphlet comprising of images of womens faces in ecstatic labour for the exhibition.
In the survival shelter. 'Ecstatic Birth' is on display top center.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
New Prints
In the studio at Hotbed press in Salford.
'Stolen image'. Screen print on fabriano cartridge paper. 150cm x 150cm. 2010
'Manu and Chandrika I', Screen print on fabriano paper. 140cm x 100cm. 2010.
'Manu and Chandrika II', Screenprint on fabriano. 140cm x 100cm. 2010
'Temple'. Screen print on fabriano paper. 200cm x 140 cm. 2010
'Temple'. Screen print on fabriano paper. 200cm x 140 cm. 2010
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Drawing Laboratory - Gatley Primary School
In January 2010 I was commissioned by Creative partnerships to work in collaboration with Matt Cahill to take up a residency within the school.It was very open as to how we might engage with the curriculum teams to facilitate a creative learning process. Working two days a week for a six month period, Matt and I decided that it was each of our drawing practices which was a ready subject for collaboration. We came upon the idea of creating a drawing laboratory, a space in which the children could explore and investigate subjects that they were working on in the classrooms.
The process began organically whereby we led some workshops in the classroom to enable the children to begin to produce imagery -using mono- printing techniques we started with the theme of dinosaur.
Matt led a workshop on expressive mark - making and that is where it took off.
We had a small empty room in the school in which to work and this was our base. We brought the children in to use the source material they had already generated.
They used their own and others drawings. Collaging, photo-copying, overdrawing, over- printing, they instigated and decided where and how images were put together.
They made connections on all levels, thematic, technical and intuitive. Drawings inspired drawings, imagery generated new imagery.
Curriculum themes explored were poilitical art - The Murals of Derry, healthy eating, trees, web camera on a bird box which fell under maths, literacy, humanities, science.
Once the initial installation was finished we began all over again. This time however, using snippets of selected imagery to create large screens for screen printing.
We wallpapered the walls with the help of year 6 top set maths who did the important job of measuring out the paper to recover the walls.
An important question which floated in and out of our heads was this: Who does imagery belong to? Can we be sole authors and does it matter if we appropriate images? The children themselves asked these questions. The head of the woman above began as a small doodle by a year six girl called Maria, it was then taken on by a year 2 boy ( pictured above ) who photocopied it and enlarged it and stuck these part together. This was then made into a screen which was printed as a pattern, see below.
We taught the pupils how to screen print. They experimented playing with shape and texture, over laying prints, trying out different compositions.
Space changes with powerful screen printed images.
Finally we brought the teachers into the space and facilitated them to respond to the installation. This was so that they could then go on with their year groups to work inot the prints and drawings and continually develop the space whilst enabling them use it a resource to explore new topics.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Research
What is the relationship between obscenity, eroticism and empowerment in the visual representation of childbirth?
Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.
Between January 2009 and April 2009 I traveled to India to make some drawings of the erotic temples of Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh and the yogini temples also found in that state.
Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.
My motivation for this was linked with the work which had emerged from the Birth Rites exhibition. www.birthrites.org.uk and has been consolidated in the Birth Rites Collection www.birthritescollection.org.uk
The project allowed me to examine the effects of different representational mediums about childbirth on a diverse audience. It also inspired me to embark on a new body of artwork that explored sexuality and childbirth through drawing, artist books, wallpaper and printmaking.
Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.
I am looking to develop my understanding of Tantric thought in relation to creation.
Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.
For the show ‘Wall’s Are Talking,’ http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/wallsaretalking/ I produced two wallpapers.
In ‘Birth’ the figures are arranged in labouring postures found in manuals for active birth and from lap dancers' calling cards. This wallpaper alludes to the taboo that conceals the link between sex and birth and mixes the domestic with the erotic. The aim was to challenge the separation between women as mothers and women as sexual entities.
left 'Birth' wallpaper made by Helen Knowles and Francesca Granato 2008. Digital print.
'Birth' wallpaper installed Whitworth Art Gallery.
‘Conception’ employs scientific illustrations of the male and female reproductive organs. From a distance both papers appear pretty and innocuous, on closer inspection an up- front exploration of sexuality and gender.
'Conception' hand screen printed wallpaper. 2010. Helen Knowles and Francesca Granato.
detail of 'Conception' hand screen printed wallpaper. 2010. Helen Knowles and Francesca Granato.
Building on this work, I am attending women in labour, documenting through observational drawing, the postures they adopt when giving birth.
Below are some of the drawings made during a birth. I am interested in the ambiguity of postures which could also be read as sexual positions. This is in direct relationship to the comments and reactions of the image reprinted for Birth Rites exhibition by Hermione Wiltshire of 'Terese crowning in ecstatic childbirth' taken form the book 'Ina May's Guide to Childbirth'. Pictured left.
Drawings made during a woman's labour. 2009. Charcoal on cartridge.
I want to establish a working-group of pregnant women who will use the images to explore and enhance their birth experiences, contributing a reflexive reading of new imagery. I intend to work with the women to create a drawing laboratory made in through the same process myself and Matt Cahill used to create the drawing laboratory in Gatley Primary school (see Drawing Lab blog).
I propose to examine the aesthetic in “which the birthing woman is resolutely the active subject and not the abject object of the birth scenes” . For Bataille, the taboo around childbirth is summed up by the blood loss and significant violence associated with it . This view exists, but has it eroded and defined women’s and men’s sense of self? Positive imagery of birth enables us to affirm and carry out our desire for a good birth experience. What sort of imagery, writing or textual analysis is it possible to create with this in mind? Hal Foster asked ‘can there be an evocation of the obscene that is not pornographic? ”
Is a space for this in the representation of childbirth? When Hannah Arendt suggests, “the absence of birth from histories of thought represents a
significant lacuna in political and
philosophical traditions”, it is never so prevalent than within art. In the early stages of the BR project I contacted the director of a large gallery, the response, “it is not a very interesting subject”. In Kerstin Mey’s book ‘Art & Obscenity’ all topics from death, poverty to pornography feature and yet nowhere does she explore birth.
Charcoal drawing made of a woman during her labour 2009
Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.Between January 2009 and April 2009 I traveled to India to make some drawings of the erotic temples of Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh and the yogini temples also found in that state.
Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.My motivation for this was linked with the work which had emerged from the Birth Rites exhibition. www.birthrites.org.uk and has been consolidated in the Birth Rites Collection www.birthritescollection.org.uk
The project allowed me to examine the effects of different representational mediums about childbirth on a diverse audience. It also inspired me to embark on a new body of artwork that explored sexuality and childbirth through drawing, artist books, wallpaper and printmaking.Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.
I am looking to develop my understanding of Tantric thought in relation to creation.Sketchbook drawing made in Khajuraho 2009 Madhya Pradesh, India.
For the show ‘Wall’s Are Talking,’ http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/wallsaretalking/ I produced two wallpapers.
left 'Birth' wallpaper made by Helen Knowles and Francesca Granato 2008. Digital print.
'Birth' wallpaper installed Whitworth Art Gallery.
‘Conception’ employs scientific illustrations of the male and female reproductive organs. From a distance both papers appear pretty and innocuous, on closer inspection an up- front exploration of sexuality and gender.'Conception' hand screen printed wallpaper. 2010. Helen Knowles and Francesca Granato.
detail of 'Conception' hand screen printed wallpaper. 2010. Helen Knowles and Francesca Granato.
Building on this work, I am attending women in labour, documenting through observational drawing, the postures they adopt when giving birth.Below are some of the drawings made during a birth. I am interested in the ambiguity of postures which could also be read as sexual positions. This is in direct relationship to the comments and reactions of the image reprinted for Birth Rites exhibition by Hermione Wiltshire of 'Terese crowning in ecstatic childbirth' taken form the book 'Ina May's Guide to Childbirth'. Pictured left.
Drawings made during a woman's labour. 2009. Charcoal on cartridge.
I want to establish a working-group of pregnant women who will use the images to explore and enhance their birth experiences, contributing a reflexive reading of new imagery. I intend to work with the women to create a drawing laboratory made in through the same process myself and Matt Cahill used to create the drawing laboratory in Gatley Primary school (see Drawing Lab blog).
I propose to examine the aesthetic in “which the birthing woman is resolutely the active subject and not the abject object of the birth scenes” . For Bataille, the taboo around childbirth is summed up by the blood loss and significant violence associated with it . This view exists, but has it eroded and defined women’s and men’s sense of self? Positive imagery of birth enables us to affirm and carry out our desire for a good birth experience. What sort of imagery, writing or textual analysis is it possible to create with this in mind? Hal Foster asked ‘can there be an evocation of the obscene that is not pornographic? ”
Is a space for this in the representation of childbirth? When Hannah Arendt suggests, “the absence of birth from histories of thought represents a
significant lacuna in political andphilosophical traditions”, it is never so prevalent than within art. In the early stages of the BR project I contacted the director of a large gallery, the response, “it is not a very interesting subject”. In Kerstin Mey’s book ‘Art & Obscenity’ all topics from death, poverty to pornography feature and yet nowhere does she explore birth.
Charcoal drawing made of a woman during her labour 2009
Monday, 19 July 2010
Artist Books 'Cocks Comb'
'Cocks Comb', detail of screen printed artist book made in collaboration with young mothers from Salford Women's Centre. 2008. Birth Rites Collection http://birthritescollection.org.uk
'Cocks Comb', detail of screen printed artist book made in collaboration with young mothers from Salford Women's Centre. 2008. Birth Rites Collection. http://birthritescollection.org.uk/#/cocks-comb-artist-book/4542010641
'Cocks Comb', detail of screen printed artist book made in collaboration with young mothers from Salford Women's Centre. 2008. Birth Rites Collection.http://birthritescollection.org.uk/#/cocks-comb-artist-book/4542010641
'Cocks Comb', detail of screen printed artist book made in collaboration with young mothers from Salford Women's Centre. 2008. Birth Rites Collection. http://birthritescollection.org.uk/#/cocks-comb-artist-book/4542010641
'Cocks Comb', detail of screen printed artist book made in collaboration with young mothers from Salford Women's Centre. 2008. Birth Rites Collection. http://birthritescollection.org.uk/#/cocks-comb-artist-book/4542010641Thursday, 15 July 2010
Artist Books
'Land of Endless Statues' Screen printed artist book made in collaboration with school children from St Anne's RC Primary in Ancoats. 2008. For further information take a look at http://birthritescollection.org.uk/#/land-of-endless-statues/4542010665
'Land of Endless Statues'. Screen printed artist book. 2008
'Land of Endless Statues'. Screen printed artist book. 2008
'Land of Endless Statues'. Screen printed artist book. 2008
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)