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? ”

I
s 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

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/4542010641

Thursday 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

Wednesday 14 July 2010

Installation work







Text accompanying Don't Cross the Line exhibition.


Press from City Life Issue 472 18 Dec - 9 Jan 2003


Adventurous Wild Flowers - Their Art and Science


'Immigration' Installation of projected drawings photographs and sound piece, 2002. Gallery Oldham. Gallery Oldham Collection.


'Immigration' Installation of projected drawings photographs and sound piece, 2002. Gallery Oldham. Gallery Oldham Collection.

'Immigration' Installation of projected drawings photographs and sound piece, 2002. Gallery Oldham. Gallery Oldham Collection.


Growth Investment


As part of the exhibition 'Don't Cross the Line' funded by Arts Council England I exhibited a site specific installation in The Royal Exchange Theatre. This show was curated by myself and Jai Redman from UHC Collective http://www.uhc.org.uk/ It explored the theme of the new imperialism. See http://www.uhc.org.uk/portfolio.php?tag=7&project=17



'Growth investment'. Hand made paper and assembled objects. Detail of installation at The Royal Exchange Theatre, dimensions variable, 2004.



'Growth investment'. Hand made paper and assembled objects. Detail of installation at The Royal Exchange Theatre, dimensions variable, 2004.

'Growth investment'. Hand made paper and assembled objects. Detail of installation at The Royal Exchange Theatre, dimensions variable, 2004.

Tuesday 13 July 2010

Installation Work

One Tree Exhibition


Stripping the bark from the Oak tree that was felled for the exhibition. An Oak was felled at Tatton Park and 70 makers used different parts of the tree to make work. I used the oak bark to tan leather and create a leather floor shown below. This was part of my residency work at Jodrell Bank Science Centre and Arboretum 1999 - 2001 a setting-up-scheme project run by North West Arts Board.

Leather Floor Oak tanned leather dimensions variable, 2001. Created for the One Tree Exhibition.


'Sailing Species Installation'


The Newsletter of the Lanscape and Art Network. Number 21 Autumn 2000.

'Sailing Species'. Mono-prints on sealed Whatman Filter Papers. Installed on water at Brereton Heath Country Park, 2000. Collaboration with Elizabeth Stuart Smith.





'Lipstick Empire'


'Lipstick Empire’ 6 x 4ft greenhouse, lipstick and cast plant fibres, Dundee Botanical Gardens, 1999.

This work was part of a group show called 'Pollinate' led by a Dundee Arts Collective. I was interested in exploring ideas of colonialism and linking this with the migration of plants, I found a snakeskin handbag in a charity shop and began to muse on the 'otherness' of this object, it's exoticism, I cast it in a very opposing but similarly fibrous material of paper. I wanted to create an exotic space within the gardens, thinking about the handbag I stumbled upon the idea of lipstick. Thick slabs of it covered the walls of the greenhouse. Inside you were overcome by the smell of this heavy substance.




'Lipstick Empire’ 6 x 4 ft greenhouse, lipstick and cast plant fibres. Dundee Botanical Gardens,1999.