Balloon Works 2021- Ongoing
In the Illuminating the Self exhibition at the Vane and at the Hatton Galleries in 2020, I made two works based on 'drawing' onto meteorological balloons with alcohol based pens. Both works included fans, inserted into the mouths of the balloons that were triggered by people passing by and setting off transducers that turned on the fans to inflate the works. The works were titled 'Sounding like Blue' 2019, at the Hatton Gallery and 'Storm to Calm: Rockall' 2019, at Vane Gallery.
This was the start of a set of new ideas and new works some of which are depicted below.
So next, I responded to the request to make some new pieces for a series of exhibitions in central Portugal in the summer of 2001, Viver ao Vivo, com Tempo no Centro. The piece was made in three sets of two balloons to be shown simultaneously in three villages, the overarching title for the work was 'With Time and Space in the Center'.
Then I made work for the RSU Anatomy Museum in Riga, Latvia, for a show titled Anatomy and Beyond, along with fellow artists Joe Davis, Eleanor Crook, Bryan Green, Nina Sellars Mara G. Haseltine and Pascale Pollier. After research into medical issues with space flight, a new work was developed titled ‘Limb From Limb: Astronaut Twin Study’, and a smaller ‘under study piece, ‘In a Vacuum Everything is Disturbing’. The former piece is the work that finally went on display in Riga. Both pieces extended the experimentation with transfer printing onto latex. There are some in situ shots of the work at the RSU in the blacked-out upper gallery.
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Then further ideas seemed to make sense for a new work, combining ideas for a season based work I wanted to make based on inverting the seasons in situ. This work originally envisaged for the New Forest, moved to St Catherine’s Hill Winchester, where I had started to take a set of experimental photographs. The work might end up being called ‘Season for Season’.
Another work sprung to mind through colliding ideas in the studio; conjoining things that should not really exist together. A notion persisted that made the work need to exist and the work 'Bring it all Home' 2021 came into being.