Showing posts with label postcards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label postcards. Show all posts

Monday, November 10, 2014

Host (2014)


A couple of weeks back I posted about the new improved (?) Bandcamp site that I now have with new artwork, links and such, and also promised I’d write when my latest project was ready for public consumption.


Host is a multimedia project created initially for Auflage #1: an artist’s book fair hosted over two weekends at Galerie GUM, in Bielefeld, N. Germany and curated by Gabriele Undine Meyer and Vera Brueggemann. The original idea was to publish a book of photographs which would come with a CD of new material, but time constraints (and the lack of a decent printer) meant that the concept changed. Host is now a limited edition of ten signed box sets containing ten hand-written postcards (complete with neat space-themed stamps!) and a CD of ten new tracks.




The five boxes taken to Germany amazingly all sold and the few remaining copies (three at time of writing) are now available to buy on the Bandcamp site for £70. If all copies sell I will be creating a second edition before the end of the year.


 
The idea was a particularly neat solution for the problem of what I could confidently bring to such a gathering of talented people, mainly because it plays to my three main areas of interest, music, writing and photography. Each card (the images can be found on my photography blog here) depicts a landscape that somehow conveys an otherworldly quality (hence the stamps). Each short message/story may or may not relate to the image featured: the same being true for each of the ten pieces of music. The listener/reader can choose exactly how much meaning they wish to imprint onto these sets.
 
The music is also available separately as a digital download from the Bandcamp site.

The project has been a considerable amount of work over the last month or so, but I have to say I’ve been thrilled at how it seems to have turned out exactly as I envisaged it.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me or bought the box, and especial thanks to Vera and Gabriele for being so generous with their time and their opinions.








Thursday, December 13, 2012

Peckham Postcards

(click to enlarge)

An early Xmas present to myself thanks to serendipity and the immense generosity of Loraine Rutt - ceramicist of this parish and a gifted craftsperson. Loraine (whose own site with many pictures of her work can be found here) - specialises in... well, let me quote her from her own bio:
'My art practice explores movement of sea, of goods, of people, of shoreline, and of satellites; and the work produced sets points in time, points of view, sets places, and sets details. A recurring theme is a particular fascination with mapping transient details by direct casting, such as the movement of material by the sea.'

(click to enlarge)

The works I've luckily come to own are pictured here. They're five porcelain 'postcards' of Peckham; each one detailing the development of the same area and based on maps and surveys dating back over 200 years. Each one comes with its own oak stand (made by Loraine's cabinet-maker husband, Steve) and is designed (as you can see) to be backlit. I love the way they glow and allow the cartographic details to shine out.

(click to enlarge)

As an ex-cartographer, I'm instantly drawn to work like this (and Loraine also uses maps of the moon in some of her work - making it even more alluring to a space fan like myself) - not only does the medium of clay give a satisfying tactility to the beauty of mapping, but it also introduces formality into our relationship with what is in essence something utilitarian.


(click to enlarge)

Coincidentally, Loraine's work also mirrors another of Peckham's artistically fertile population - the estimable Tom Phillips, whose own work often uses maps of this very same area as a basis for his prints and paintings. There must be something in the water...

Anyway, if you like this stuff, there's tons more on Loraine's site, as well as in her studio which is in Arch 191, Blenheim Court, 48-50 Blenheim Grove, London SE15 4QL.