Public art project: Remembering and Imagining.

I recently completed the second stage of a project commissioned for NHS Gloucestershire. The work consists of several small display cases packed with obscure and arcane hospital paraphernalia. The project was part of the relocation of local cottage hospital facilities to new buildings at Moreton-in-Marsh and Bourton on the Water. From a  practical, healthcare provision point of view the relocation from charming, but aging Victorian buildings to modern new sites cannot be faulted. Understandably though there were some mixed feelings within the wider community, anxieties and nostalgia, at the prospect of losing  a connection with places that had played a large part in the villages’, and people’s histories. A series of artworks was commissioned by Lesley Greene with the aim of easing this transition.

I worked with a collection of objects from the hospital archives: medical equipment whose uses are long-forgotten, recognisable but outdated apparatus, and oddments that were kept by someone at some time by someone. These were arranged in small cabinets and sited around the buildings, in corners, some hidden, some obvious: no interpretation is offered alongside them. I hope that when these objects are chanced upon they will prompt stories of the past – how things were, and inspire new thoughts – possibilities and imaginings.

Oral History in the Visual Arts

I am delighted that my essay ‘History In The Making: The Use Of Talk In Interdisciplinary Craft Practice’ has just been published in Linda Sandino and Matthew Partington’s edited volume Oral History In The Visual Arts.

From the back matter of the book: “Interviews are becoming increasingly dominant research method in art, craft, design, fashion, and textile history. This groundbreaking text demonstrates how artists, writers, and historians deploy interviews as creative practice, as “history”, and as a means to insights into the micro-practices of arts production and identity that contribute to questions of “voice”, authenticity, and authorship.” 

More details including the full list of contributors can be found here on the Bloomsbury website.

A review of The Tool at Hand

The current issue of The Journal of Modern Craft carries a review of The Tool at Hand exhibition (scroll down or click April 2012 and December 2011 for earlier posts on the project). Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, Assistant Professor of Communication and Technology, Alverno College, Milwaukee presents a clear reading of the works in the show and an evident grasp of the task facing the participating artists. Jennifer writes, “…the participating artists raise concerns through their chosen tools and materials to offer critical stimulus to contemporary dialog about making”.

I am particularly gratified that Jennifer drew upon the work that I made, “With his super-tool, Gates makes visible the important relationship between an artist’s skill and the strategic use of tools. By emphasizing strategy and adaptation of a tool made specifically for the exhibition’s task, Gates’s work is also and example of creative problem solving within the context of constraint at the heart of ‘The Tool at Hand’.”

References

Mikulay, J.G. Exhibition Review. The Tool at Hand. The Journal of Modern Craft. Vol 5 – Issue 3. October 2012. pp351-354. Berg Publications.

The exhibition will tour to Philadelphia Art Alliance PA; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, TX; and Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR during 2013

Work showing in Norway

I am currently showing a body of work at Telemark Kunsterersenter in Norway. It is a group show focussing on the practice of making works in series. As someone who thinks of themselves as always making the next version of previous thinking, the idea of series cuts across, and runs through working. Intersections across a path. The current work presents itself as the product of one period, and also looks back as well as forward. Details of the gallery here.

Domestic Bliss

Domestic Bliss 2

 

 

Two pieces

A couple of pieces that left the workshop this summer. A version of the lounge rocking chair in American walnut with oak scoop and back panel. And a writing desk in European oak with a dovetailed maple and cedar drawer. Both pieces commissioned by people who had seen my work and then visited the workshop to see how something could be made that was right for them.

With Richard Slee

I recently worked with Richard Slee on his current show, Camp Futility, at Studio Voltaire in London. A number of his pieces used pre-existing saw blades, the task was to unify them as a collection of individual objects through the way they were displayed. Drawing on pit-head-structures, trestle bridges and some steps at Niagara Falls the resulting supports also suggest mining sluices. All in keeping with the visual and thematic language of the show as a whole.

 

Tool at Hand Think Tank.

I’ve recently returned from a trip to the USA. The Chipstone Foundation brought together the majority of the exhibitors in the Tool at Hand and a group of historians for a weekend symposium of discussion around the issues raised during the life of the project so far. This all happened at the Milwaukee Art Museum and a little way North of the city at the Chipstone collection.

The brief, to make a piece of work with one tool and to reflect upon this in a film, brought into sharper relief how makers talk about making. The pivotal nature of the tool’s role in the making shifted attention to the act of making and the triadic interplay between actor, tool and material. In many of the artists’ accounts the tool assumed a highly agentive and sensitising role. The range of resulting interpretations of the brief seemed to invert the notion that instructional language (in this case the brief) has a clarity or concretion when compared to acts that are typically held to be difficult to describe – such as making. The apparently singular phrase, ‘one tool’ had become a moveable feast of flexible meaning in some of the approaches, a couple perhaps at the very edge of poetics.

A thought-provoking weekend of discussion, leaving many intriguing loose ends and provoking new avenues of future thought and talk.

Pairings II at Stroud.

I have been making some new work with Jane Webb and Alice Kettle as part of the Pairings II project. The postal service seems to have become a shared tool this time. The resulting works will be shown alongside the other participating artists at the Museum in the Park, Stroud as part of the Stroud International Textiles Festival from 28th April to 27th May.

The three of us will be participating at the event’s symposium on the 5th May and I will be talking about my work on the 6th May.

More details and information on tickets can be found here.

New piece

Just finished in the last few weeks. A sideboard for a private client. The piece is predominantly in European oak, about 2 metres long, with a carcase construction of through dovetails and mortice-and-tenon joints and a panelled solid ash back. With drawer-fronts in brown oak, the drawers are dovetailed front and back in maple with solid ash bottoms in traditional slips. The top drawer also has a removable cutlery tray.

The Tool at Hand, Milwaukee.

It was a privilege and a challenge to accept the invitation from Ethan Lasser of the Chipstone Foundation to make work for this show. The brief was to make a piece of work using just one tool. The show opens this week at Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, USA.

The participating artists were asked to make a short film to reflect upon or discuss how they engaged with the project. The films are shown alongside the works,  mine can be seen here:

 

 

There was encouragement to make work within the bounds of our usual disciplines. For a studio furniture maker to work with one tool is quite a challenge, it is a field that has developed innumerable specialised tools and devices to control and refine its usual material – wood. The task then was to reverse a couple of hundred years or so of specialisation to redacted generalisation. I adapted a disposable contractor’s saw, a tool often at hand in the basements and sheds of people other than cabinet-makers. This was re-made to split, saw, scrape, shave and shear. The resulting work was as much a result of the tool coming together with the material (a single offcut of oak) than me imparting my will upon either. A discernible shift in the dynamic between tool, material and worker emerged. I chose to work on an extension to my ongoing series, In Our Houses, a project partly born of using a reduced toolkit.