“This month Surface Gallery presents its first in house exhibition of 2010: Surface Dwellers, an impromptu group exhibition showcasing the work of our many surface inhabitants. The exhibition seeks to bring together practitioners from the recently opened studios and our team of devoted gallery volunteers. The exhibition will document a diverse range of activity, from works created within the gallery walls to works created or conceived beyond them.

The exhibition explores notions of ‘encounter’ and ‘participation’ as well as the exchange of thoughts and ideas. The launch of our studios opens up an exciting new space for our organisation, a territory we wish to share and celebrate with the public. Our studio Artists are brought together simply by a need or desire to inhabit a space for creative production, our volunteers in turn are motivated by a desire to challenge themselves and to share an interest or passion in Art. It is this desire that generates exchange, our volunteers and artists are brought together through a shared will to develop and explore, a conception that lies at the very heart of the visual arts, an objective will to participate in culture outside of direct economic benefit.”

Not Yeti Bookshop 2009 (Surface Gallery 2010)

you can read it here; Now What? | Project blogs | Artists talking | a-n.

Some experiments with home-made pin-hole cameras.

“We have not been able to establish paintings general lexicon or grammar – to put the pictures signifiers on one side and its signifieds on the other” – Roland Barthes

Abstraction is a language that cannot be interpreted.  Its syntax and grammar is constantly changing, depending on who is painting and who is reading.  We can use words to describe the physical and formal properties of a painting. Though many critics and writers may try, we cannot communicate the whole experience of seeing it, and we should not attempt to.

Books are vehicles for language, and the bookshop offers the reader a hundred different experiences but these experiences are restricted and pre-determined by the writer. The story is the same no matter who the reader is. By replacing text with form the number of potential experiences is infinite and unpredictable.

Controlling the visual experience is almost impossible; the viewer/reader brings with them their own associations and interpretations which will always stand as obstacles to communication. Accepting this fact leaves the artist free to explore internal dialogues and relationships without the fear of ‘misinterpretation’

I will be taking part in a group exhibition at the Googleheim Gallery (the old bookshop at Chester Uni) next week.

Each participating artist has been given the brief of responding to the space or concept of this building, which used to be a bookshop and will soon be a bookshop again. The show includes painting, photography, sculpture and installation pieces.

6-26 June 2009
Monday – Friday, 10am – 5pm
Googleheim Gallery (The old bookshop)
University of Chester
Parkgate road
Chester

Private viewing: Saturday June 6th 5pm

For more information: 07796546489

Or perhaps not.

anyway im here if you’re interested in what I’m up to.