Now C-19 is getting very serious and uni has canceled face-to-face meetings and our JHG show has been cancelled I know have the opportunity to write this to you. So please read and understand with sympathy how the world has been turned upside down; which was made enough already. (as I am sure by the time your reading this, either its all calmed down or you also have your own madness to contend with)
Below is a breakdown of current projects:
Cow Windows - Surrey Heathlands project
Salt Lick - Surrey Heathlands Project
Redefining Elpis - James Hockey
Ephemeral vs Eternal - internal Crit
Surrey Heathlands
I was incredibly daunted by this project. How to put a proposal together? Was there any point, since everyone else is more accomplished than I am. How can my pouring colourful work even feature in the wild? As daunted as I was, I wanted to take on the challenge, because I love to walk. I like to take my kids out walking, I like to see things along my walk and they all seem to need a reason more than just walking. So from that I decided to accept the challenge.
Initially I thought I would be smart, I'd combine my James Hockey Show with the Surrey Heathlands thus cutting down my work. My internal crit could be a test run of for the James Hockey and Ta Da one work there venues. Oh, how naive I was. I had a tutorial session with Ali form Surrey Heathlands and she suggested that my free standing gutter system probably would not withstand the inquisition of the cows. I had no idea the cows were so involved with that artworks. In fact they like to investigate the new objects in their surrounding. This made me think. Why make artwork cow proof, when we can make artwork for the cows?
In the back of my mind I had wanted to make an artwork which was several large glass panels behind which a person could stand and would look different since the glass would be polarised or colours; literally making the visitor view the Heathland in a new way. I wanted the glass to emphasis different aspects of the Heathland, like the heather, the clouds, the trees etc. Combining this with the concept of artwork for the cows I realised there was a conversation about cows being colourblind. After much investigation, there is no definitive opinion on whether they are colour blind or not, but what was certain was they they could differentiate tone. It is possible they only see in variants of grey or may be they can see in colour.
Based on this I bought film gels. These not only change the colour of the environment when looked through but also changed the contrast of the area. Therefore colourblind or not, there would be an opportunity to literally see the world in a different way. If I had these as 30cmx30cm windows which pivoted it would also provide an interactive element to the artwork, engaging people or all ages.
Research for this I have called up many window and glass manufacturers including, Pilkington Glass, Sussex Surrey Windows, Surrey Glazing, Guildford Glass, Saint-Gobain, Enchroma Glass and Sheet Plastics. I finally settled on using film gels due to finance and realistic durability being 4 months.