Figure Ground residency, water exchange


















I collected water from Hacca's brook near my home, where water flows eventually to The Thames. I am preparing for the Figure Ground residency at the LV21 light vessel and the open day to the public on the 20th April, from 12.00-17.00. uring the next two days, I will be carrying the water with me at all times, in preperation for dispersing it into the Medway at high tide (15.06). Through the action of exchange, carrying, mixing and joining of waters from two sources, I am creating a link between spaces and locations.






View Larger Map


View Larger Map

Iceland, the fractures between and beneath

A friend of mine recently brought me back some volcanic lava back from Iceland and my curiosity was ignited, it was this sense of Iceland being a breathing living underground island. Snaefellsjokull, the Icelandic glacier which conceals the fictional passage to the Centre of the Earth, stimulated Chris Watson's radio 4 sonic project on Iceland.

The sound of ice exhaling, of bubbling water surfacing, Watson calls it earth music, it's like Andrews liver salts carbonated, fizzing. Sigur Ros is interviewed about the way his music interprets the space and threat of Iceland; his music has a sense of opening out, unwinding rising and hovering. Iceland seems to be breathing, unfathomable in it's earth skin, the yawning sea, which snatches moments beneath the lava The inside of caves exude a continuous grumble.

I must go I need to experience that voluminous space, the holes the cracks, the fractures between and beneath.

lava gift, Iceland 2011


an invitation to participate in cracks between the paving stones

Cracks between the paving stones, is an ongoing collection of images, observations and interventions around plants that secure themselves in seemingly impossible places. You are invited to send any images of your actions,writing and discoveries of cracks between the paving stones, which will be added to this ongoing project.

the non-managment of space

edgelands

I am currently reading Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts book Edgelands, its a wonderful poetic book, which explores the edginess of these places. There is nothing nostalgic about edgelands, they are the soft verges strewn with discarded litter along the motorway, the places that appear to belong to nobody. Farley and Symmons really challenge the question of the slippage between rural and urban, finding the lyrical in these landscapes, the motorway hotels, service stations and derelict farms. These areas of land are nameless they are the place on the way to Ikea, to the business park, this terrain, is visible and invisible, they are unlikely to be managed and have a nameless wildness about them. There are 30-40 thousand hectares of these areas, which we shoot through without as much as a second glance.






LV21 light vessel for Figure Ground Residency

My first day of a mini residency on a light ship, LV21 , for Figure Ground, what a day. LV21, is a decomissioned light ship, it has no engine and had to be towed from Swansea, its pillar box red and beautiful. Its a between space because it has lots of voids which take you to spaces down ladders and

through dark spaces. Ladders are the main way of getting in an out. I like the idea of a ship being docked, between histories, living another life beyond its original use, is it an authentic light vessel or something else now?

Amazing bright blue crisp sunshine, a ship to play on all day. To breathe in the space, be challenged by new perspectives from artists with very different practices, managing to find a middle ground to share something of our ideas and thoughts. Space to let things unfold in their own time without pressure, what a luxury. I was working with two artists during the day, we were initially wondering how we would connect, but I found there was more in common than I thought. Finding that a painter moves with their body and inhabits the work much like I do when I try to inhabit a space. Finding artists who like poetry and singing, who are not restricted by medium or the parameters of art practice, who want to go well beyond those boundaries. A glorious and inspiring start to a great project. Why not keep in touch with the project as it is developing at the figure ground blog


20 Artists Commandeer Light Vessel 21 from Spaghetti Weston on Vimeo.


how many words for an alley

Being fascinated by language, I was surprised how many regional words there are for an alley, doing a little research I have found the following names,, depending what part of the country you are located, passage way, cutting, snicket, jennel, ginell, alleyway, jigger, jitty, cut, backway, wynd and twittern. Do post anymore words if you know of any.

A residency on a lightship





images from a residency at The Turbine House in Reading 2010, photo's Hilary Kneale


















I am really chuffed, I have just heard that I have been accepted for a short residency in Kent during March and April, developed by some great colleagues at Figure Ground. It's only a few days but its time to stand back and have a dialogue with other artists. Time to explore ideas and make work by the water on an amazing ship, and follow up my long term interest in water.

Chronicler of the suburbs, Nick Papadimitriou

After my recent fascinating dialogue with painter Deborah Burnstone, who is as interested in roads and highways as me, she suggested I have a look at the work of Nick Papadimitriou. This walker, interpreter, thinker, writer, poet, documentor, mapographer... is fanatical about the study of his home perimeter of the North London suburbs. In a recent newsnight film, we are invited into a world of subterranean suburban rambles. All the arty words of liminal spaces, hinterlands, psychogeography all come up in Nick's work, but you don't hear them. He is not interested in being cool about his work he just does it, in a genuinely honest open way. His attention to the ignored, the aimless openness to anything underfoot, his felt sense of the overlooked is deeply touching and borders on an other-worldliness without referring directly to spirituality. Nick Papadimitriou's new book Scarp, published by Hodder and Stoughton will be available in April 2012.

Blog interview with Deborah Burnstone

night drive, Deborah Burnstone, oil on paper, 16x12", 2008





junction,  Deborah Burnstone, oil & acrylic on canvas, 30x40", 2008



  freeway,  Deborah Burnstone, oil & acrylic on canvas, 36x48 ins, 2009




nightfall A279, Deborah Burnstone, oil & acrylic on canvas, 102 x 76cm, 2010


















Over the last few weeks, I have been having a continuing email dialogue with London based artist Deborah Burnstone. It's been really interesting to hear about Deborah's interest in the anonymous urban, suburban and rural sites that she works with, to create her paintings. Deborah's work has such a resonance for me; its that sense of  unidentified human intervention in the landscape, which we so often take for granted. That between space, that we tend to overlook on the way from our car to the service station, or between the airport and our chosen destination.

The French Anthropologist Marc Augé, describes sites such as hotel rooms, airports, supermarkets and motorways as non-places. As in Deborah's paintings these places could be anywhere, yet have a nowhere quality to them, emptied of the human body, so common place and lacking in identity.

Do look out for Deborah's work at Inside Out, an exhibition of new paintings at West Eleven Gallery in Notting Hill Gate, from Tuesday 22 March - Saturday 27th March, the opening is on Wednesday 23 March from 6-9 pm., why not get along there and meet Deborah to find out more about her work.

Ann: Hi everyone I am interviewing artist Deborah Burnstone, to find out more about her paintings concerning roads. Deborah trained at Goldsmiths, and more recently started painting after an earlier interest in film-making and sculptural installation.

Ann: Hi Deborah what led you to painting, and the subject area of suburbia and urban roads in particular?

Deborah: Hi Ann, I started painting gradually after I left Goldsmiths. I made the commitment to concentrate on painting when I decided I needed to limit the parameters of my practice. I painted mostly abstract work for a time - it was a good way to become familiar with paint. Eventually I became frustrated with working from no reference material which is when I began to paint roads.

Ann: What made you want to limit the parameters of your practice; so many contemporary artists tend to be led by ideas more than the medium they work in? When I left art school and even before I left, I worked mainly with performance because it meant I didn’t have to buy lots of materials and then this type of practice became central to my work.

Deborah: Well I had always secretly wanted to paint, but at art school we were all discouraged from doing so – there was a sense that painting was a tired old-hat medium. After college I got a studio for a while and I thought: ‘Wow have studio, will paint.’ However I didn’t really know that much about painting and for quite a while was a bit lost and casting around really. I continued to shoot video and super 8 film but got completely stuck on a project – a film of people standing by water’s edge.

Later, quite frankly I focused on painting for pragmatic reasons. I had small children and was really limited geographically. I could no longer go wandering around estuaries and beaches or drive up and down roads at dusk and had to limit my art practice to specific times and places. Funnily enough, though, this didn’t in any way seem like a curtailment of freedom – having the chance to do a day’s painting a week (which is what I did when my older son was a toddler and later when my younger son was a baby) was a huge freedom for me – probably what kept me sane. I have found that the reduced parameters are quite liberating because with painting you focus your thinking and imagination on a relatively small area. I also have been finding increasingly that I am returning to many of my old pre-painting concerns and that there are links with many of my earlier ideas, which is quite heartening. Sometimes when you change media it’s hard to see a connection and you feel that perhaps you were a fraud all along. It’s nice to see that you are still being yourself even in a new medium!

Deborah: The subject matter is connected to my earlier practice when I was a student and in the year or two afterwards. I became very interested in light and dark and often used to film at night. For my degree show I made among other things an installation of paper boats painted in luminous paint that were installed in a dark room and momentarily lit up before fading back to darkness. Later on I filmed the Westway at dusk with a video camera attached to the car window. As you drive up onto the flyover the sky and the lights of the cars and buildings are magical. I have also filmed the movement of boats from the deck and from the shore and made a film called The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt about looking and boat journeys, which also featured cars passing on a road as the light fades.

The idea to paint suburbia came out of an exploration of the idea of series and collections. I liked the idea of suburban houses as objects that are more or less the same but which gradually over the years take on the individual stamp of their occupants: the flowers, plants, extensions, new doors. All the things we choose to express our taste and personalities.

The motorways and empty roads evoke loss, transience, the metaphors are very rich. For some strange reason I delight in their banality and yet find them glamorous. Sure that's an oxymoron...? Banal glamour!

Ann: How do you choose which site to paint, how do you find your images to work with, do you go out on field trips?

Deborah: I get a lot of my material from the internet. The pictures I choose from the internet tend to be images / views that are familiar to me from journeys I have made myself. They have a generic quality about them - we have all passed by these stretches of roads at one time or another. I do go on field trips - I particularly like the A13 and the area around Woolwich and the old docks as you get aeroplanes and the river thrown into the equation. Heaven! I also like those scenes in films or TV programmes when the characters or action is moving from one place to another and they are shown driving along a road.

Ann: Following on from this question Deborah, could you name any movies or TV programmes that have informed your work and that readers might find interesting? I guess you are referring to road movies which go back to such films as Easy Rider? It’s interesting because these movies are often quite narrative driven, where does narrative fit for you?

Deborah: I once saw a Wonderland and loved the scenes of council estates at night; I’m also thinking of all those American cop shows where driving along the highway is used as a transition between scenes or to tell the viewer where the next scene is taking place. I like the fact that these scenes are used to keep the narrative itself glued together. In some respects the scenes I paint are like a part of a film that has got separated from the narrative. We actually don’t know what came before and what will happen afterwards

Ann: Your work on roads seems to be trying to capture a moving moment in a still painting. You mention on your website Deborah that you often work from still images, can you talk about how you work?

Deborah: It's pretty straightforward really. I work from photos or print outs and literally sketch out my image onto canvas. In some of the pictures colour becomes a paramount concern and in some the pictures become greatly simplified. I like texture, which is why I often combine acrylic and oil paint in one painting.

Ann: That's interesting that you refer to colour Deborah, because roads bring up a picture in one's head of greyness. But that's perhaps the surface only, as Richard Mabey has pointed out in his book The Unofficial Countryside, roads and motorways are habitats, for animals and plants, born out of human need. Also I noticed in your night paintings of roads you focus on the dazzle of lights, which have a sort of fractured impact, as if you are half closing your eyes and looking into a light.

Deborah: They are grey aren’t they? But there’s always all sorts of other stuff that the grey sets off – fields, pylons, wind turbines, lone trees or clusters of trees, distant hills. I would really like to read the Unofficial Countryside. I love those parts of the roads between roads, which are like tiny areas of countryside, nature taking back its land - for example there’s a great little strip of nature between the M4 and the M40 close to Heathrow.

Ann: What is your interest in roads? There is something in your work about an erasure of time and any many identifying symbols, everything seems pared down?

Deborah: Goodness where do I start?! Thinking about the pictures I am painting at the moment - roads and motorways at night in which the car lights play a prominent role - these pictures seem to evoke that feeling of observing the world in your own head, a solitude you could say. There is something anonymous about these roads but yet something general and common to all of us. The cars are containers of people. There is always a sense of motion, passing through, unexpected and yet familiar and repetitious in roads. Yes I do have a tendency to simplify stuff, pare it down.

Ann: I like your comment on the "feeling of observing the world in your own head, a solitude you could say" can you say a little more about that? When I mentioned about your style of paring things down is that a conscious decision, just wondering how much we do as artists is conscious and how much intuitive or unconscious when we let go of the ego?

Deborah: I wish I could pare down even more! The only thing I know is that when you get too fussy in a piece of work it all starts to unravel. I remember once I was on a yoga holiday in Turkey and told some people I was going to try and visit all these tourist sights. This German guy said to me: ‘Less is more Deborah, less is more.’ I always say this to myself when I get in a muddle with a painting. I do think that when you’re on the move – in a train or even in a car you are in a funny unusual state: you’re dislocated from things and are able to watch and think in a different way. You have to give up moving and stop and watch and just let thoughts come in and out of your mind. Perhaps it’s a bit like meditation, which I’ve never had the discipline to practice.

Ann: There is something about the expanse and distance of roads and yet about the way you work in a way that almost brings nostalgia to the image.


Deborah: Yes I know what you mean - there is a sense of distance, detachment and perhaps of longing, of trying to grasp a passing moment in time.

Ann: Yes I know what you mean Deborah, always beyond reach. I was wondering as I look more at the work, that perhaps you are exploring a sort of dream like in-between space in your work? In addition I was thinking that the cars remind me a little of dinky cars, you know those cars you buy in little boxes, I used to play with them as a child, perhaps that where the sense of nostalgia arose for me?

Deborah: Yes I think there’s something in that. It is about in between-ness. The bit that isn’t part of the story but yet is the story. It’s quite detached but actually it encapsulates everything too. And yes I love toys – I’m not even sure I could paint stuff realistically. I always admire draughtsmen and women and painters who have a dexterity, which makes their work, look super real but at the same time it can sometimes look quite soulless – you can’t reach beneath the super-glossy surface. I saw a great piece of work the other day while trawling around on the web Dave Monaghan. This guy’s work is made using old toy cars.

Ann: I notice there is no interest in the human form in your work, there is anonymity, can you tell me about this?

Deborah: A painter friend recently suggested I try introducing people into the picture. At the moment I have no plans to. The absence of people I hope nevertheless evokes thoughts of a human presence. The car lights are transitory - each passing car denotes a loss, a mystery, an unknown story but a familiar one. I was once quite obsessed with memorials - candles lit to commemorate the dead and Buddhist lanterns and I think these images recall that preoccupation though not intentionally. Funnily enough I would like to make another film which will feature people...

Ann: The removal of people creates a powerful poignant sense of absence; I like that. The film sounds interesting Deborah, I look forward to seeing that.


Deborah: I’ll keep you posted Ann!

Ann: Can you tell us what you are working on at the moment and where we might be able to see your work in the future?

Deborah: I'm working on a series of small paintings of night-time scenes snatched from cars. I would like to make another film soon. I'll be showing the paintings at the West Eleven gallery in Blenheim Crescent London W11, 22-27 March.

Ann: Does West Eleven Gallery have a website, and can anyone interested in the work come along?


Deborah: They do but don’t think it’s up to date. We’re going to do a facebook page and I’ll attach a link.
It may change once I’ve figured out more advanced facebooking!

Ann: Finally, Deborah I wanted to ask you a slightly different question concerning the creative process? I know you have children and a busy life, how do you manage to carve out time for your creative practice and what makes it important in your life, sorry a big question! I am interested in forms of creativity and wondered about your thoughts on this?

Deborah: Good question! I am lucky – I have some time. Never enough but at least I have some. I don’t have to work full time – I just do bits and pieces of editing and writing from home – so I’m very lucky. And our house is very messy! Now both my sons are at school I manage a few hours a day at least 3 or 4 days a week. Someone picks them up from school a couple of days so I get 2 fullish days a week. I am horrible when I don’t get a chance to paint. My other half can usually tell if I’m not painting due to school holidays or domestic duties!

Do contact me if you are interested in an interview or want to comment on Deborah's work. I am very happy to have an ongoing dialogue with any artists or anyone interested in sites and overlooked between spaces.
You have argued that the protection of nature is a cultural project, not a natural project. Why?

Because it involves changing people's values and ideas, and building a politics around those cultural conceptions. Whether what we protect is deep wilderness or an inner-city community garden, from a cultural point of view what we are protecting is a symbol of what nature means to us. This doesn't mean that places are only symbols or pure cultural constructions. The world exists, and yet we experience it through our own ideas. Our politics in particular are built out of those words, ideas, symbols.

wild flowers of the city

These are the most common wild flowers, often called weeds, found in towns and cities in Europe and North America, Bittersweet, Burdock, Canadian fleabane, Charlock, Coltsfoot, Creeping Thistle, Curled Dock, Dandelion, Fat Hen Golden Rod, Greater Plantain, Knotgrass, Meadow Grass Mugwort, Red Clover, Rosebay Willowherb, Rye Grass, Shepherd's Purse,Smooth Sowthistle and Yarrow. Why not look out for them in the coming monthes and send me any spottings of them?


Are you out there on the streets?
















I began this blog sometime ago, I knew I would come back to it and now feel its the right time to continue, I feel excited by the subject area, is anyone else I ask myself? Anybody out there interested in these?

  • roads
  • motorways
  • zebra crossings
  • interventions in public spaces
  • anonymity
  • between time and space
  • the soft estate, roadside verges
  • the growing lack of contact pedestrians have with drivers now we have traffic lights at zebra's
  • lighting
  • hard shoulders
  • road kill
  • tribute to people killed on the road/shrines on roads
  • art in streets and public spaces
I want to find others who are interested or work in these areas, doesn't matter what you do. So if you know anyone who might be interested, pass on the message. It would be great to have a dialogue with you.

Listen to Richard Mabey on Private Passions on radio 4

I turned on the radio today and Richard Mabey the wonderful nature writer was being interviewed about music and his relationship with the dynamic changing environment. You can still hear for the next seven days on the link, well worth a listen.

Mabey is very tuned into the changing landscape, he is no romantic about nature, but has a special attachment to the overlooked areas of nature that we often drive by or dismiss. Private Passions is like a more thoughtful version of Desert Island Discs so might not be everyones cup of tea!!!

Beachcombing the hard shoulder

A scavenger
patrolling the borderlands
for illegal immigrants.
Clearing the litter
and corpses of
insignificant mistakes

Combing the edges
cruising, hovering for a
mere morsel,
a rubber innard,
a bird stapled to the tarmac,
showing off all it's got
for all to see

Beach combing for scraps
tossed from a window
the sound of 90 miles an hour
won't put me off.

At the scene of pile ups
I never fail to beat the cctv cameras,
spills won't be neglected,
as I cruise the corridor of time
cleansing my flight path,
for the forgotten moments

(AR)

The Unofficial Countryside

I am eagerly awaiting a recent book purchase, entitled Weeds: How vagabond plants gatecrashed civilisation and changed the way we think about nature, by Richard Mabey. He is a wonderful writer and advocate for the hidden wildlife and plants of urban spaces.
I have read a number of his books over the years, and what energises me is his interest in the overlooked and underepresented, such as Blackberry brambles and Nettles, apart from free food, nettles are great for the compost heap, make good soup if you pick the nettles when they are young and are great as a rather wishy washy dye.  

Here is an extract from the Unoffical Countryside to wet your appetite.


"In a stetch of canal near my home there was a stell narrow-boat moored for most of the spring and summer. It had been used for dredging and was full of a tangled mass of silt, beer cans and bankside vegetation. No one seemed concerned about moving it and by mid-summer it was like a floating window-box, sprouting sharp green blades of yellow iris and great water grass, bur-marigold and the pink flower-spikes of redleg.


Soil will find its way anywhere and give plants a chance of beginning. It gets blown as dust between the stone in walls, wiped off shoes into the cracks in pavements....


Mabey's work is about the small and insignificant plants which are so important to bio diversity. Since reading his books I have never been bored by the endless tarmac of the motorways I speed down. I always have my eye out for the next tree or escaped plant sprouting from the edge of the hard shoulder.

Tourist Lane

I linked to Improv Everywhere, a group of arists who make work in public spaces. They describe themselves as "causing scenes of chaos and joy in public places". Link here to see Tourist Lane, a video of the artists work in New York; an amusing comparision between the pace tourists walk as opposed to New Yorkers.