Saturday 13 March 2010

Promotion

This week I have been learning how to create my own website for my project / business. This will allow me to promote the exhibition and opportunities to artists. I'm also hoping I can incoporporate this blog and have a forum for artists to get involved in debates and discussions.

Watch this space webworld.

Catch Up

So in the last few month's I've been really busy putting all of the work I'd been doing since September into a portfolio, essay and proposal, which concluded the first part of my MA in Arts Management. It was a really useful time for me to collect everything that I had been doing and to quantify where I'm trying to get to.

Since the hand-ins, i must admit, I've been taking it easy. Although, I have put in a funding application to Somerset Vounty Council for £600 and the Arts Council South West have received a draft application, which I have had feedback on. All of which is looking very promising. I have set myself deadlines and I'm really excited about getting this project off the ground.

The project will consist of -
1. A one day residency for visual artists in Somerset to work in collaboration to create a temporary piece of art.
2. A two week exhibition of short art films, which will be placed into a film library. There will be ten films all together and as the audience enters into the space they can decide what film(s) from the library they would like to watch whilst visiting the exhibition.
3. A evening of progress, for artists, arts professionals and communities members to really investigate what is needed and ways forward for the visual arts in Somerset.
4. A month long residency for three artists to create new work in collaboration with the public. The artwork will be placed into a weekend long exhibition.

These events will all take place in Somerset within the months of June, July and August 2010. The aims and objectives of the project is to create a model of practice that will support and increase the level of visual arts being produced and exhibited within the county of Somerset.

Still to be confirmed is the dreaded the space. The space for the day residency (Sharing Lab), is confirmed, but the other elements of the project are not. The choses are (in order of preference) -
1. A contemporary portakabin. This all depeneds on whether the business gets funding this year.
2. The exhibition will tour the county and be a series of outside projections. Obvioulsy this chose id just for the exhibition.
3. A marquee

My dissertation will use the evaluation of the project to investigate the models of practice to support the visual arts in rural settings - comparing Somerset to other rural settings within the UK and Europe.

So, best get started.

If you are interested in any part of the project or my ongoing academic research please don't hesitate to contact me on Context.Arts@googlemail.com

Saturday 9 January 2010

The Trailer to my P401 presentation now taking place on Monday 18th January -

Monday 4 January 2010

MA project - update

The project is coming together well - I've put together a rough budget, ideas about the spaces are starting to work and I've got confirmation from a curator that I've asked to work on the exhibition with me. Over the next few weeks my ideas and thought processes so far will be culminated in the creation of my MA portfolio, my proposals and essays for part 1 of my MA. One thing I'm hoping to have done by mid January is a completion of interviews and research into rural arts, Somerset arts and my project. I'm also planning on using the next month to put together my funding applications for the project so that once my MA part 1 is complete I can start working on setting my project up and managing it.

As I've been putting all of my gathered information together and continuing conversations with fellow professionals in the area of rural arts I started to think about the bigger picture and the business that I'm hoping to set up through my MA. By doing this MA not only have I know got a basic understanding of how to set up a company but I also have a better understanding about the aims for the organisation.

There is a state of unknown future of the arts in Somerset at the moment as the Arts Council South West have commissioned work to look into how the arts are delivered and how they might be brought together  to be more cohesive. As part of my research for my project and business I plan on getting to know this commission better so that I am successful.

I feel that my project is now at a stage where I have collected so many opinions, ideas and inspirations that I can now start putting everything together in order to make it work. The first four months of my MA have been really helpful for me and my practice.

Transferable spaces

Over the Christmas break I have been considering certain practicalities of my project. The main one being how to go about getting a space to use and what kind of space should I be looking to use. The space needs to be secure, accessible, have a supply of heating and electricity, be able to be moved from site to site, can be used to exhibit art in and is not a village hall, caravan, barn or shed. The things that I have been looking into include flat pack spaces that are mainly used as alternative conservatories, detached garages (very shed like), containers and the latest idea that a certain architect gave me, was portacabins.

I've also been thinking about ways in which future projects for the spaces could look at how artists work in communities of Somerset and in collaboration to decorate the outside of the spaces into pieces of public art.

Wednesday 9 December 2009

My MA project - blog number 2 (an update)

Here's just a quick update on the project that I plan on delivering in the next year.

An opportunity for contemporary visual artists living and working in Somerset to come together to share working practice, create dialogue and share concerns and to look at ways to work together on future projects.

A exhibition of contemporary visual arts in a semi-permanent space that will tour Somerset to break down issues of access and provide communities with creative provision. This event will also bring local artists together and will involve a event that invites artists, councilors and arts advocates to share a meal and discuss topics around the project, somerset arts and rural arts in general.

Once the exhibition has taken place the space will be turned into a studio for an artist(s) to use on a long term and to sustain the provision.

This will all take place at the start of the summer in 2010 and once it has taken place the evaluation will go into my dissertation which is still going to be looking at the notions of context dependable art and whether the meaning and engagement of the art changes depending on the space it was made and then shown / toured to.

How do you judge quality?

Within the language that I use to describe my projects aims and objectives I constantly use the word 'quality'. But what do I mean?

As I've mentioned in the blog already, my perception of the visual arts in Somerset as I was growing up was one that thought little to know contemporary conceptual art was being exhibited in the county and I felt the need to look elsewhere to find it. By no means am I suggesting that all contemporary conceptual art is of high 'quality' but it is challenging, provocative and of relevance to British art, if not worldly arts. This is how I define quality within the arts - thought provoking, engaging, pushing the boundaries and raising the level of skill amongst other elements.

This blog could very easily go around in circles and ask questions such as 'what is art?' and as most of us would agree the answer to such questions are opinion based. Therefore is the question of 'what is quality?' opinion based and by me using it to try to define what I'm aiming to do it could conjure a completely different representation to someone else and therefore not be descriptive at all?

So to change the way I describe my aims and objectives I will now be saying that I want to provide space for artists to create and show ground breaking, provocative and engaging contemporary art in semi-permanent spaces in Somerset.