Object Matter

Pictures from my MA exhibition

2007-12-02T03:34:00.000-08:00

These pictures show two sculptural works in my MA show - each one also had a film of itself, elsewhere in the space.

Papier Maché Landscape

2007-06-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

This was the beginning of landscape made out of papier-maché, using squared paper. It is finished now, I'll post some pictures of it one of these days...

Leith Hill Tickets

2007-06-18T15:33:00.000-07:00

This the ticket one buys to enter Leith Hill Tower - a victorian viewing tower at the top of Leith Hill in Surrey. They say it's the highest point in the South East of England.

A Playing Card

2007-06-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

I found this playing card in the street. These images show its front and back.

Colour and Black and White

2007-05-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

I'm planning on doing something about they way colour appears in black and white. Different shades of grey and so on.

Edgar Allen Poe...

2007-05-16T03:03:00.000-07:00

"These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random "the rounds of the press." I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier curcumstances, would have been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must not - they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations of mankind."

Diagrams of Paper Sizes

2007-05-16T02:55:00.000-07:00

Some standard sizes of paper. They each fit into the other 2, 4, 8, or 16 times, of course. What happens with even larger sheets of paper? What are they called? A-1, A-2, etc?

Close Up frame and Stereogram Viewer

2007-05-14T04:39:00.000-07:00

Well, this is the viewer I built to show images of the frame suspending the words Close Up.

Mobile

2007-05-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

This is the finished mobile, hanging against a white background (so as to be filmed).

A Piece Of Wire

2007-04-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

In searching the streets for bits of metal, I've started to come accross lengths of wire that have been flattened into curious shapes. If I hadn't been collecting metal, and if I'd had a camera with me, I might have photographed the metal there and then.

http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Brassai

http://expositions.bnf.fr/portraits/grand/067.htm

Pictures On The Wall Of My Studio

2007-04-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

Found Metal Mobile Under Construction

2007-04-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

The horizontal layers of washers are supported by wooden struts. Once it is unveiled and suspended in the air, I will post another photograph of it.

Le Sang d'un Poete

2007-04-21T03:20:00.000-07:00

A short clip from the Blood Of A Poet, by Jean Cocteau. I really think that it sets the standard for avant-garde.

Close Up

2007-04-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

These are reversal images of a wooden frame I built, which holds two sheets of glass, between which are suspended wooden letters that spell out 'Close Up'. The left hand image shows the letters in the frame (and also a green ruler which I placed on the frame for a moment to make it easier to ajust the focus, and then forgot to remove when I took the picture). The other two images are a stereo pair; the slight difference between them should make a three-dimensional stereogram. The next part of the process is to build another frame to hold the images, a viewing-frame. As ever, I will post an image of that as and when it is built.

Phillips Park, East Manchester

2007-04-13T04:25:00.000-07:00

I recently went on a bike ride, ending up in Phillips Park, where I'd never been before. It is attached to an old cemetery. As I pushed my bike around it, I was the only person there, in a vast space of grass and gravestones. There is an amazing, quite ruined chapel there too, that has a bronze plaque commemorating the Boer War set into one of its walls. The rafters of the church are visible from outside, and have plants growing through them, and birds nesting. I'll endeavor to take some photos there next week. The park is the space just to the bottom-right of this photocopy of a map...

there's a picture of the park here: http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ewm/ic3/77.html

Bicycle Wheel Label

2007-04-10T05:08:00.000-07:00

The pink, card, label that came attached to a new bicycle wheel I bought. The label is ripped by the wheel maker, and slipped onto a spoke, and then the rip is sellotaped. The purchaser of the wheels removes it again. I like the shape of the rips a lot.

Tunnock's Caramel Wrapper

2007-04-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

What an amazing wrapper. I'm not sure how long this design has been in use, but probably since the heyday of Peter Blake and Jasper Johns. In case it's not too visible on the scan, and you've never eaten a Tunnock's Milk Chocolate Coated Caramel Wafer Buscuit ("more than 4,000,000 of these biscuits made and sold every week"), and I recommend you do, the wrapper is made of metallic-coated paper. The Tunnocks website (www.tunnock.co.uk) is really beautiful.

La Malediction des Sept Boules Vertes!

2007-04-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

This is an absolutely brilliant series of comic books. Unfortunately, it's hard to find out any information whatsoever about its author, Laurent Parcelier, and as far as I know, he didn't publish anything after this series rather mysteriously ends.

External Tape

2007-04-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

This is a tape recorder I partially disassembled playing a cassette with one side of it's casing broken - the tape itself spools out around nails hammered into the wall. The soundtrack to the video is the recording the cassette recorder made whilst installed thus.

Coffee rings on an envelope

2007-04-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

One of my coffee cups is cracked and broken; it leaves rings wherever it is placed. This is an envelope upon which I placed it at breakfast this morning. This is not a profoundly important thing to have done, but it does produce a pleasant image!

The Polavision film-cassette

2007-04-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

This is the very nice packaging for the Polavision film.

Found bits of metal

2007-04-06T01:21:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of collecting bits of metal found in the street, especially washers. I'd like to assemble them into a mobile, in the spirit of Kenneth Martin's sculptural work. It won't be mathematically derived though, so in a way not at all like Kenneth Martin.

Polavision instruction manual

2007-04-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

In a car-boot-sale I bought a Polavision movie camera - the 8mm instant movie format made by Polaroid. This is its instruction manual, featuring a brilliant drawing of the strange double lamp that fits onto the top of the camera. I haven't used the camera yet, although there was an unused Polavision cartridge that came with it. I would appreciate any information about recent users of out-of-date Polavision filmstock...

I think the drawing is very much in the style of the early XIII comics. There is a mysterious interactive website made by Dargaud about the comic: www.treize.com

The Constructivist Marble Run in action

2007-04-05T05:22:00.000-07:00

This is a documentation video of the severally aforementioned marble run... the video is rather compressed, so I apologise for its poor image quality. It is silent.

One of the two display cabinets in the 'Evidence' exhibition

2007-04-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

This is the right-hand of the two display cabinets in the aforementioned 'Evidence' exhibition. Once again, a part of my 'Constructivist Marble Run' track suspended in midair (by a rather visible piece of invisible thread)

Some images of the exhibition, and the text which describes our various works, is on the Manchester Metropolitan University's website. The address for this is:

www.holdengallery.mmu.ac.uk

Constructivist Marble Run Track Set

2007-03-10T01:41:00.000-08:00

This is a set of track parts from the 'Constructivist Marble Run' I posted images of the installation of previously.

Evidence: exhibition opening this week.

2007-03-10T01:32:00.003-08:00

This exhibition, which opens this tuesday (the 13th) shows the work of my classmates and I; in some traditional museum display cabinets. The notion of Evidence is important both in the Edmund Husserl and the Arthur Conan Doyle senses! Some of the visual influence for the displays come from Josef Sudek's 'Labyrinth' photographs. There is a fascinating essay about Sudek and surrealism here:

www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/publications/ papers/journal3/acrobat_files/Lahoda_article.pdf

(www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk)

I will post some images of the cabinets forthwith.

Fuji bulb for a Super8 projector.

2007-03-10T01:22:00.000-08:00

These bulbs come in wonderful, dated packaging. I'll post a scan of the box one of these days.

2007-03-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

I decided to replace my shoeslaces with some brown string. It looked good, but they snapped in the rain... the photos is a bit grainy as it was taken on a telephone.

2007-02-23T14:40:00.000-08:00

Pages 230 and 231 of the 1963 Heineman edition of 'Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction', by J. D. Salinger. Buddy glass introduces the game of Stoopball, in which the player throws a ball against a wall, with the hope of it bouncing across the street to hit another building's wall, and then touch the ground without being caught by an opposing player. Needless to say, Seymour Glass is a wonderfully talented player.

Parquet Floor

2007-02-22T03:08:00.000-08:00

The wooden blocks that make up the floor of an art gallery. I work in this gallery as an invigilator; so I have plenty of time to look at the floor.

George Leigh Street

2007-02-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

Pictures from George Leigh Street, Manchester. It's just around the corner from St. Peters Church, as well as an old pub building condemned for being built using asbestos.

http://www.ancoatsbpt.co.uk/projects_peters.htm

Wall Relief

2007-02-18T07:06:00.000-08:00

A detail from a wall relief, loosely inspired by the work of Mary Martin. It also functions as a marble run...

Assembly of Doorstops

2007-02-17T12:10:00.000-08:00

I've 'collected' quite a few doorstops from around the art-school building where my studio is. I apologise sincerely to anyone who's looking for them. I've been putting them together in various combinations...

I love the photographs that Ellsworth Kelly took as research for his work.

Information

2007-02-17T11:34:00.000-08:00

This is a photocopied reassembly of one of the images in the final part of the catalogue for the Moma exhibition Information (1970). It's a view from a probe on mars, and an astonishing image. I wonder what kind of unmanned panoramic camera is needed to produce that sort of picture?

An extraordinary lampshade.

2007-02-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

This lampshade is above the dining table in the summer house Selin, on the island of Ramsö, in Sweden. Not only does it have a mind boggling shape, but a curious colour as well.

Removing a section of paint from the wall.

2007-02-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

This is during the filming of a stop-motion animation, in which white paint is removed from a wall.

A marble.

2007-02-17T05:42:00.000-08:00

I like the way that a marble is a lens, a mirror, and a highly visible object in of itself.

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http://akronmarbles.com/

An aerial view of a carpet in my parents house.

2007-02-17T05:29:00.000-08:00

This carpet is thick, and its wool feels almost like straw.

"You see, he told himself, I know how it is. The red parts of the carpet are red-hot lumps of coal. What I must do is this: I must walk all the way along to it to the front door without touching them. If I touch the red I will be burnt. As a matter of fact, I will be burnt up completely. And the black parts of the carpet . . . yes, the black parts are snakes, poisonous snakes, adders mostly, and cobras, thick like tree-trunks round the middle, and if I touch one of them, I'll be bitten and I'll die before tea time." The Wish, by Roald Dahl.

The precipice, the threshhold, De Rooij and De Rijke's Point of Departure:
http://www.secession.at/art/2005_williams-r-r_e.html