Hulme Hippodrome

Managed to tag along to a MMU visit to Hulme Hippodrome yesterday whilst I spent a couple of days back in Manchester. Despite passing the building numerous times, I'd never actually realised what it was. After a bit of ferreting around for information on the internet I had been under the impression there was some sort of restoration grant on the horizon. Visiting the absolute desolation of the place yesterday was heartbreaking, I hope I am wrong but I suspect it has tipped over the point of no return.

Highlights included finding the hatch and tunnel which links the Hippodrome to the nearby Junction Pub for easy access. I think more venues should have tunnels to public houses but perhaps it is for the best that this isn't the case.

More information here, and much nicer photographs too. If you have lots of money and would like to help, details here.

Snow Days and Studios

Having been snowed out of Valle Crucis this week I am Stockport bound. I've moved into a larger studio at Bankley and have been unpacking some of the things I spent the weekend carefully packing in order to take with me to Wales, I will repack them again once the snow's thawed. Strange transitional week.

The Absence of Colour

For the most part colour and my practice have had barely any relationship with each other, I have almost exclusively worked with monotone as an extension of the uncanniness drawn from superstitious objects and the ghost like eeriness of white. Any colour was evidential: sepia toned rust, burnt wood, moss covered and faded in the sun. Nothing too bright. Today I am ordering silk threads in reds, blues, greens and golds inspired by some of the Cistercian manuscripts I've been researching at Valle Crucis, could be a goer.

Brugge Volkskundemuseum

Volkskundemuseum, Bruges

Levvy Nights

Sunset at Levenshulme train station after a quick dash to the studio last week. Funny really I frustratedly worked from home for four years before finally realising how important it was for me to leave the house, and this year I have two studios. What luxury

Gratuitous Abbey Shots & New Friends

Unless you're not on my mailing list, Facebook or Twitter, don't know me in real life or weren't paying attention you may have not already heard me trilling on about how I am going to be artist in residence at a ruined abbey for 6 months. That's right; and it's not just ruined - it's been made, destroyed, remade, destroyed, knocked down, bodged - and is just about the largest physical testament to humanity and the legacy of making that I've had the opportunity to respond to. It's also the longest time I've had to focus on one project since I left the MA, I am thrilled. 

I am researching at the moment but will be fully installed from March and based at Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangollen until mid August. The main brunt of my work there will focus on the authorship of making and presence visible on the building and across the local area, I'm also going to be looking at themes of reduction, destruction and craftsmanship in my work, making temporal installations across the negative spaces around the Abbey site. There's a blog especially for it here: http://airvallecrucis.wordpress.com/

New friends. The animatronic monk, sat below me in the Summerhouse basement, and Lola the Abbey dog, I am in good company.

2012 : The Best Bits

I don't normally do the end of year recaps but in fact I've had a bit of writers block all this year. There was a lot of well needed change which was a bit difficult for me to articulate at the time but as we move forward the least I can do is look back and give 2012 it's dues. Shall we?

The best places I blagged* myself into in 2012..

Still courtesy of the North West Film Archive

Repeated visits to the The North West Film Archive for a project that hasn't happened yet but may do in the new year, and for footage of the old Smithfield Markets for Collecting History in the spring and my residency at the Canal & River Trust offices in October. The residency also involved trips to the Trust's workshops and yards, walking up and down canals, studying bridges and locks, and a hands on visit to the The Waterways Archive at the National Waterways Museum looking at maps, blueprints and technical drawings. I completely ran out of time to use the latter in the 6 weeks of the residency, the shortest ever time frame I have ever had to produce work from new research, but it should make some sort of appearance in the new year.

*not really, I legitimately invited myself but it does still feel like blagging, see the fraud complex mentioned in the Neil Gaiman video below.

Image courtesy Contemporary Art Society. Copyright Joe Plommer.

Canal & River Trust, Apperley Bridge

The best people I met in 2012..

from Eddie Cartwright's research file

Eddie Cartwright, who I met through Collecting History, Welfare Officer for the Greater Manchester Ex-Boxers Association and keen local historian, he lent me his entire folder of research on Manchester's Northern Quarter and the old Smithfield Market and passed on a tonne of anecdotal knowledge. Also, John "Gibbo" Gibbons who left us with loads of information about his family's stall in the old fish market, even if he did stand me up in the end and tell it all to Dena from MCDC instead. Shocking revelation to me this year that I can only be in one place at one time.

The best insight during the Wigan residency came from Steve Bradbury who chauffeured me around to the workshops collecting bits and pieces out of the skips and yards whilst regaling me with a load of technical knowledge. Here I am asking him contrary questions about conservation and repair on a paddle gear base for a lock which has already been repaired years ago, probably something along the lines of... [puts on nasal art voice] which bolt will they copy if they need to replace one? and if this we value the legacy of engineering 100+ years ago then why don't we value the engineering that keeps the canals running today?. As you can see, Steve is patiently demonstrating the bolts to me and telling me what they do whilst I take a photo of his hand.

The best work I made in 2012..

Obviously, it was all superb.
Except this isn't true, I despised some of the work I made this year so the answer to the question is in fact: ..is all on my website. It's been four year since I graduated now and this year I learnt that editing my portfolio, and making mistakes, is a luxury I can afford. I made a new body of work outside of a commission or exhibition deadline and I am very proud of it, there will be more of this in the future and I want to work towards an exhibition next year.

What I learnt about myself and my practice in 2012..

I like working with people, collections, knowledge, objects and new challenges; I do not like working alone, making the same thing, or allowing my practice to revolve around its financial income. Jewellery is a tough old game, I won't miss trying to sell it and there's plenty of people out there that do a much better job of it all. I like making things, I like showing people how to make things, and I am glad I tried it out so that I could know why I don't do it any more.
All of this is positive but I am aware more than ever of the precarious placement of my practice between two markets: craft and art. This was hugely exciting to me when I was a student but after four years of busily putting myself out there and picking up bits and pieces of market reception I have had my confidence knocked. In 2013 I will find my place and get comfortable with it, the borders of things and the cross overs are the most exciting after all.

The best advice I heard all year..

... confirmed what I knew already but needed someone else to tell me to do it. I had a great portfolio session with Creative Industries Trafford at the Castlefield Gallery earlier in the year and my action list read: get a studio, make networks, find collaborators. I ticked all of them off during the rest of the year and next time I will just bloody do it. 

This is also excellent:

Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 from The University of the Arts (Phl) on Vimeo.

The best of the bad..

Includes: negotiating a hostage situation of mis-delivered work with my ex land lady whilst we argued with her about a broken bed base; the lady who emailed me just to say my website was awful because it didn't work on her phone; writing about 18 moaning blog posts which will never see the light of day and boring the poor ol' S.O. with it all instead; attempting to switch on a iMac by waving my hands in front of the apple logo on the front and the accompanying text message from my volunteer which may have just read "haha!" (or I may have invented this for comedic effect) and everyone's favourite: centralised finance systems and increasingly high pitched phone calls to various offices in higher education institutions.

Also, this blog had it's fourth birthday this June so (belated) happy birthday faithful friend. Thanks for reading it, don't have too many sherries tomorrow night and get home safe.

Wrapped 2012

Pieces from 'Wrapped', see the entire series on my website.

Chronology Wigan

Images courtesy Contemporary Art Society. Copyright Joe Plommer.

More images on my website.

Craftsmanship

From last year's Susan Hiller Tate exhibition catalogue: "We have such a strange idea about craftsmanship, and we think that craft has to do with a laboriously acquired skill. That's not exactly right."