Gallery Oldham Residency
Next month, I’ll be completing a residency at Gallery Oldham and creating work in response to one of their upcoming exhibitions ‘Art Forms in Nature’ which opens in mid-October. The exhibition, touring from the Hayward Gallery, features work by Karl Blossfeldt and I am using his images as inspiration for an installation of weird and wonderful plants made out of paper.
For the second part of the residency, I will be offering drop-in workshops to add to the installation – making oversize blooms out of paper, using lots of different techniques such as origami, paper cutting and folding.
The event and workshops, called Nightshade, are also part of the Manchester Science Festival – there’s lots of different things to see and do during the ten day event – have a look at the programme here.
I’ve been doing some test pieces for the installation, concentrating on creating poisonous, carnivorous and parasitic plant forms.
Clarendon Square Shopping Centre Artwork
It’s a while ago now but over the summer I worked with some brilliant schools to produce drawings, monoprints, collages and paintings all based on the buildings and landmarks of Hyde. Some of the artwork produced can be seen in a previous post here.
I had the humungous task of scanning all the artwork (which totaled over 300 pieces) and then creating a 20 metre long frieze from it all for permanent installation in Clarendon Square Shopping Centre. The final artwork was printed on a matte vinyl and installed by myself and Chris from Sign Solutions Plus. Being 20 metres long and on a corridor wall it was fairly hard to photograph but here are some images of the final artwork.
Cast stone artwork installed
Richard Dawson of Arbarus and myself have finally got the Bromley Farm cast stone artwork installed! Consisting of three ‘totems’, the artwork was designed by young people from Bromley Farm in Congleton and features their artwork and cast hand shapes. The artwork spells out ‘Bromley Farm Community Centre’, with each letter created by taking a subject or item relevant to the area and incorporating this within it’s design. For example, the ‘B’ features a bear’s paw, which comes from a local story regarding a dancing bear.
The young people came up with the idea and created the original lettering in a series of creative workshops over the summer. Molds were then taken from their artwork to turn it into cast-stone panels to fit within the three pillars.
Being A Freelance Artist 