U-Hang residency: Week 3

The pressure was on this week, as I needed to finish my final designs in time to get everything made and set up. I like creating modular work that requires lots of time and patience at the end to get everything in place. There have been a few points this week where I’ve questioned my reluctance to take shortcuts – why print a thousand squares that need sticking on a window individually instead of one big square with the design printed on? It’s made me realise that this stage of the process is important to me – arranging the modules as I go, deciding on the final design there and then and seeing it come together bit by bit – it all feels rewarding. I started the week by getting some samples made – laser-cut card based on the window pattern design, cut-out vinyl with elements of mosaic patterns and printed clear vinyl to ‘colour in’ one of the internal windows.

Playing about with these in the space gave me an idea of what worked best, and the next step was to decide which areas of the building I was going to install work in: the white space above the glazed bricks in the landing, the glazed brick wall in reception and an arched internal window that looks up to the stairs to the landing.

Finally, having decided on the design elements I wanted to make, I needed to draw digital versions of these, ready for cutting and printing. Again, I couldn’t bear to take shortcuts – drawing every single mosaic tile felt important. I use a graphics tablet for drawing, and discovered that the ‘wrong’ way I hold my pen (which I never changed because, despite being told off for it all the way through school, it works…) causes problems on a graphics tablet. So, at the age of 33, I’ve spent a considerable part of my week learning how to hold a pen.

Clutching my pen correctly and with the designs at the printers, I’m now nervously waiting to pick up the final work and get it installed…

U-Hang residency: week 2

More experimenting this week – trying out lots of ideas, knowing that next week I’ll need to start focusing on just one or two concepts. I like this stage of research because I can get lost in what I’m doing without worrying about the result – lots of ‘what if?’ questions and following different paths until they reach their natural end or take me somewhere exciting.

Existing patterns

I spent an afternoon taking photos of the patterns I could find around the building, including deliberate patterns that are part of the decoration and accidental ones formed by years of erosion on the floors, functional elements added more recently and chance placement of other items (mainly confetti and dead flies!). You can see these here.

I often find myself taking loads of photos as part of my research – presenting these nicely is as much about process as it is about them looking pretty. Arranging and categorising mean I have to think carefully about each image – its colours, shapes, textures and forms – before making a decision about where to place it. I feel as if it’s helped me to get to know the building on a different level.

Archives

I spent a day at the Barrow Archive and Local Studies Centre on a tour of their strongroom, where all the records are kept, and looking at old documents relating to the Nan Tait Centre. Seeing the architect’s original plans and drawings was kind of humbling, and it was lovely to see all the hand-drawn decorative detail that was put into even just the titles of the drawings.

Motifs

After some slightly obsessive drawing of a few particular patterns that had caught my eye, I started to reproduce sections of these in card and play around with placement and positioning in the space. There are some rather fine columns built from glazed bricks that I can work on, and these continue throughout the building with more columns and glazed wall sections downstairs. I’m beginning to think about patterns formed from modules that can be combined and arranged in different ways to sweep through the building and lead people upstairs.

Layers

There are lots of opportunities for layering in the space, and I’ve been enjoying piling patterns on top of each other using shadows, reflections, sellotape, rubbings, vinyl and ink and seeing what happens. Because a lot of the patterns come from the window leading and wrought iron (I think!) panels, there are some places where it’s actually quite hard to look at a pattern straight on without looking through another.

Confetti!

The Register Office is based at the Nan Tait Centre, which means people get married there. There’s always little piles of old confetti gathered amongst leaves around the front door, and sometimes these get trodden in to the building itself and end up on the tiled floor somewhere. I love the idea of patterns being brought in from the outside and adding to the existing decoration. I’m not sure if this is something I’ll use, but if not, it’s in the bank for a future project.

Next week: choosing ideas to take forward, getting samples made up and working on final designs (eek!)…

U-hang residency: week 1

I’m spending September doing my first ever artist residency with Art Gene as part of their U-Hang exhibition programme. Based in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, Art Gene is an arts research facility that works with a range of artists, architects, other specialists and communities on ambitious projects that examine and ‘re-vision’ regeneration. It’s inspiring stuff and a real privilege to be working there.

U-hang is a rolling exhibition progamme that brings artwork to the public areas of Art Gene’s building, the Nan Tait Centre, which is shared with local government offices. Artists are invited to ‘engage creatively with our Grade II listed historic building’, which is what I’ll be doing…

The Nan Tait Centre opened on 1903 as the School for Advancement of Science, Arts and Technology, and was later renamed Barrow Technical College. When the college moved in the 1980s the building fell in to disrepair until it was renovated by Art Gene’s founders in 2002. There’s a wealth of original architectural detail, and it’s a pattern-lover’s dream.

I’m one week in, and this first week has been about exploring – the building, my work space, the town. And where to get a three-meat carvery for under a fiver. I’m based in a lovely, open landing space, and I got straight to work creating quick, temporary paper collages around the existing tile detail. It was a good way to get comfortable in the space and start coming up with ideas. Other activities this week have included sketching the elegant curves of the iron bannister panels (I generally work with lines and angles, so curves are a bit of a novelty) and doing rubbings of the tiles and textures of the floors (buying wax crayons was harder that you’d think).

My aim is to create ‘site-specific surface pattern’, which responds to and interacts with the existing pattern and decoration throughout the public areas of the building. I’m working towards an exhibition at the end of the month – not knowing what the final work will look like is equally exciting and scary. I’ll update this next week, by which time a plan should be coming together…