Projects
July – Rocktronica
I am have been working on bringing an interpretation of Rocktronica (below) a original illustration design by Michael Snowdon that he produced for Baa Bar, to three dimensional life. A fun if unique commission…
Rocktronica – made out of old speakers, recycled stereos, speakers, ducting, metal tubing.
Rocktronica by Michael Snowdon
—————————————————————————————————————–
Wednesday 12th May
Blankpages Liverpool Showcase
Blank Media Collective’s blankpages team descend on Liverpool for one night only for an evening of multimedia performance and interaction featuring Liverpool poets Cate Jacobs and Curtis Watts, and Liverpool artist Jack Welsh. Poetry will combine with site-specific found object installations and moving image work selected from the Blank Media Collective artists’ database. Blankpages Poetry Editor, Baiba Auria, will deliver a rare reading of her poetic works, and there’ll be a short poetry open mic at the top of the evening. Music by DBH and Darren Adcock, Manchester-based acoustic guitarists.
Waiting (2010) Found wood, tape, nails, glue
This is the site specific piece I installed in Leaf. Waiting was propped discreetly in the space near the entrance yet had a large physical presence at over eight feet tall. It was partly inspired by artwork featured in the May Blankpages online magazine. The work was propped on a pillar in the space and emphasis was on the linear dimensions of the piece and tension of the forced wooden pieces on the front.
—————————————————————————————————————–
Proof
Arena Gallery Friday 22 April – Saturday 8 May 2010
The Liverpool Illustrators
Rhonda Davies/Keiron Finnetty/Mary Lundquist/Phillip Marsden/Louise Morgan/Jane Spencer
Proof flyer courtesy of Mary Lundquist
Proof was the last exhibition under my tenure at Arena Gallery. The exhibition featured new work print works by the group including a collaborative mural outside the gallery.
—————————————————————————————————————–
TAXED No.10: Skillmarket
An exchange for practical skills and useful information
A TAXED initiative, supported by a-n The Artists Information Company and A Foundation.
Developed by artists in Liverpool in response to artists’ needs in a challenging environment for their practice, Skillmarket aims to provide artists with a unique opportunity to interact and swap their skills and knowledge, in support of their professional development.
Skillmarket; the 10th event in the TAXED series (Taxed meaning ripped off or stolen in Liverpool slang) taxes Hannah Hurtzig’s ever-changing Mobile Academy. The 11th version was presented at Bluecoat, Liverpool in November 2008 as Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge.
As part of the TAXED group, skillmarket was an ambitious event held at A-Foundation, Liverpool aimed at facilitating discussion and the exchange of ideas and skills via face to face meetings.
—————————————————————————————————————–
‘Collusion‘ – A collaboration between Rich White and Brychan Tudor.
Arena Gallery
Friday 19 March – Saturday 3 April 2010
‘Collusion’ installation view. Photographs courtesy Rich White.
Collusion flyer, Jack Welsh
‘Collusion’ installation view. Photographs courtesy Rich White.
—————————————————————————————————————–
‘a solitary cosmopolitan’ – Justin Eagle
Arena Gallery
Friday 19 February – Saturday 6 March 2010
For the first exhibition of the new year at Arena Gallery, Justin Eagle presented new sculptural and photographic work. It was pleasing to bring an artist of Justin’s caliber to Liverpool for the first time in over ten years.
‘a solitary cosmopolitan’ installation view
The families, the children, the working class- let’s do it. I’m ready!
(Notes to accompany Justin Eagle’s a solitary cosmopolitan)
The title of these notes is taken from Modernism: A New Decade’s opening track; or, alternatively, from The Style Council album that Polydor refused to release. Soul-influenced songs about Thatcherite Britain were one thing; a new Deep House direction was another. Yet time passes and meanings shift – twelve years later the record was deemed ahead of its time (and a digitally remastered version was finally put out on CD).
Justin Eagle’s a solitary cosmopolitan explores similar subject matter (meaning very British notions of culture and class, combined with a sideways take on eighties politics). The exhibition consists of two works, namely The Whisper (a photographic print of a public sculpture intended for a Homebase carpark), and Reconstruction of the Atmosphere (a Modernist-style mobile ‘decorated’ with a motif appropriated from hotel stationary).
Andre Wallace, the man behind the original Whisper, has been undertaking commissions for statues since the 1970s and his work can be seen across Britain – from Salford and Newcastle to London’s Docklands. His public sculptures are, in every sense, made for this – large, recognizable as art objects, and yet completely congruous with their no-style-style surroundings; and likewise the kissing couple were initially designed to merge, only in their case with a contemporary (i.e. capitalist) hotel interior.
‘a solitary cosmopolitan’ poster design, Jack Welsh
When displaced from their corporate surroundings however, their illicit implications become apparent. The whisperers (now smaller and indoors) appear to whisper about the kissing couple; while the kissing couple (now bigger and floating) consciously ignore the whisperers. The altered scale (too small to be Modernist Sculpture, too big to be occasional) creates a feeling that is simultaneously light and disconsolate – what Yeats might term a ‘lonely impulse of delight.’
Paul Weller (meaning a politically orientated suburbanite in immaculate casuals) looks out at us from 1989 every inch the solitary cosmopolitan – but what of his modern day counterpart? When stood in the (currently flat and pastel-coloured) Arena Gallery one is overwhelmed with strange nostalgia – both for a time when The Guardian reader might also have been the Socialist Worker reader; and for when an Italian coffee machine could signify the urbane. A Solitary Cosmopolitan/Modernism: A New Decade. I’d be ready to do it, if only I knew what ‘it’ was.
Susan Finlay, 2010
—————————————————————————————————————–
Wrong Love – A Foundation, Liverpool 13th February 2010
I was commissioned to make a deity to an icon of ‘Wrong Love’ for the one night event at the A Foundation. Taking into account the theme of the event and the anti-traditional vibe of the event, I made a shrine to a true icon of cinema Woody Allen. With his films such as Annie Hall and more recently, his fixation with starlet Scarlett Johanson, Allen seemed to be an ideal candidate for this. Another twist was his dubious relationships and his aging years, the images printed for the event reflecting an unease alongside the DIY nature of the build. All materials were found for this work.
