Sunday 14 October 2012

20:20 Print Exchange

I've been away from the blog for a long while - not the best of starts but hopefully I can make my posts a little more regular from now on (I will try to, anyway - provided there's something interesting to report!).

I've been printing today at the West Yorkshire Print Workshop and am quite pleased with the results. The prints are for the 20:20 print exchange, for which artists are asked to produce a new edition of 25 prints on paper size 20cm x 20cm, (paper size). In return each artist receives a box set of 20 randomly selected prints, (including their own print and 19 others). See http://www.hotbedpress.org/exhibitions/2020-print-exchange/ for more info.

Here's my 'hydrangea' print, a three colour acrylic screenprint:

 
It's an edition of 36. To be quite honest, I started with 36 pieces of paper fully expecting some wastage - as long as I got 25 good ones, the others didn't really matter. I'm quite suprised but I actually managed 36 decent attempts at the picture, so have 11 'spares' which don't need to be submitted to the 20:20 exchange. In some the colours are less well registered (lined-up), but this really didn't matter ... in fact it quite enhances the image in some ways.
 
 
Below is my first attempt at a print for 20:20. Sadly I only got 22 of these that were good enough - so near and yet so far ...
 
 
 


Wednesday 15 August 2012

Screenprinting

Printing
I've re-joined the West Yorkshire Print Workshop recently; feels funny being back there, given I worked there for so long and at one time it was almost like a second home! Nice though, and everything reassuringly just as it was. Thanks to Kate Desforges, the technician, for her helpful advice - on my second visit (I've been in twice over the past fortnight, and am booked for next Tuesday too) and it's all starting to make sense to me again.
The screenprints are three colours and ideally would all look like this:


In reality there are about six out of twelve that I'm happy with: not bad considering I'm so out of practice! I'm sure the ratio of good to bad will improve the more I do.

I'm entering work for the 20:20 print exchange, so my next prints will be for that ... possibly a hydrangea drawing just to give myself a different sort of challenge.

HOST
I'm participating in HOST, the Kirklees open studio trail (http://hoststudios.co.uk/bm/artists/sculpture/mark-milnes-2.shtml) again this year. I'll be at Batley Art Gallery on Saturday 8th September, 11am to 4pm, hopefully with some new work to show! In the meantime, there are a couple of showcase exhibitions: one at the Lawrence Batley Theatre (http://www.thelbt.org/Taste-HOST-0) in which I'm showing a 'Spider' sculpture; and one which I helped to hang, at the train station concourse in Huddersfield, in which I'm showing a painting (see below).



Thanks for reading
Mark

Sunday 29 July 2012

Taking work to Hull ...

I'm showing work in an exhibition opening next Saturday - at Studio Eleven in Hull. It's on Humber St in the Fruitmarket area of the city, near the docks. Very pleasantly suprised by how lovely Hull is now: it's been a very long time since I visited and it has changed a lot. The cultural quarter is really vibrant and we met some lovely people in the galleries we visited. The show will be at http://www.studioeleven.co.uk/gallery-info.php; it's alongside an exhibition by Northern Potters 'Made by Hand', which I used to be a member of, funnily enough. Here's the work I'll be showing:





There's a festival (Humber Street Sesh) running alongside the exhibition opening next weekend, so it should be a great day to get across there. 10am to 1am: 100 bands and local artists, live art, real ale bar, pop-up street cinema etc etc! Sounds lively, looking forward to it. More at http://www.facebook.com/HumberStreetSesh.



PS: this is the gallery -




Wednesday 25 July 2012

Photographs of two new pieces

The photos aren't great but should give a reasonable idea of the new pieces. Simple plywood constructions, painted. Clearly reflective of the influence of Ben Nicholson, and also of the kind of hand made construction often visible in much early to mid twentieth century artwork: the artist-made frame edgings, painted rather than industrially coated; the visible paintbrush marks and nail heads which make apparent the underlying construction of the object. Ultimately they're simple little bits of diy: but constructed with care and much attention to composition. I might do a few more ...



Sunday 22 July 2012

New artwork and a new blog ...

It's been a productive few weeks and since there seems to be plenty of new work appearing it seemed sensible to start a blog, linked (eventually) to my website. This way, images of new work can be uploaded as it is completed and I'll have a good record to look back on, detailing what I created and when. Or at least that is the theory ... we'll see how much writing I actually manage to do, I suspect it'll be all or nothing like the work itself!

Anyway, to start with there are some new(ish) steel sculptures: I say newish because the bulk of the work was done at the back end of last year. They've spent a long while in the garage whilst I mulled over how to complete them; two sculptures eventually became one with a few quick welds, and all have now been painted white which will help to emphasise the importance of light and shadow when in a 'white cube' gallery space.

Spiders I & II

The sculptures were never intended as spiders in any representational sense. However, that's how my daughter saw them and the name has stayed. It's as good a description as I could have come up with.

Spiders III

Aside from the sculptural work, I've recently pulled out some other bits and pieces which have been awaiting completion for a long while. There are some paintings which I never quite got on with: I couldn't ever figure out what was wrong with them, but asked my partner Laura who suggested just flipping them over. It worked, I think - much happier with them now. Simple things, eh?!




A New Beginning III (top)
A New Beginning IV (bottom)

I like the vertical composition and the complexity of the overlapping strings. They aren't quite in tune with the most recent of my artwork, but revisiting older work occasionally is useful. I'm currently showing a small selection of artwork at Batley Art Gallery and putting this work together has really prompted me to reconsider my work and start to investigate a lot of different avenues of artistic thinking. Eventually I'll hone things down to a very specific area of exploration, but for the meanwhile it's suiting me to keep things broad.



Shed Piece I (Enclosure)

Shed Piece I is the first in a planned series of sculptures utilising pieces of scrap steel that we came across in my late Grandad's shed. There's plenty of interesting shapes to make a fairly large set of works along these lines. I enjoyed the simple act of assembly: like creating a collage, it's all about the quality of the source material and the way this is combined.


Untitled (relief)

Finally, there is a series of reliefs and a set of paintings on the go ... I completed three of the reliefs today, which are simple panels - with holes cut into them - painted, stacked and fixed from the reverse. They relate to a series of works made back in 2006, from which I had some leftovers hanging around in a box. The original series was pure white, and I'd always thought about doing some smaller ones with colour. Here they are ... I will post more pictures when I've taken some.

So, on to exhibitions: I'll be showing some of this work in the near future at HOST (www.hoststudios.co.uk) 8th/9th September - with related exhibitions at LBT and Huddersfield Railway Station throughout August/early September. And I'll have work at Studio Eleven in Hull from 4th August onwards (http://www.studioeleven.co.uk/gallery-info.php)
and at North Light Gallery in Huddersfield during September (http://www.northlightgallery.org.uk/). After that there's a Yorkshire Sculptors Group show in Scarborough. More details about all of this later, on this blog (if I manage to keep up to it!).

And lastly, there's always more work to view at http://www.axisweb.org/seCVWK.aspx?ARTISTID=4244 (some uploaded today!).

Thanks for reading
Mark