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