The Open West

Virgile Ittah and Hitomi Kai Yoda, Kumo no ito

These images are all from The Open West, 46 artists work are on display at the Newark Park in Gloucestershire which is close to my parents’ home. So I went to the opening and had a good gander around. The work inside was really amazing, a real rich diverse selection of work across the visuals including some VJing! The fact they had Dr Justin Matshall as guess selector clearly influenced the level of high quality and innovative craft which was on display throughout. I particularly enjoyed Vaughn Horsman's and Cathryn Shilling's work.  I hadn’t heard of Newark Park before so Open West had encouraged me in by displaying some contemporary art inside this old heritage site. The house is beautiful, with immaculate grounds, (including peacocks!) and views of the Cotswolds; wish I had seen it a long time ago.

It was really great to see that they had a fair balance of local, regional, national and international artists represented. They’re also working in partnership with MEANTIME Projects who are based in Cheltenham and supported the artist in resident William Lindley as well as working with schools in rural locations and delivering artist workshops. Having grown up in a very rural area, I found this particularly inspiring. I would have loved the opportunity to learn from an actual practicing artist whilst at school, yet would have properly encouragement me more earlier on instead feeling a little odd that I wasn’t interested in football.

So I’m ending my last post for a while on an arty high. There are loads of great artists work I haven't even mentioned, you'll have to go check it out for yourself. I'm tight up at the moment; I won’t write anything on here now until October as I am in the middle of doing my DISSERATATION. I have been immersed in research and executing questionnaires for the last two months and I had a moment where I realised I had abandon this blog. I have still been out and about; thanks to twitter I do upload the occasional tweet (just to remind myself as much as anything) of the inspiring art that is out there and influencing me.  I can’t believe I’ve almost reached the end of two years at University of Manchester.  I have also uploaded my papers as I have done in the past, which you can see here in case you are thinking of taking on a MA in arts Management; frankly it’s also nice to think that someone else other than the tutors might someday read them.  Till then have a good scroll through some ace works at The Open West!

Artemis Herber  Stems (pictured)

 Jo Davis Pieces of Kennet

Akinori and Miki Ueno thought

Kate MccGwire (just a small example, the bigger pieces are mind blowing, go see them for yourself!)  

Caroline Tattersall Untitled

Peacock, peacocking!

 

 

Beatrice Haines, Urban Coral 

Juila Winter, Parade 

 

 

Vaughn Horseman, Wolfman IV

Sara Wicks, Daisy Petal House

 

 

Kate MccGwire, Heave

 

Won an iPod touch!

 

There was a competition at University of Manchester for the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons building. I’ve been told I was a runner-up and will get a iPod touch! You can see a film of all the entries in a short video here (they even used a quote from me!). 

Anyone could enter within the University, the image was supposed to reflect something of Uni life at Manchester. All my experiences at University have been because of the people I have interacted and learnt from. I wanted to combine something from the people I’ve been working with to produce an image of our shared experiences.

I asked everyone on my course to send me an image of their eye. I figured it’s something we all shared in common, we all have been looking and learning together and I knew I could merge the colours from our iris’ to make something interesting.

So from the images people gave me I chose parts which could go together to form a final image. Everyone gave me something different; some were really good quality, close up images, others were pretty blurred, cast in shadow or just really tiny. I was however, able to use snippets of everyone’s eye and if anything the variety of images just added to the final outcome.

This is a separate picture that shows where each person’s eye is within the image I submitted. We’re going to donate the iPod touch to the course we’re on so students can use the iPodtouch for interviews and taking pictures, it’s a nice little legacy of us while we are on the course. There will be an event later in the year to accept the prize- v. exciting!