There is Freedom in Constraint

Today from 11am Rachel Smith and Helen Frank will be working under a range of constraints as they explore compliance, misrepresentation, and error within any given system.

Helen Frank works within sets of self-imposed mathematically inspired rules. Her particular focus is on the contradictory potential of these artistic constraints. Both hand and mind are players in the system, and so too are the properties of determinism and free will: diligence, disruption, adherence, and errancy. Often the resulting art works are evidence of a slightly absurdist evolution. 

Interruptions around music hall, performance, ghosts, and narrative

Residency Day 6

Jo Ray has been working in the foyer with me today. We have been exploring common interests and improvising, pushing materials around to help make sense of theoretical concepts

Lots of interruptions and interesting conversations around hyphens and the meaning acquired when using compound modifiers as the words connected influence our understanding.

The connective nature of thinking while moving materials in the hand

Knowing in the body and how to express this outwardly

I fight for improvisation, but always with the belief that it is impossible

Rachel Smith will be working all day in the foyer today

from 1pm onwards:

She will be collaborating with Jo Ray on timed diversions to explore the area within a 10-minute radius of the foyer, bringing back fragments of footage and digital images which will provoke the making of further impromptu responses. 

Jo Ray is an artist, researcher, and lecturer based in Sheffield. Her current practice explores encounters with models and sites of model use. Scale play is recurrent in her work, which uses diverse methods in response to spatial and social situations, archives material, and artefacts. She is interested in the potential of spaces where speculation, play and enthusiasm are possible, and the tipping place between emulation and improvisation. During her practice-led doctoral research, Ray has used artistic practice as a means of exploring ‘model-ness’ and modelling in enthusiast and self-organising communities, undertaking residencies in the autonomous township Christiania in Copenhagen, and a model railway enthusiasts club in Sheffield.

In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown

Clee Claire Lee will be joining me today in Jessop West - thinking bout liminal spaces, absence presence drawing and sculpture, connecting ideas between and across our work

come along, interrupt us in the bright sunshine and use wire to help you thinking process

or take a break and sit at the typewriter a while - it remains here after a successful day yesterday