In her exhibition ‘Outlines’ her piece ‘View from the train’ shows instances of graffiti being painted over to remove it and how these areas of ‘buffing’ bring a dimension of their own with their variations of texture, colour and layering. In ‘Wall’ she re-creates a surface discovered in Leyton referencing the vivid colours used to cover the original façade and emulates its texture using plaster and sand. This completely contrasts with the muted colours of the expunged wall graffiti in ’View from the train’. Whilst her work is wall mounted it is three dimensional, including materials such as cardboard, plaster and household emulsion paint. These elements are used to stunning effect in the piece ‘Garages’. One of the larger pieces on show references the mouldings on a terrace of houses in Leytonstone High Street; specific observations of the houses show the individual patinas which have developed in each building. Through her work she challenges the viewer to re-examine the way we consider mutations to our immediate surroundings and perhaps to see them not as degrading but as an evolvement of the original structures.

Find more on Gillian Swan http://www.gillianswan.co.uk/

The Stone Space is pleased to present Outlines, an exhibition of work by London based artist Gillian Swan who works with paper and card to produce three dimensional constructions which are then painted. Past work has imagined satellite dishes as constellations of stars and Outlines will include new pieces that focus on ornamental moldings and the accidental embellishment of the built environment resulting from the removal of graffiti.

Outlines by Gillian Swan opens this Thursday 16th  to 26th February at The Stone Space.
Private View: Thursday 16th February 7pm to 9:30pm
www.gillianswan.co.uk

Photography by Martine Charalambou

German born Alke and New Zealander Della have both lived in this country for over 20 years and although they have shown work at the same events this is their first collaborative exhibition. They decided on this venture when having worked together at the Mitre Studios in Walthamstow over the past year they realised that they were both moved and influenced by similar concerns over environmental matters.

Della’s work usually brings art into urban contexts recycling found materials and appropriating traditional techniques into site-specific works.  She says “My works are often by their nature transitory and are themselves eventually recycled and absorbed back into the environment”.  In ‘Spill’ she has produced pieces for indoor display using different mediums including oils, marbling and plastic.

Alke has been inspired by anger at the effects of pollution on the planet and the consequences they have on its population. “I feel that much of my art is motivated by my outrage at man-made environmental disasters as well as the social injustices created by the ‘markets”. In her work she often contrasts present day topics with influences from past eras, for example using imagery of the recent unrests on British streets against Rococo backgrounds.

The exhibition ‘Spill’ at the Stone Space takes its theme from global oil spillages.  Alke, roused by the effects of the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico uses reprints from a collection of the 19th century naturalist, James Audubon’s  ‘Birds of America’,  and paints over them with shapes in textured enamel paint plotting the evolution of the pollution across the Gulf.

Della’s exhibits at ‘Spill’ include ’20 Ships’ spills’, a piece mapping various spillages from ships across the world;  ‘Container Stack’  references container ships and explores the fact that oil and water do not mix;  ‘A memorial’ captures the iridescent beauty of oil and draws on the similarity in its colours to those of the New Zealand Paua shell.

As this fascinating and thought-provoking exhibition shows there is beauty to be found in even the most catastrophic of events.

Find more on the artists at
www.alkeschmidt.com
www.della.eu.com

The Stone Space Gallery would like to invite you to attend the Private View of Spill, an exhibition of works by artists Alke Schmidt and Della Rees.

Della and Alke are interested in exploring contemporary social and environmental issues and debates through the subversive nature of art’s aesthetic dimension.  In the works created for “Spill”, the artists have focused on the disastrous impacts caused by oil spills.  Inspired by the contrast between the long-lasting nature of such events and the typically short-lived media attention, the artists map and document such ‘disappeared’ disasters using a very different aesthetic language from that used in news coverage. The result is a series of small-scale, intriguing and visually attractive pieces that draw the viewer in and invite reflection on very large-scale events.

Spill, an exhibition of works by artists Alke Schmidt and Della Rees opens this Thursday at the Stone Space with a private view on Friday evening from 6:30pm.

Della and Alke are interested in exploring contemporary social and environmental issues and debates through the subversive nature of art’s aesthetic dimension.  In the works created for “Spill”, the artists have focused on the disastrous impacts caused by oil spills.  Inspired by the contrast between the long-lasting nature of such events and the typically short-lived media attention, the artists map and document such ‘disappeared’ disasters using a very different aesthetic language from that used in news coverage. The result is a series of small-scale, intriguing and visually attractive pieces that draw the viewer in and invite reflection on very large-scale events.

Could you tell us a bit about how/when/where you produce you work?
My work is both studio based and site specific. When I’m working with the drawing machines, I tend to be in the studio, having them either roaming the floor, or attached to the walls. As they are made from Lego, their construction has endless possibilities, and so I spend many hours building and experimenting with designs in an attempt to realise an idea. But when I’m working with GPS (Global Positioning Systems), I work outside the studio, carrying a handset with me, recording my journeys to produce cumulative maps, r for more complex projects, getting volunteers to do that for me.

What was the biggest challenge when making this work?
I think it was getting the balance right between producing an installation that is both engaging and playful, but still progresses my investigations into mis-mapping and so informs new work.

You have shown these works before in other venues. How does the experience differ at each showing?
Each time these machines are installed in a gallery, the drawings produced are unique to their environment. Chance and random interference play such a large part in the work that small differences, such as a slightly uneven wall surface, or extremes of room temperature have an effect on the resultant drawings. Additionally, the viewer’s experience of the installation can be very different depending on where they encounter it. For example, in a quiet gallery, the noise from the motors can be a calming, rhythmical, buzz, which is as much a part of the work as the drawings themselves. Whereas, situated in a noisy art fair, the sound from the motors is lost and it is the interaction between the viewers and the machines that becomes part of a shared performance.

What is the longest time you have run a single machine for?
They ran for 5 weeks in the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum as part of ‘The Open West’ exhibition in 2010 and this was probably pushing them to their limit, as the resultant drawings were very heavily overlaid in some places and the pen had almost gone through the paper. For me, the beauty of the drawings lies in seeing the network of lines that intersect and overlay each other and if the installations run for too long, these become lost.

Tell us about your other works using GPS and mapping?
The process of mapping has always fascinated me and, in particular, the use of GPS to locate ourselves in the landscape. So I started walking, whilst carrying a GPS handset, recording my position every second, as longitude, latitude and altitude, which could then be displayed as simple line drawings. These records of my journeys, built up over time into cumulative maps and produced work that was more about the notion of ‘place’ and my relationship to it, rather than a pictorial representation of it – for instance, I walked round structures such as Brighton Pier, following the railings and edged round the fun fair rides. I was hoping to capture within these drawings, something that reflected their making and so experimented further with a project in Cannizaro Park, where I asked volunteers to carry a handset whilst using the park. Between them they walked over 54 miles and produced data that, as a group, mapped almost the entire area in a network of lines, producing a drawing that highlighted the more popular routes and revealed the less explored places. Whilst doing this, it became apparent that the GPS wasn’t as accurate as we thought, with walks being reported through the middle of ponds, and this led to my interest in mis-mapping and the failure of machines. By recording the static position of an object over a period of 20 minutes, GPS will tell you that that object has ‘moved’, showing it in a multitude of positions. This is due to a variety of reasons: the inbuilt inaccuracy of the handset; poor satellite reception; adverse weather conditions and also the effects of pollution. I became interested in finding ways to represent these technical glitches, showing the varying positions in outline form, using ‘lines in space’ to indicate them and this work was shown as part of the exhibition ‘Park 09′ and also led to a residency at the Meantime Space in Cheltenham.

What kind of things inspire you to create art?
I find inspiration in lots of different ways. It could be from the unexpected everyday ‘failures’ that we all encounter – e.g. the vending machine that doesn’t give you the item you asked for, or the journey that has some form of random diversion imposed on it. Or it may be innovative materials or equipment that will excite me – e.g. a new Lego sensor, or heat sensitive paint. Talking to people about my work is also a great source of inspiration as they will always come up with new insights, from the school children who want to interact with the machines via their own Bluetooth devices, to the musician who sees a link between the choreography of the drawing process and the writing of music.

What’s your favourite museum/gallery?
I’m a great fan of the Science Museum in London, especially visiting the galleries that showcase mechanical inventions and engineering – I can spend hours in there, taking notes and sketching from the exhibits.

Which artists are you being influenced by at the moment?
It’s difficult to pinpoint only one, but I was enthralled by the Japanese artist, Chiharu Shiota’s exhibition at The Haunch of Venison in London and her installations felt to me what I imagine it would be like to step inside one of my machine drawings, if they were 3-dimensional! She creates these amazing immersive experiences, comprising of a network of black lines in space, filling the gallery with a web of intersecting threads, allowing a small pathway that you can walk through. The concept of her work is very different from mine, but the method of making fascinates me.

What will be your next project?
I’m currently working on ways of linking my GPS recordings of my walks, to the drawing machines back in the studio. I’m interested in seeing what transpires when the physical walk itself is retraced by a machine and the deviations become apparent. If successful, it should be possible to have people out walking, being tracked by the lego drawing machines in real-time, back at the gallery. This appeals to my sense of humour of employing hi-tech technology in the first instance and then translating it, using incredibly low-tech, ‘Heath-Robinson’ style, pen-on-paper automaton.

‘Dialogue’ is at The Stone Space until Sunday 29th January.

Follow Debbie Locke on Facebook and Twitter (debbie _locke)
www.debbielocke.com

The ‘Dialogue’ exhibition which opened on Thursday 19th of January features 3 wall-based drawing machines which communicate with each other via Bluetooth technology.

Each machine reacts to a ‘message’ passed from the previous machine, and tries to emulate the mark that it has made. This cycle runs continuously, creating documents as evidence of the process.

Based on clinical data alone, these drawings should be identical, however, by adopting, in part, a ‘Heath Robinson’ approach in the mechanism’s assembly, I can challenge the notion of the infallibility of machines and add an element of play and humour to the work.  This hopefully enables the resulting work to escape the confines of its initial deterministic methodology and achieve the unexpected.  I have been actively encouraging the inclusion of chance and random interference in the process, making it possible for me to study the disparity between logical and irrational behaviour.

‘Dialogue’ is a drawing installation comprising of 3 wall-based drawing machines which communicate with each other via Bluetooth technology.  Each machine reacts to a ‘message’ passed from the previous machine, and tries to emulate the mark that it has made. This cycle runs continuously, creating documents as evidence of the process.  Based on clinical data alone, these drawings should be identical, however, by adopting, in part, a ‘Heath Robinson’ approach in the mechanism’s assembly, I can challenge the notion of the infallibility of machines and add an element of play and humour to the work.  This hopefully enables the resulting work to escape the confines of its initial deterministic methodology and achieve the unexpected.  I have been actively encouraging the inclusion of chance and random interference in the process, making it possible for me to study the disparity between logical and irrational behaviour.

Exhibition runs from 19th January to 29th January
Private View: Thursday 19th January 7pm to 9:30

The Stone Space Team