Changing Spaces

A friend of my sent me link to an interesting article in the Guardian by Alexandra Topping. The article looks at the impact of the development of the Olympic Park and its connection to the surrounding area:

An alternative Olympic tour takes in Hackney's art, history and fashions

The article in many ways touches upon what I am trying to achieve in my project. Have a look and see for yourself and please feel free to leave comment on the blog.

Q) Did the other three 3D pieces emerge in the same way as Leaded Tree? 

Yes - all were produced from materials I had found around the industrial area of Walthamstow which connects to the Lee Valley Park. Industrial Landscape.was constructed from an old radiator which was once part of an industrial size fridge....   
   Deconstructed Landscape used corrugated board.around the outer edges and wood chippings in the centre and was framed in an old wooden wine storage box....  ... and A Grey Area was produced by inlaying corrugated board into MDF. All of the works were then painted with acrylic to harmonise them visually and remove them a step further from their original function and appearance.    

Q) It seems that 3D has emerged organically from your painting but did you have any interest in sculpture before conceiving of Changing Spaces or is this a completely new  thing for you? 

Part of my interest in sculpture and 3D artwork does go back a long way to GCSEs at Chiswick Community School in West London in the early 1990s. We had visiting teacher who introduced me to the media of assemblage. Although this was a short-lived introduction it left a strong impression on me although, at that time, the process of creating  the assemblage was often much more appealing that the outcome!

Assemblage was about using found objects and presenting them in their raw state, so when I produced my first 3D artwork in 2010 I used the general ideas of assemblage and added my own style and approach. My aim was to try and strike a balance between the conceptual and the aesthetic. The results off the first group of sculptural  works led me to explore other possibilities. Ironically I found myself go…

As one of the collaborative aspects of Changing Spaces,. artist and writer, Valerie Grove will be conducting an ongoing interview as the project unfolds. Her first question is addressed in this post.

1. Up until this point all of your work has been 2D and all has been painting. Although there have been changes in your painting style over the years this project seems to mark a major shift in your artistic development. How did this move to 3D emerge? 
In 2009 I produced several paintings in which the surfaces were very thickly layered  and the paint was actually applied over other materials such as corrugated card inlaid into MDF. I left parts of the underlying materials exposed which revealed the depth of the layers and actually gave the appearance of 3D sections within the flat surface of the whole work. This was important because it was transitional work which really brought my interest in 3D into focus.

I took this much further in 2010 with four experimental pieces of art  in which I u…