Vladimir Arkhipov....more images

Teapot - Viktor Kuzmichoyov, Moscow 1992

Viktor's daughter recounts the story of dropping her mother's favourite teapot and smashing off the handle. She was completely distraught and cried in the corner until her father came home from work. He calmed his tearful daughter and took the teapot to the factory where he worked and fitted it with a new stainless steel handle. Even though her mother deemed it 'Not aesthetically pleasing...' the teapot continued to be used.



Birdcage - Nikolai Kudelin - Moscow 1994

Nikolai's daughter, Nastya, recounts how her father catches songbirds and keeps them in large cages that he makes himself. This little cage is also hand made to carry the birds around. He often sells the birds or gives them as gifts.



Bubble wand - Oleg Petrischev - Perm,1994

Oleg's granddaughter, Marina, tells how he converted this aluminium spoon for her little brother, Dima. Dima was often entertained by their mother, who worked in a theatre, with fairy tales and impressions of beasts and ogres whilst he was fed which made it easy to encourage him. Sometimes however, he would make a terrible fuss and refuse to eat his food. One day his Grandpa came into the room whilst he was being difficult, stirring something in a mug and banging on the side to attract the little boy's attention. Eventually he pulled out the spoon and began to blow bubbles through the hole he had cut in the bowl of the spoon which fascinated the child. It remains one of Dima's favourite things.


Toy house - Nikolai Ruchkin - Ryazan, 1987

Katya, Nikolai's granddaughter remembers that this little house was made for her brother, Grigorii when he was very ill. He had to spend the weekdays with his grandparents because he was too unwell to go to Nursery school. Katya thinks however, that her Grandad really made the house as much for his own pleasure, making her a bigger version later on.

All images taken from 'Home-made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts' Vladimir Arkhipov.

Antique Welsh Quilts and Blankets

Today I visited Jen Jones Antique Quilts near Llanybydder in west Wales. I've been meaning to go for ages. Next year we are showing a major contemporary textile show in the gallery and it's made me want to think about textiles in our local culture. Next Friday Jen's new Welsh Quilt Centre will be opening in Lampeter and I hope to go to the opening...look out for an update!

Vladimir Arkhipov's folk artifacts

Anatoly Yamanov - home-made chair
from Home -Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts

A couple of months ago, I found a book about the collection of Russian artist Vladimir Arkhipov called Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts. The book is a document of a selection from the thousand or so pieces he has collected as part of his project. The objects are made by ordinary people in their day-to-day lives to fulfil a practical necessity. During the collapse of the Soviet Union impoverished people did what people do universally when they need to solve a problem, they adapted the materials at hand to the task. The results are ingenious, resourceful, inventive and unique.

Here is the artist talking about his collection:

"In the Russian language the word for 'creative work' (tvorchestvo) shares a root with the word for "Creator' (Tvorets). The word for 'art' (iskusstvo) shares a root with the word for 'Tempter' (Isskusitel). Formerly, when artists still believed in God, they 'Created'. Today, when most artists do not believe in anything, they make art. There is no creation left in art. So what is an honest artist to do? I have found a partial answer to that question. Since I require a viewer and I am doomed to self-conscious aesthetic reflection, I cannot be absolutely honest and sincere. But I know that every day hundreds of millions of people discover their connection with God in some way when they create. The act of creation has no need of justification. It is self-sufficient. The most interesting visual traces left by creation are those that have not been subject to conscious aesthetic assessment by their creators. All that is required is to find them and present them in a skillful manner. The right of choice is mine. I spent a long time searching for and selecting a modern folk phenomenon (which as yet has no name), as an example: millions of people throughout the world create unique everyday items for themselves. I interview them, take photographs, show their things in exhibitions. In this way, I combine their creative work with my art". P.303

I love this book for many reasons. The objects themselves are wonderful; extraordinary; but so is the documentation. Arkhipov attributes each item with the name and photograph of its 'creator' (unless they have been withheld) and also a story from the maker about the circumstances that brought it into being. The narrative context immediately animates the object and deepens its meanings.

I empathise deeply with Arkhipov's dilemma as an artist, the struggle with 'honesty' for which he has found his expression, the problems of aesthetic irony. I admire his approach greatly but I find my own solutions must involve making.

The chair above was made by Anatoly Yamanov from the Ryazansk region in 1993. His photograph shows a kind faced older man in a check shirt and a flat cap. Sacked without a pension from his job as a plumber he and his wife sold their town flat and moved to a village in the country to live a modest self-sufficient life. "...We bought a small house, but it's got a stove. Without a stove you can't survive the winter. That's the main thing. There was no furniture at all, so I made the most essential things: a table, a bed, some chairs, out of anything I could find lying around". P.276

Arkhipov continues the reach of his project through his Folk Forum website where anyone is free to post examples of hand-made objects.

Claire Coles and Bettina Bereś

Claire Coles table - seen here

Bettina Bereś, Oil on canvas - seen here

I went into my studio today and spent a little time just looking around at all the little things placed as inspiration or saved in boxes. Tucked behind the electric cable on the wall there have been two invitation cards - one from Llantarnam Grange in Cwmbran and one from Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown. They've lived up close there for a year or so talking to one another and in my mind they've fused together. The Bettina Bereś image is not the same as the invitation card - but I've been looking at it today and decided I like it even more.

Both these images have opened up questions in my mind about the function of furniture - especially chairs - and the place they hold in our psyche. I've made a few furniture pieces myself recently to think about it further.

Kathryn Campbell Dodd 'Economic Values 1 & 2' 2009

Agnes's Jacket

Image from the Prinzhorn Collection

A few weeks ago I listened to a Radio 4 Programme, All in the Mind, featuring the American Professor of psychology, Gail A. Hornstein talking about her new book Agnes's Jacket: A Phsychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness. My ears pricked up immediately when I heard Claudia Hammond, the presenter, comment that Tracey Emin had raved over the extraordinary artwork of the book's title.

Agnes Richter was a patient in an asylum near Dresden in Germany during the 1890's, admitted against her will and held for 26 years from the age of 40 to the end of her life. In her former life, before her institutionalisation, she had been a seamstress. The jacket she created is now held in the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg.

This is an extract from Gail A Hornstein's book: "...The felt is frayed, but the course linen underneath looks indestructible. The flared cuffs, fitted bodice, and perfectly formed buttonholes reveal a skilled seamstress at work. But it isn't the jacket's design that mesmerizes every person who enters the room. It's the intricate text that has been embroidered in five colours over practically every inch of the garment. A needle-and-thread narrative unlike any other." (page ix; Introduction) The jacket was issued as part of her hospital uniform, but Agnes picked it apart and reconstructed it. During that process she embroidered her own text into every surface. It is more or less indecipherable, although there are many references to 'ich' i.e. herself.

I was trained as a lettering artist and also have a particular interest in the 'ghost' life and resonance of objects such as clothing and furniture - the powerful legacy of these formerly inhabited things; the presence held in such personal items. So this discovery feels a bit like a missing piece of jigsaw.

Kathryn Campbell Dodd detail from 'The Bone Dice quilt 2009'

Having researched the jacket a little further, I found a blog - Lulu Bird - with lovely images from the author's own visit to the Prinzhorn Collection:




Images from Lulu Bird

Yesterday, I learned about a fellow lettering artist Rosalind Wyatt who has created a body of work called The Stitch Life of Others and the resonances with Agnes's jacket are unmissable.

Image from The Guardian Online

I have thought again about Tracey Emin - I wonder when she first saw the jacket ? Her work is so strongly resonant.

Image from BBC

Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design

Jurgen Bey 'Linen-Cupboard-House' ('Linnenkasthuis') from V&A website

I've just found out about the new show at the V&A in London, Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design...GOT TO GO... I'm reeling a bit because of the correlations with some of the work I've been doing lately, always lovely when things connect.

Until I can get to see it - this image is pinging in my head!

Nick Cave's Soundsuits

Posted at the Jack Shainman Gallery

Every time I look at Nick Cave's work I come to life! I've known about him for a few years, and as soon as I saw these extraordinary pieces, my own work began to change. I've only ever seen his work online, and I'm sure to see them first hand would be a whole new love affair. There's so many references there, and a joyous sense of celebration.

When I was a child (and it still happens now), we had a carnival in our local town - when I say 'carnival' I mean a suburban south London version - sedate and non-participatory! Floats paraded through the streets and past the end of our road ending up in the local park - trucks and flatbeds decked out in tissue paper flowers, and all sorts of crafty attire with be-costumed folk waving out to the onlookers watching from the street. It was an annual ritual to go with my mum and grandma and watch and wave. The local May Queen always had a special float with a little throne and all her handmaidens in pretty matching dresses and flowery crowns. That's my heritage. It's low key but pervasive!

Posted at the Jack Shainman Gallery

Nick Cave occupies the other end of that spectrum with his soundsuits; exploding with movement, revelry, colour; making their own sounds through the extravagant gestures of the inhabitant. They talk about his own heritage and are unequivocally political. The acts of collecting, assembling, sewing, patching together is brilliantly resonant - in that process, these very physical, focused activities, there is a powerful ritual of re-possession.

Posted at the Jack Shainman Gallery

Having only seen the soundsuits in performance online, and mostly as still images, to me they are more like artifacts, and they do work perfectly on this level as well. They become more like museum pieces - bizarre ethnographic exhibits. This museum-like quality in itself becomes politically charged, touching on colonial notions of 'othering'. In that sense these gorgeous costumes constitute a riotous act of reclamation.

Throughout my life my mum has been a way-station for the second hand - our garage was the repository of stuff for a hundred jumble sales. I grew up with re-cycling running in my veins. Nick Cave has rounded up the glory of cast-offs and oddments and brought it to life in a carnival of colour and sound.

Nick Cave video here