Completed Live Art Project: 'Time Passages' At Melbourne Festival 2014

'Time Passages', Acrylics & Paper Collage With Picture Frames On Three Joined Panels,
210 cm X 360cm (Overall), 2014.

I spent much of this summer, working on a project that finally reached its culmination the other weekend at Melbourne Festival of Visual & Performing Arts 2014.  Sadly, my activities have yet to go global though; this Melbourne is a small town in Derbyshire, in the British East Midlands, which hosts a surprisingly ambitious programme of events under the Festival banner, over an extended weekend each Autumn.  Numerous exhibitions, workshops, demonstrations and performances are staged in a variety of public buildings, private homes and gardens.  Pleasingly, the town’s location, within easy reach of the cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester, also means that the Festival attracts large numbers of visitors and participating artists, makers and performers each year.

Marketplace, Melbourne, Derbyshire.  (Photographer Unknown).

Alongside the ‘Art Trail’ of individual exhibits scattered around the town is an Open Exhibition that my close friend Suzie regularly helps to coordinate.  For several years the attempt has been to extend this show beyond the customary remit of such an event, both by including a themed ‘Art Café’ within the same venue, and by varying the range of art experiences available to visitors.  Thus it was that, some months ago, over a pub table, we hatched the plan for the live art project that eventually became entitled ‘Time Passages’.

The basis of the piece was a series of three large panels, joined edge to edge and filling an area of wall a little over two metres high by three and a half metres wide.  These were covered in layers of collage and paint, using a variety of paper material, both original and salvaged.  That’s pretty much the preferred M.O. for much of my recent work.  However, it’s never been on this kind of scale before, which partly explains why the work ate up most of the summer break from my school employment.  Stylistically, the panels differed somewhat from much of my other work too, including as they did, illustrative references to themes and a loose brief that were presented to me at the outset.

'Time Passages', In Progress, Saturday Morning, 13 September, 2014.

The challenge was to bridge the theme of ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’ [1.], (which also provided an identifier for the Café), and work produced during several poetry workshops carried out at nearby Calke Abbey in recent months [2.].  After a little thought I chose to connect these somewhat disparate ideas by focusing on the element of Time.  The ‘Alice’ books have obvious classic status, and have been favourites of mine since childhood, so it was no chore to revisit the text.  It soon became evident that the ambiguities of time, in various forms, (not least, subjective Dream Time, and a child’s subjective perception of time), is a major thread running through Carroll’s ‘Wonderland’ tale.  I don’t spend much time hanging around stately homes, generally, but it was easy enough to tap into the idea of the passage of time being revealed through the physical fabric of an historical building.  I was conscious that the link between architectural context and the biographies of previous incumbents had been key within much of the work produced by the visiting writers.  In broad terms, that isn’t too far away from many of the concerns of my own regular work, albeit with a more urban focus.

'Time Passages', In Progress, Sunday Morning, 14 September 2014.

In the event, the panel artwork evolved in a relatively organic and abstract manner, with various motifs alluding to some of the above, including clock faces, numerals, book bindings, hearts and diamonds, and sections of peeling wallpaper, crumbling plaster and exposed brickwork.  Although each board was produced separately, care was taken to ensure they sat together visually, without actually following through.  Once this artwork was completed, a series of assorted empty picture frames, painted red to differentiate them from the background and provide some visual continuity, were attached to the front of the panels.  These were to provide holders for the smaller elements actually produced live over the festival weekend. 

'Time Passages', Left Panel, Completed State

'Time Passages', Central Panel, Completed State.

'Time Passages', Right Panel, Completed State

The project had evolved without much in the way of preparatory drawings, studies, etc. butI was reasonably pleased with it when I saw it completely set up for the first time in Melbourne’s Assembly Rooms.  It was actually gratifying to discover I could pull off something on this scale fairly instinctively and without too much time to backtrack or pause for reflection.  My only major regret was that, due to a debilitating virus towards the end, I effectively lost a couple of weekends’ worth of working time.  Hopefully, only I missed those finishing touches I just didn’t have time to include.  In fact, most artists know it can be useful to have the occasional unmovable deadline or unforeseen event to prevent every last nut and bolt being over-tightened, in any case.

'Time Passages (Old)', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, Inserted Into Found Picture Frame

The pieces produced and installed into the frames, over the weekend, took the form of boards bearing selected passages of text from ‘Alice’ and copies of John Tenniel’s original illustrations.  Over these were stenciled and collaged further phrases and words, mostly homing in on specific references to time and inspired by them.  My original intention had been that festival visitors would join me in producing these live elements, but despite various invitations, the only visitors really inclined to participate were children, a few of whom dawdled long enough to assist with a little strategic glueing and stenciling.  The results were inevitably somewhat ad-hoc, and lacked the degree of finish I’d normally aim for. This was inevitable though, given the time available and I was able to bring the overall piece to some kind of conclusion.  The smallest frames remained unfilled at the end, but without really leaving the overall piece looking badly unfinished.

'Time Passages (While)', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Board, Inserted Into Found Picture Frame

If the overall project unfolded as far more of a live-art situation than a workshop; in retrospect, I think far more structured planning would have been needed for it to really function otherwise.  Having been involved in that kind of thing in the past, my experience is that one’s own role becomes mainly about facilitating the creativity of others.  In this case, I settled for the project being mostly my own work.  I think this was the right decision as many visitors were passing through The Assembly Rooms as just one venue on a list of several within the overall Festival.  Greater public participation may have required advance management of people’s expectations, and a willingness to linger rather longer in one place.

'Time Passages, (Late)', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Board Inserted Into Found Picture Frame

Nevertheless, people were far from disengaged from my activities and, over the two days, I enjoyed numerous conversations with folk keen to find out what it was all about.  It was also gratifying that three of my pre-existing paintings, exhibited alongside ‘Time Passages’, drew a fair amount of attention too.  The general opinion seemed to be that the most recent piece was the most successful, which I’ll take as evidence that I must be doing something right.  In reality, my work may have been slightly out of place alongside the still-lives, landscapes and flower paintings comprising much of the open exhibition.  Plenty of that work was more than competent in execution, however, and I was happy to simply represent a rather different (and possibly unexpected) take on things.  As ever, it felt instructive to see pieces I’ve lived at close quarters in a different context, if only to discover how they might fare out in the world.

'Together 1', Closed 1' & 'Consumed 1', Melbourne Festival Open Exhibition,  September 2014

'Together 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100cm X 100 cm, 2011

I enjoyed my two days of public exposure at Melbourne Festival, even if working on ‘Time Passages’ effectively put everything else on hold for a couple of months.  Actually, this was one of my reasons for agreeing to do it originally.  Although my creative progress has been fairly steady over the last year or eighteen months, the work hasn’t always flowed seamlessly, and I’ve been a bit ambiguous about some of the results.  Working outside my normal comfort zone, and to an agenda not totally my own, was an attempt to shake things up a little, in the hope I’d come out the other side a little more inspired and energised.

'Closed 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2012

'Consumed 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2014

That’s the point I’m at now so, having caught my breath, it’s up to me to ensure that is the case.  The next few months will be all about working towards an exhibition I’m planning with Andrew Smith in Rugby next summer. There’s plenty of stuff to be getting on with, therefore.  My presence at Melbourne Festival marked just the start of a period of more public exposure for my artistic efforts, - something that is obviously set to continue into 2015.  I’ll still be diving into the back bedroom as often as possible, but it seems it’s time for the work to start emerging, blinking into the light, increasingly too.

'Together 1', 'Closed 1' & 'Consumed 1', Melbourne Festival Open Exhibition, September 2014

[1.]:  Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’, London, Macmillan, 1865.

[2.]:  Organised by Expressium Poetics.