Completed Sculpture: 'This S(c)eptic Isle': 'Sentinel 5 (Better Products For A Better Future)'

All Images: 'Sentinel 5 (Better Products For A Better Future)', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes & Tube,
MDF, Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape & French Polish, 132 cm X 60 cm X 60 cm, 2018

Here’s the fifth (and as far as I currently know – the last), of my current ‘Sentinel’ sculptures.  This one’s titled, ‘Sentinel 5 (Better Products For A Better Future)’.  Of course, one should never say never.  However, my current feeling is that, if I were to continue down this particular road in coming months – the basic format might need to evolve a bit further, one way or another.  We’ll see.

This has ended up being the second tallest of the current set, and the most irregular in its formal composition.  The asymmetrical footprint was dictated, in part, by the need to add some additional stability to a relatively slender lower section - but quickly came to feel like a pleasing departure from its somewhat simpler colleagues.  The same is essentially true of the tube and narrow box additions running up the faces of that lower box - and I’m pleased to have integrated them more successfully (and less superficially) than was the case with ‘Sentinel 3’.

The main text on this ‘Sentinel’ reads, “I need a home, I need food, I need...”, but perhaps equally allusive, is the original, and more discrete [1.], printed legend, “Better Products For a Better Future”.  There would seem to be some interface between necessity and desire implied by the conjunction of these two found phrases - alongside an obvious contrast in tone.  The latter seems to feed directly into any ambivalent thoughts I may have about consumerism (of goods and/or propaganda), in connection with these ‘Sentinels’.  I’m always fascinated by the potential of such aspirational marketing tags to pretty much satirise themselves – however ambiguously.  Juxtaposing it with the more existential plaintive, "I need..." might also trigger some debate over what our society can (and can’t) actually provide – should you feel so inclined.

[1.]:  A bit too discrete to show up in these photos, in fact.  It is there - trust me.

Completed Sculpture: 'This S(c)eptic Isle': 'Sentinel 4 (Wrong Way Up)'

'Sentinel 4 (Wrong Way Up)', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Acrylics, Paper Collage,
Adhesive Tape & French Polish, 125 cm X 60 cm X 60 cm, 2018

Regular visitors will know the drill by now,  Essentially, I'm methodically putting up posts about my recently completed work, just now - in advance of next month's 'Visions Of A Free-Floating Island' exhibition, with Shaun Morris and Andrew Smith.

This is the fourth of the 'Sentinel' sculptures, 'Sentinel 4 (Wrong Way Up)'.  If I have slight qualms, in retrospect, about the possibly over-literal formal composition of '3' - I have to say, I'm rather happier with this one.  It seems to relate fairly closely to the larger 'Sentinel 1', and to possibly hit an equable sweet spot between suggesting a human figure, and being a purely formal arrangement of boxes.

I'm also pretty pleased with the large applied text fragment, "I'm a human being, God-dammit! My life has value!", and even with the slightly juvenile juxtaposition of the originally printed "Wrong Way Up" legend, and inverted arrows.  There's something delightfully passive-aggressive about labelling the wrong way up, the right way up (as it were), I feel.  I also think the overall distribution of black, red and white graphics seems to achieve a pleasing balance throughout the entire piece.  I'm even quite pleased with the addition of the "Fragile" packing tape, although its variable adhesive properties make that stuff surprisingly tricky to work with, I have to say.

Just one more of these, plus a couple of other loose ends - to follow shortly...

Forthcoming Exhibition: 'Visions Of A Free-Floating Island' at Surface Gallery, Nottingham

As I've teased in a couple of recent posts, my recent work, along with that of Shaun Morris and Andrew Smith, will go on exhibition at Nottingham's Surface Gallery, in mid September. We're now in a position to start publicising the show properly, so all the essential information you need should be here.

The Opening Event on Friday 14 September is naturally open to anyone who'd like to join us, as indeed, is the Artist Talk we'll be giving on the afternoon of Saturday 22 September.  The more - the merrier, I say.  That second event is a bit of a new one for the three of us - exhibiting together.  Hopefully, it's a valuable opportunity for us to communicate our intentions, thoughts and feelings about the work face to face, with anyone who'd like to put us on the spot.  We'll endeavour to be as coherent as we can.

Hopefully we'll see some of you at one or other of the events.  

Visions of a Free-Floating Island:

An Exhibition of Artworks by Hugh Marwood, Shaun Morris & Andrew Smith

15^th September – 29th September

Opening Night: Friday 14^th September, 19:00-21:00

Surface Gallery is proud to present Visions of a Free-Floating Island, a collaborative exhibition exploring urbanism, confusion, politics, and our reactions to this ever-changing world.

Visions of a Free-Floating Island sees three Midlands-based artists drawing on their everyday experiences and immediate environments to deliver a subjective and bemused ‘State of the Nation Address’. 

Morris and Marwood draw heavily on their immediate urban surroundings, be it through Morris’ melancholy painted streets – haunted by parked vehicles and skips, or Marwood’s assemblages – made from cardboard boxes, broken toys and abandoned fridges, salvaged around his own neighbourhood. Meanwhile, Smith investigates the neuroses and stresses of modern life, in his sculpture, photography and writings, also referring to possible therapies through large ‘coloured-in’ pieces.

These artists offer no glib answers to a society perplexed by Austerity, Brexit, and knee-jerk politics.  They relish the begrimed poetry of contemporary urban streets, and the linkages between external environment, social context, and the mental landscape.

Artist Talk

Saturday 22nd September, 14:00 – 15:00

This is an opportunity to meet the artists and to discuss the work on display. Visitors will also be invited to make their own ‘therapeutic colouring-in’ versions of some of the work in the exhibition

Visions of a Free-Floating Island opens in both the Main Gallery and Project Space. As always, there will be a donations bar with ales from local breweries, Springhead and Pheasantry.

Free Entry: Everyone Welcome

Opening hours

Tuesday to Friday: 12pm - 6pm

Saturday: 11am - 5pm

16 Southwell Road, Nottingham, NG1 1DL

Website: http://www.surfacegallery.org

E-mail: info@surfacegallery.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/surfacegallery

Twitter: @surfacegallery

Instagram: @surfacegallery

Credits:

There's still plenty to do before the show open.  However, it only seems right to thank Jez Kirby and Nathan Dean at Surface Gallery, and Designers, Chris Cowdrill and Miri Bean, for their efforts in getting things this far - and for preparing the publicity material you see before you.  Making the work is one thing, but getting it into the public arena is, as ever - a team effort.

Completed Sculpture: 'This S(c)eptic Isle': 'Sentinel 3 (Thank You For Your Order)' & Forthcoming Exhibition

All Images: 'Sentinel 3 (Thank You For Your Order)', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes & Tube, MDF, Acrylics,
Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape & French Polish, 124 cm X 60 cm X 60 cm, 2018  

Here’s the third of my ‘Sentinel’ sculptures.  The full title here is ‘Sentinel 3 (Thank You For Your Order)’ – the subtitle, this time, being extracted from a label affixed to one of the component boxes.

As with the other ‘Sentinels’ the stacked boxes also bear prominent snippets of text drawn from my ‘Below The Line / Beneath Contempt’ text piece – in this case reading, ‘…….Paradise awaits’, and, ‘Happy days are here again!’.  Those phrases probably suggest some of the counter intuitive, self-deluding optimism prevalent on one side of our current political debate.  However, they may also unintentionally allude to what, I now realise - is the slightly ludicrous aspect of this particular piece.

In truth, I probably hadn’t intended to create something with quite so much of the ‘comedy robot’ aspect about it, when I started – and something about those lateral appendages now appears a bit forced - and even slightly cheesy, to my eye.  Perhaps it’s just indicative of me realising the full potential of these box stacks to imply figures, when originally mocking-up this one – and consequently getting a bit carried away.  The real damage was probably done when I swapped the order of the two uppermost boxes, thus creating a slightly over-literal head/neck combo.  At the time, I probably justified the bent tube and long, angled box as fleshing the whole thing out formally (it did seem to lack a bit of volume without them) –but now I think we can all see I was mostly just 'sticking the arms on'.

Either way, it’s done now – and perhaps I shouldn’t be too po-faced about things like this.  It was always my hope that a strain of the ridiculous should run through my ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’ project, and if ‘Sentinel 3’ hardly counts as an example well-judged absurdism, maybe a bit of good, old-fashioned silliness isn’t wholly to be sniffed at either.  The occasional honest misstep, or lapse of ‘taste’ (whatever that means), is just part of a healthy creative process, I think - and something that far better artists than I might succumb to occasionally.  I’ve come to regard the five existing ‘Sentinels’ as a little community, whilst working on them - the hope being that each one might represent not only an individual voice, but also a slightly different temperament, when exhibited together.  Perhaps, if nothing else, ‘Sentinel 3’ can just find a rôle as the joker of the pack.

On the subject of exhibiting: all this work will actually be exposed to public gaze very soon, in another joint venture with my fellow artist friends, Shaun Morris and AndrewSmith.  The exhibition, next month - at Nottingham’s Surface Gallery, has been a long time coming, but is now creeping up on us pretty rapidly, as my long, hot Summer of blissful sculpting gives way to the inevitable phase of organisational scurrying.  We’ve been a little late in sorting out the publicity material this time, although everything is in hand.  In the absence of a proper visual notification, I can at least include some of the essential details here…

Notification:

The Show, entitled ‘Visions Of A Free-Floating Island’ will run between Saturday 15 September and Saturday 29 September 2018, at Surface Gallery, 16 Southwell Road, Nottingham, NG1 1DL.  There will be an Opening Event, between 7 – 9 pm on Friday 14 September, and an Artist Talk between 2 – 3 pm on Saturday 22 September (to both of which everyone is, naturally, more than welcome).  Full details of the gallery can be found here, but just be aware that they don’t open on Mondays.  I will, of course, put more formal notifications of the show up here, once they're available.

Right - must crack on…