Artists Profile

Holly Piper

Peter Dudgeons April 19th

West Brompton, 100 Lillie Road, SW6 7SR

Distancing from Reality, Forced by Reality.

Its space was still an interior but now the interior of the mind, one that knew no bounds in projection or introversion. Symptoms included spatial fear, leading to Paralysis of movement, and temporal fear leading to historical amnesia.

In the space Natasha’s measuring tapes fixed and altered; bounded off the wall sprouting out in various arrangements by conducting a route. As mentioned in her statement the tape measure led from the wall to the floor. This element captivated me I placed the frame on the trestles, beside the direction of the tape on the floor a new component was attained. An interaction was developed, in the procedure. The operation of the tape, calculating the “unfinished” article (chair frame) showcased a stage of the progression that I feel generated a theme (platform) of “craftsmanship” (the working class background) shifting to the domestic environment, which Andrea introduced to the exhibition. Undergoing the transition of progression and completion within the domestic background.

When I was a kid, the workshop was a thought provoking atmosphere & setting, being fascinated by the utensils of the workshop and the banter of my dad’s work piers. Seeing tons of Frames being upholstered and the process of the layers being sown on by hand. Posters of Loved ones, Nude women, Scribbled Crude Jokes, Football slogans and a PlayStation at each workers station and the division between the upholsterers and the cutters.

Now, The work piers who were originally there as a kid have mostly gone yet the odd couple are still there, the atmosphere is still attained, more Posters have been layered on the previous ones but featuring new aged mockery. The upholsterers and the cutters are still divided like naughty school children.

Home.

Andrea Phillips

My practice has always been occupied with urban spaces and it's people, and the energy and psychology behind/within that. I draw heavily on the experiences of my life, the lives of people around me, and underground radical community and history, both in term of politics and music. However, I am also inspired by strange stories I encounter through science fiction and animation. Perhaps the story itself and its journey into the strange in order to get to the crux of something, that sometimes social realism can't, fascinates me. Maybe the only way to underline that reality is stranger than fiction is to strengthen the contrasts of the real, so that it is realer than the news, and possibly more urgent, because it is the state of something not so easily seen, our internal lives.

I was immediately fascinated by Holly Pipers story as she told me about the dudgeons factory that her father had worked at and helped build up over the past 20 years. Also she talked about her relationship to this place she had grown up helping out her dad. It became clear to me how influential this had been to her practice.

I make a lot of work about my world, well because I am me a lot of the time, hehe, and trying to work with digesting my experiences. However, this was exciting because this felt like contributing to an already existing story. For some of the artists involved, like Holly and Natascha, they are very interested in craft and design and both share that as a common background. Since I focus very much on the social, I considered the sofa's made at the dudgeons factory and reflected on them leaving the factory and being dropped in the home. I wanted to capture different characterised expressions occurring on a sofa in this domestic setting. I proceeded to draw three people of a roll over paper draping over a cardboard frame, in the hopes of evoking association to a couch. Initially, this was as far as I got with this idea, but after group discussions, we started talking about tv and projections. From there I wanted to try merging a series of moving images (a collection of odd recordings I've taken over the past two years), and bring a sense of "the outside" & "the inside" together. After all is said and done I think the piece is called TV TYM.

Ellie Preston

In my art I question if what we see is real, the difference between what we see in our heads and in objective/subjective reality and finding the space between the two.

I'm interested in capturing people in their own moments, a flash of vulnerability across their faces. Taking freeze shots of the expressions that people hold in each second of their lives.

I use a lot of photography in my work. It's a tool and form of documentation to help me reach my end result. I create narratives and scenes from my photography as for me a piece of work containing people and a narrative is what I find draws me to a piece of work.

I spend my time sketching people normally, while they are pre-occupied with their own state of being, especially among the everyday hustle and bussle of life. People in transit (on public transportation) have captivated me for some time. Everyone today (especially the young) seems to be distracted by the their phones, head phones or a magazine etc. Finding someone who is just distracted by their thoughts in a quiet, human moment is what I look for and what I want to bring across in my paintings.

An artist who has really inspired me would be Edward Hopper 'Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world'

'But slowly i began to use cameras and then think about what it was that as going on. It took me a long time, i mean i actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years.' David Hockney.

Natascha Young

Marcel Duchamp chucked three, one meter lengths of thread onto a black canvas and conserved them with what Herbert Molderings described as 'thin trickle of varnish'. Duchamp was trying to change the way a measurement looked like. This is something that I tried to do at Peter Dudgeons in West London, April 19th. Originally an upholsterers storage unit, the six of us from Chelsea College of Art put on a show, mainly to respond to the space. Or at least that's how I chose to interpret it. 

Armed with four coiled metal tape measures I set to work. There was one major problem in my attempt to question measurements and space. I needed to remove the paint from the tape that had the units of measurement on them. It had taken me six hours to remove less than a meter from a five meter roll. It was beautiful, but there where four of these five meter rolls.

To have the lead like scratchy strip as my indicator, subtly stretching across the wall and crawling along the floor excited me. So I persisted. Time ran away.

I made the decision to wield industrial quantities of paint stripper. Coat upon coat onto the stiffened strip. Forty minutes following (as stated on the packaging) I proceeded to give it one last bash.
To no avail. To over come this, I decided to twist and warp the tape measure as I hammered upholstery tacks into the strips on the graffiti caked wall. I wanted to measure the space by moving from point to point, like A to B to C to D and not A to B , A to C. It became a map. The contrast of the yellow to the wooden walls and scraps of embedded old newspaper cuttings, was in my eyes still successfully indicating and highlighting parts of the space that may have been over looked. 

As far as I know, the tape measures are still there.  

Anwar Talukdar

Time, Control, Sequences, Repetition

My work explores themes of identity through process and action… how something is constructed, the time that it takes, the detail, the process by which an object is made, these all reveal the nature of something in identity, I have always been fascinated by this aspect of looking at or producing work

I find inspiration from things that occur naturally in nature and how they can be mimicked by using these processes, or by artists who’s work reflect them, or by texts I read that relate to them.

This piece of text taken from ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ I believe would be the best way to describe my work:

 “A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things…”

My work is in a constant state of evolution - either in structure or in meaning, something may start as one thing but will invariably end up as something else.

Holly Tighe

My practice predominantly focuses on the domestic, the familiar, with strong influences from gaze theory. Typically taking an aspect of the everyday and presenting it with a more personal, intimate perspective. My work lends itself to many forms, from text to photo documentation and film.

Specifically for the exhibition I chose to focus on the domestic aspects and personal interaction with the sofa at home. Typically, every home has a sofa or some form of arm chair. It is often the first thing one uses to relax when coming home from 'a hard day at work'. When we use our sofas, often whilst watching television, your body unwinds and as a platform for comfort one's actions become more unconscious than aware. The video for the exhibition focuses on these subconscious actions, filming the couple as they are relaxing and watching a film. The camera captures their unconscious gaze at the television and projects it through the lens and on to the viewer in the exhibition space; displaying the subjects relaxed nature from within the home and taking it to a public setting.