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Contemporary
Visual Arts Network
East Midlands

Celebrating and Supporting Visual Arts in the East Midlands

Contemporary
Visual Arts Network
East Midlands

Celebrating and Supporting Visual Arts in the East Midlands

Announcements

Digital Dialogues are conversations convened by CVAN EM with artists, curators, producers and others with a connection to our programme. They continue on 6th July, 3.30am-4.30pm with Andrea Hadley-Johnson, Artistic Programme Manager at the National Justice Museum, in conversation with Northampton-based artist Sally Sheinman. Register to join us.

Our It Takes A Region to Raise An Artist events which were cut short due to COVID-19 are going online! To hear about the research into the East Midlands’ visual arts sector and the recommendations made to support its development, register to join us.

Browse our regularly updated COVID-19-related resources, guidance and commentary.

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cvaneastmidlands

Hi...I promised monsters and here they are ...

Hi...I promised monsters and here they are ♥️.

Hi...I promised monsters and here they are ♥️...hybrids and creatures have always fascinated me... my favourite books were always the grislier versions of fairy tales and a series of books illustrated by Robin Jacques really fired my imagination. (See the skin shedding monster in the photo roll).
I had a wonderful opportunity to make monsters to illustrate a book for an amazing writer and artist @reinasalt and I turned to my childhood fears and thrills coupled with a deep love of traditional Victorian etchings. I created a series of cut paper work sometimes fused with printed and collaged backgrounds. They were tangled, hot, terrifying and unsettling. I never felt they left me.

At Compton Verney I revisited them, responding to the 'Curious Beasts' in the adjoining gallery. They crept out and became these clean cut, calm Things that tried to fool you into thinking they were real. They existed and asserted themselves and expressed an alternate reality uncomfortably squirming beneath the skin. I used the innate authority of traditional etchings and Illustrations to forge these new forms.

I keep making them and they peep slyly, tripping out of sight, unexpected and gleeful. They comfort me.

I also love the work of #kikismith #louisebourgeois
@annettemessager and @m_hanselaar for their ability to transform, reimagine and knit personal history to myth, storytelling but at once disturb and seduce.

Tomorrow I will share my love of book forms and give you all a free 'recipe' for a lovely folded form to make yourself.

Sweet dreams and enjoy my monsters ♥️

cvaneastmidlands

Hello there...today I start showing you a few ...

Hello there...today I start showing you a few limi

Hello there...today I start showing you a few liminal beings I made while I was Artist in Residence at Compton Verney for @leicesterprintworkshop

Monsters.

Love them.

For more about this, click this link and see a beautiful film made by the amazing @billnewsinger who is both a delight and an incredible photographer http://www.leicesterprintworkshop.com/printmaking/etching/books_resources/

So, @compton_verney were hosting the British Museum's exhibition "Curious Beasts" and wanted to accompany it with an artist working in a pop up printmaking studio, there to answer questions, do demos and create new work.

Here are a few photos of my space and a shot of my every changing wall of work. I made a series of Sphinx etchings but made them terrifying in a different way from the traditional...these beings were hard, muscular, eyeless horrors far away from the beautiful curled and silken creatures I researched. Their femaleness was not *bosomy*, it lay in a fearsome predatory Motherhood both powerful and without need for validation by others.
I went on to explore many other of these beings including the Minotaur and Harpies.
Tomorrow I will share more monsters from a different project.

My favourite part of the residency was far and away talking to the visitors. They all needed something...advice, technique tips, history...but most frequently, *permission*.

Permission to make
Permission to play
To get it wrong
To 'let' themselves
To be

I like to imagine those conversations have lingered with them as much as they have with me. I take them out and give myself permission too ♥️

#printmaking #etchingart #etching
#britishmuseum #comptonverney #leicesterprintworkshop #artistinresidence #artistsoninstagram #artist

cvaneastmidlands

Hello ♥️

So here are a few of my ...

Hello ♥️ So here are a few of my "FOF" series

Hello ♥️

So here are a few of my "FOF" series of works, shown a few years ago at Attenborough Arts in Leicester. They are etchings with chin colle that were shown on light boxes. I have put one piece up twice to show the difference in the print with light behind it.

I wanted this work to be ethereal, hovering, gleaming and revealing its beauty amidst the tangle and complication of its surroundings. I presented these intense prints in a calm, cool almost forensic way, allowing the viewer to get close to what had been abject, lost and transient objects found on the floor on my many travels.

Using found papers and ephemera as chin colle (a collage technique where the print is on top of the additional paper) I was matching like with like and playing with colour and form to echo and reflect my belief in the beauty of the lost, the found and the forgotten.

My recommendation for the day if you like etching is to check out @clarephelanprintmaker @emmafitzpatrickart @squonkink and @desforgery @rachelduckhouse all of whom are brave, daring and hugely talented.

cvaneastmidlands

Hello there ♥️

Another opportunity to...

Hello there ♥️ Another opportunity to talk to

Hello there ♥️

Another opportunity to talk to you and straight away I want to send you all friendly zaps. It's Been A Day,huh?

Okay so I said I would show you my studio and here it is. Do not judge me too harshly, please. It is a total contrast to my outcomes that I always work in chaos. I enjoy presenting very cool toned and contemplative work but it seems to be born of mess, struggle and confusion. Along the way you will see the work of some of my favourite fellow artists @speaking_in_rainbows @cappysuecreations and @ash_kc @janeormes @redplatepress

I admire @hattybuchanan for her extreme precision and deliciously cool workspace but mine appears to reveal an entirely different aesthetic / process. I would like to nod to @desforgery who is very good at Making It Happen too and prioritises her workspace however that can work.

I gather together, collect, crave and gloat then systemise my findings and find meaning. This involves a lot of hoarding (sometimes years worth) and handling of things...hence the pictures here. Once I sort and decide I then offer back to the viewer my findings. You are invited to see my point of view but free of the mess and viscerality of the source material. I will show you two series of works tomorrow that amply display this way of working.

In one form or another I have always had a studio space...even that's not what I have called it or felt entitled to describe it as. I loved having a space in @leicesterprintworkshop and it gave me a peace and wholeness during a part of my life that was hard and without time to make work. Just knowing my things were held, kept safe and *there* when I needed them kept my mental health in one piece. I imagine you too defend and protect a small piece of ground for you to work. Even a temporary table top, tray, spare room, boxes under a bed...whatever. Enjoy it, hold it dear, it is important.

This post has been a little emotional but it's not every day I let people see my little patch of earth where I am most myself. But in today's world it feels like that is just what is needed ♥️

#lpwathome #printstudio

Featured Events and Exhibitions view and add events

Workshop

Isolated Moments

20th March 2020 – 30th September 2020

Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Northants

Exhibition

Take Part – The Mass Isolation Project

25th March 2020 – 25th March 2021

@massisolation/FORMAT International Photography Festival, Derbyshire

Workshop

Isolation Art Mail

19th April 2020 – 31st August 2020

Tracey Meek, Derbyshire

Screening

No Jobs in the Arts #3

30th April 2020 – 1st September 2020

No Jobs in the Arts, Nottinghamshire

Exhibition

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place

30th April 2020 – 31st December 2020

Phoenix Leicester, Leicestershire

Exhibition

30th April 2020 – 31st December 2020

Phoenix Leicester, Leicestershire

Exhibition

30th April 2020 – 31st December 2020

Phoenix Leicester, Leicestershire

Screening

WORK Online Screening

1st May 2020 – 31st December 2020

Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Northants

View and Add Jobs & Opportunities

Last updated 2nd July 2020