gifts

Alice Fox Gifts from the Pavement print textures detail

I’ve been working quietly away at my exhibition for Saltaire Arts Trail.  This time next week the event will be in full swing and the ‘village’ of Saltaire will be buzzing with people of all ages, inspired energy and a plethora of different art experiences for visitors to sample. One of these will be my exhibition Gifts from the Pavement, in one of two pop-up galleries on Victoria Road.

I posted a while ago about finding my ‘gifts’, the result of a kind of ‘beach-combing’ or pavement combing.  Farley & Roberts (see post on Edgelands) refer to this kind of collecting of objects: “This is not beachcombing, but edgecombing” (p154).  Saltaire, a World Heritage Site, can’t really be classed as an edgeland; it’s far too loved and looked after.  However, the discarded or ignored details that I’ve explored here are generally over-looked, so there is an edgelands quality to them.

Alice Fox Gifts from the Pavement layered rust, collagraph and screen print

My collection of ‘combed’ textures, marks and shapes found on the streets of Saltaire has been transformed into a series of long prints or sections of a path, which will form the main part of the exhibition.  As with other recent print-based work these are built up from various layers of different print techniques and texture:  There are rust prints from found metal objects; collagraph prints, some made with found items and some from paper but inspired by the textures and patterns found on the street (drain covers, worked stone etc.); mono-prints using some of the natural items I found (leaves and seed heads); screen prints featuring scraps of found text; hand stitch adding a further layer of texture to the surface and finally a layer of subtle texture, almost like a rubbing, that makes the surface even more pavement-like.  There are areas of intense activity as well as quieter sections.  This reflects the ‘activity’ on the streets: some stretches were rich in points of interest, others much ‘cleaner’.

Alice Fox Gifts from the Pavement Saltaire collagraph and screen print detail

In the run-up to the Arts Trail the Saltaire Tourist Information Centre has some ‘Pavement Pieces’ prints (like little fragments of the main ones) and cards.  I still don’t know exactly how the long prints will actually come together in the exhibition space until I get in there later in the week.  This is slightly nerve-racking but exciting too.  The book I’ve published to go with the exhibition is due for delivery on Monday and until I see it in print I won’t know if it really has worked how I hoped.  Although the work is all made there are unknowns and challenges for the week ahead.

edgelands

Alice Fox train tracks

I’ve really enjoyed reading Edgelands by Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts: a wonderfully playful mix of observations and poetic writing about those in between places that are not quite city, not quite countryside, not quite classifiable as one thing or another.

in their words:

Somewhere in the hollows and spaces between our carefully managed wilderness areas and the creeping, flattening effects of global capitalism, there are still places where an overlooked England truly exists, places where ruderals familiar here since the last ice sheets retreated have found a way to live with each successive wave of new arrivals, places where the city’s dirty secrets are laid bare, and successive human utilities scar the earth or stand cheek by jowl with one another; complicated, unexamined places that thrive on disregard, if we could only put aside our nostalgia for places we’ve never really known and see them afresh.  (p 10)

Edgelands are constantly shifting and being re-developed.  That’s part of what makes them dynamic, hard to pin down.  Some crop up in pockets close to city centres, where waste ground and industrial decline has offered space for the edgelands to self-seed. (p 213)

When I walk to my studio I go along part of the Leeds Liverpool canal, along the back of industrial buildings, offices, under roads, beside railway.  This is a classic example of an edgeland, an un-cared for piece of land that is pretty much left to its own devices, complete with rubbish, graffiti, weeds, ducks, magpies, blackbirds…  And this is the magic, the wildlife that just gets on with things.  The resilience and sheer bravery of some of the plants you find in these scruffy places, pushing up through cracks and flowering away no matter what, brings an enchantment to these walks and the sudden flit of a long-tailed tit can make my day.

Alice Fox pansies in the cracks

In Robert MacFarlane’s The Wild Places, having visited some of the most remote parts of the UK, he comes to recognise the wild all around him in his local landscape.  This is certainly true for me too.  While the call of the coast is never far from my mind and the lure of remoteness is always tempting, it is the wild of my streets and pathways that keeps me engaged with my landscape on a day to day basis.

Further reading: Weeds, Weeds & Wildflowers

Alice Fox stone and growth

installation

Alice Fox Spurn Cloth #2 at The Bowery, Leeds

This week I’ve been creating an installation at The Bowery in Leeds.  This is based on my long Spurn Cloth #2 but sees it displayed in a very different way to the previous venues it has visited.  Rather than hanging vertically the cloth is hung horizontally round half of the gallery room.  I have extended it using collaged rusted and printed paper so that the band of texture and marks forms a complete circle around the space.

Alice Fox Spurn Cloth #2 (extended) at The Bowery, Leeds

The paper is collaged directly onto the wall, something that I was quite nervous about doing. Having completed it, I’m really excited about how it has worked.  There is a kind of freedom to this  sort of site-specific work.  I don’t have to worry about pricing or whether anyone might want to buy it.  It can just be.

Alice Fox Textures of Spurn at The Bowery, Leeds

At the end of the exhibition the paper extension will then be scraped off the wall and will be no longer.  Just as Spurn itself is constantly changing shape, bits being eroded in one area and deposited in another, this installation has seen the original cloth extended, added to, enhanced.  And then, as if by the action of an exceptionally high tide, it will be taken away again.

Alice Fox Textures of Spurn installation at The Bowery, Leeds

My work is showing alongside a beautiful exhibition by Hannah.  The preview is this evening from 6-8pm (all welcome) and the exhibitions run until 5th July.

Industrial Abstract

Alice Fox Fabric of the Building Green Wall & Wall ii

Fabric of the Building gets another airing from this Saturday.  It is showing at The Beetroot Tree, Draycott, Derbyshire as part of Industrial Abstract.  I’m really please to be showing this work again.  It was my final degree project and most of it has been tucked away at home since I graduated.  It includes works on thick industrial felt, paper and digital projection.  There are elements of print, embossing, manipulation, natural dye, and hand stitch. I’m looking forward to installing it in a different space and getting those animated stitches covering a wall in the gallery.

The exhibition is on from 20th April to 8th June and there will be a ‘meet the artist’ event at the gallery on Saturday 4th May.

different space

Alice Fox Spurn Cloth #1 creases catching the light

Each time I take Textures of Spurn to a different venue there are new challenges in presenting the work in a new space.  This is quite an interesting exercise and I learn something new every time.

Alice Fox Spurn Cloth #1 at Gallery 49 exhibition

At Gallery 49 I am sharing the space with other artists. There were decisions to be made about how to allow the work to sit alongside that of others and letting it compliment each other.  Stef’s beautiful botanical monoprints and Margaret’s ceramics tied in beautifully, picking up particularly on the seaweed collagraph elements in my work.

Alice Fox Textures of Spurn with Stef Mitchell prints and Margaret Lawrenson ceramics

Alice Fox Tide Marks books at Gallery 49

The exhibition is on until 27th April.

Alice Fox Bridlington north beach

I took the opportunity to have some time by the sea, both at Bridlington and a little further up the coast at Filey.  Despite the persistent cold weather we’re having there was some beautiful sunshine and it was quite a wrench to tear myself away from the beach.  There were all sorts of intriguing marks in the bright white stones, some almost like stitches.

Alice Fox sketchbook Bridlington north beach Alice Fox stone markings Bridlington north beach Alice Fox stone marks Bridlington north beach

 

concrete textile

Last week I collected my Beach Ghosts prints from Artlink in Hull and took a little time on my way back to say hello to the Humber Estuary.  I walked briefly on the foreshore almost under the north end of the Humber Bridge.  It isn’t the most glamorous foreshore in the world but there is something about that point where land meets water that is captivating whatever the situation.

Alice Fox Humber bank sketch

I took a brisk walk in the sharp wind, making a few quick scribbly sketches before the biting cold took hold of my fingers.

Alice Fox Humber bank concrete textile 2

The bank here has the most intriguing erosion control.  It has a fluid smooth form and was obviously created using a textile basis filled with concrete that was then hardened.  These bulging shapes still have vestiges of their textile origins but are now solid concrete, complete with zips and woven surface texture.  It reminded me of the innovative stuff some textile designers and artists have done integrating concrete in their work, for example here, here and here.

Alice Fox Humber bank concrete textile 1Alice Fox Humber bank concrete textile 3

beneath my feet

Alice Fox pavement marks 18

I’m working on a new project.  It started with my contribution to the Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project (link to my book in the digital library on the right).  I’m now working on an exhibition for the wonderful Saltaire Arts Trail which takes place in my local World Heritage site in May.  I’m taking the ideas I started in my original sketchbook and the resulting work will form an installation as part of the trail around the village.

Alice Fox pavememnt marks 6

Gifts from the Pavement is a collection of textures, marks and shapes found on the streets of Saltaire: Subtle changes in the surface of the pavement; points of interest under foot; discarded objects like a rusty washer or squashed tin can, a dropped ticket or a scrap of something not-quite-discernable.  These marks and shapes are collected and arranged, explored and developed into unconventional prints and displayed in surprising ways for the viewer to follow, discover, explore.

Alice Fox pavement marks 11

So I have been collecting, pavement combing, sweeping the Saltaire streets with my eyes.  I have a whole bunch of wonderful photos of ironmongery, kerb stone marks and ephemera of all sorts.  I also have a box of ‘gifts’ that I collected on my walks, some more beautiful than others (I avoided anything too distasteful – there were many cigarette stubs and a few other unsavoury items!).

lice Fox pavement combing

This week I’ve been sorting through the images and items (some more of them are here) and preparing to print with them.  They’re a strange mix of things: some with a history as long as Titus’s village, some dropped from someone’s pocket on a rushed journey to work a week ago.