I’ve spent the past two days in a workshop at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, led by Susie Green an artist and musician from Newcastle. There were fifteen of us, and we worked generally in groups of three to first create a set of prompts, then to create artwork from those prompts, then to create artwork inspire by the first set of artwork and finally to arrange and curate the show.
The workshop started with some homework– on our way to ECA, we were each to note five of ¬†the things around us. The list was:
1. An architectural detail of a building.
2. An outfit/pattern/item of clothing seen on themselves or another.
3. A name of a shop/street name.
4. An overheard conversation/a regular thought had (if no conversations get heard).
5. The feeling of the ground beneath their feet.
We first presented these to the entire group, then we broke into our trios and cut our lists into five separate items. We then mixed and matched those to create a tone-poem or three (some groups kept the five line format,others did not). These again were read to the entire group, and as presented they felt very much like finished works in and of themselves.
Our next step was to work on artwork inspired by the text. First, we moved to another group’s prompts, so we were not using our own original prompts or poems. Then we were provided with a minimal amount of supplies (paper, markers, tape, glue, paints) and started work. Some people used one phrase, others more. The final products were primarily 2-D pieces that mounted on the wall, although there were a could of pieces that extended into space.
We admired each other’s work and then moved again. Now we were to create artwork using someone else’s piece as inspiration, or as a maquette. These works were to be larger, as monumental as we could make them using the supplies at hand. We got more supplies (cardboard, plastic sheeting, a large roll of paper, some wood) and got started.
In this phase, we were working in our trios and trying to come together on one concept, rather than in the previous step where we worked in trios but were not so concerned about integrating with each other’s work. This ended up producing not just large, but some nearly monumental works.
When we were finally finished for the day, we had produced poems, maquettes and finished artworks all within the span of a few hours.
Tuesday we reviewed what we had done the previous day and then spent some time considering how we could present and possibly enhance or finish yesterday’s work. We obtained some lights and mounted them, using some to lit the artwork on one side of the room and the thirdrot project a silhouette using one of Monday’s artworks. ¬†The wall onto which we projected the silhouette was covered with the phrases we had cut up on Monday, while our curatorial ideas (which we had drawn out) were hung on a beam above.
During both days of the workshop, Neil Mulholland was taking photos. Visit the Shift/Work photostream on his Flickr.
I really enjoyed this workshop. Using seemingly mundane and unrelated thoughts as a starting point and joining them to spark inspiration was different than the way I normally work. Then using one artwork to inspire and inform a new one, although not unfamiliar, was done in an unique way. Having to create artwork with extremely limited resources and materials I would never have chosen also made the challenge more interesting.
On Thursday and Friday, another group will be using the same space for a different but related workshop. What we created on Monday and Tuesday could easily be used by them as raw materials or inspiration. On Saturday, we all come back together to view the space again and finish the workshop. I wonder what it will be by then…