Temple Works Found

Group exhibition October 2009
venue website

There was this TV show when we were little called Fraggle Rock. When the song came on we would dance. There were Fraggles and Doozers - the Fraggles just had a laugh and the Doozers spent all their time working. The Doozers made buildings out of clear plastic.

When I found the clear plastic pieces in the Work Study room (the study of effectiveness in the workplace) I was reminded of this world of workers and bosses and all things Marxist. I was in a hard hat (like a Doozer) in a factory (like a Doozer) being told what to do (like a Doozer) with this clear material ( like a Doozer) but yet I wanted to have fun (like a Fraggle) and I wanted to play (like a Fraggle) and I was enjoying myself (like a Fraggle). It was a strange place to be. I
felt that the only thing I could do was be a Fraggle playing a Doozer. The result of my playing was a maze for a rubber stegosaurus I found earlier.

The second thing I made happened when I went into the office. In the drawers I found headache tablets, a plaster, a sewing kit, a birthday card, a cassette tape, a nail file, some doodling and a few other personal effects. Of all the other trash lying around these small personal effects were
evidence of the people who worked there every day. I wanted to archive these objects because the were so personal. Using paper from the same office to make paper pulp I fossilised these objects to preserve them and keep them in acknowledgement of the people who spent every day at the factory.

Natural Selection

'Natural Selection' at Arts@Trinity October 2009

Confinement and The Sinner

Grandchild with Kiss and Not so White

A group exhibition by members of the Yorkshire Sculptors Group in response to Darwin's Origin of Species.

Born and Bread

At our AGM last year our ever enterprising Barry Midgley (member of Yorkshire Sculptors Group) suggested we take ourselves to the big smoke (i.e. Landan Daalin!)

But we were going to do it the Yorkshire way. Would we make our sculptures form the finest marble? or carve them from the finest ceadarwood? Nope - for us it would be the humble loaf.

Hmm, well after much discussion we agreed to support each other through this challenging process. Each time we met up there were displays of the worlds tiniest loaf, bread which had been genetically spliced, holey bread and no bread but just groans of despair at the failure to be inspired by this more common yet complicated material.

After many months of hmm'ing and haa'ing I was struck with an idea. I would leave my material is the hands of my estranged neighbours - if they responded I would have an object if not I would have work without the object - either way my neighbours were sure to be surprised and hopefully moved in some way by my actions.

I wrote a letter of request for a slice of bread and the year and city of birth and posted it to 30 neighbours.
Everyday I skipped home wishing and hoping not for a cheque or a letter telling me I'd been selected but for a slice of bread. As they stacked in my freezer I felt the joy of being presented with the most valuable gift as each new slice fell through the letter box.

After three weeks I had nine slices. I preserved them and used letraset to apply the names and dates to the slices and filed them as if they were an encyclopedia or collection of reference books.

When the show in London finished I delivered a print to all of the neighbours who I had invited to take part in this project. Their responses ranged from smiles and words of delighted gratitude to folding my print in half and shoving it in their pocket!

Later Terry Hammil took our work to ANTIFREEZE in Manchester where we won best artwork in show - yay to the bread sculptors!!! You can see images of more of the work at the London and Manchester show on the links below.

Received bread, letraset, PVA glue
June 2009
Chelsea Gallery London,
ANTIFREEZE Manchester
ANTIFREEZE blog

I'm Sorry....

I've been resident at Leeds College of Art and Design as part of the AA2A (artists access to art colleges) programme, and I have been developing work from The Fine Art of Rejection which happened in July 2008.

During that project I pulped all the paperwork for a project that did not come to fruition and I ended up making little sculpted sheep from them. They look like this:Whilst at the college I wanted to develop the rejections that the public had submitted at the show last time. For months I have been pouring them through my mind, writing them out rewriting them, printing then in colour, taking some words and highlighting these, but it all seemed to be a waste of time because the material I was working with was much more precious that anything I could do to it. So I left it as it was and scanned the rejections which you can see online here.

Which just left me and the sheep. On an early Spring afternoon in the Lake district the sheep and I went into a friends outdoor studio and had a look through what we had got so far. The materials from the rejections was great but it lacked anything visual, so the sheep and I decide to animate some of the stories. We took lots of photographs that afternoon.

I took these images back to the college and started to work with them in photo shop. I had been speaking with some of my peers at an artist crit session at Project Space Leeds and we talked about children's story books as a way making the whole rejection theme a lot more light hearted. When I would stay with my Nana in Dublin when I was young I'd watch loads of TV because she had extra channels. I loved the Clangers and their beautiful strange world. I thought these images should have some of this other worldliness about them. This then allows them to take on unearthly characters and they can speak and animate the rejections.

I selected some of the statements from the rejections and use these as well as some prints I had made before to creat the final image. My residency was in the print room so I sought advise from the technicians and they suggested a CMYK seperation. That sounded good so I went about doing that. It took time to get everything together but once I got going I was thrilled with the results. I would make 10 of each image and when I had finished I would then select the best based on a criteria of well exectuted, bright, clear, not marked and central on the page.

Although I had a criteria, how it actually happen was this: Look at the first one, now look at the next -better or worse? Next better or worse? And then when it came down to it did the four chose look well together - actually one looked duller so another not so well executed but brighter was selected. That's just how it goes!
It was a coincedence that I happen to have had 36 rejections submitted last July and now I had 36 rejected images so I have named each of these after a rejection.

On 16th April 2009 I will be holding an event as part of the preview for the show of mine and the other three artists work. It will begin at 6pm and finish at 8pm. You will be able to see the selected and rejected artwork, there will be performance from Scott Senogles MMusc and Rus Pearson, and an opportunity for the public to be involved in this piece of work.

Winged at Sacred

What we waste tells us a lot about who we are and what we value. I am interested in the decisions we make about what we keep and what we discard and how these decisions influence us as individuals and how this then is reflected in our society.
For 'Winged' I worked with St Mary’s parish church Mirfield and Bradford Cathedral and asked the congregation to create feathers from their used service sheets to construct the wings. Before installing it here at the Delius Centre for Arts I went to the congreation of the German church and asked them to take part it the making process also.
I am grateful to all who took part and made this artwork possible.

Liquidizer @ The Vault Gallery

"Dissecting, directing and distilling contemporary artists’ attitudes to money."

LIQUIDIZER presents more than a dozen artists’ responses to the theme of money through painting, sculpture, video, photography, text and magazine; on issues from global economic policy to pocket change. (from www.vaultgallery.org)

This work is made from Nigerian naira. Thirty years ago each of these notes would have been worth approximately $400, today they are worth about a dollar fifty.

Four were made in response the Nigerian motto "Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress"

The BIG Decision

Ah Light Night! SO much to see, so much to do! How to choose? Well fear not, SCS were there to help. We traversed the city directed by our giant origami fortune-teller. On our way we handed out handheld versions to help everyone make the most of Night Light’s spectacular opportunities. The public were invited to put their evening in its hands and let serendipity take it’s course.

SCS is a group of three Leeds based visual artists (Rebecca Strain, Larna Campbell and Dawn Sharkey) who have been working collaboratively since receiving a NAN collaboration Bursary. This work has been commissioned by Leeds Visual Art Forum

The Fine Art of Rejection

Video Stills from my residency at 42 New Briggate Gallery, July 08

For full project details see blog

Gleichzeitig 2

Performance installation at Yorkshire Dance (Leeds) by Kathinka Walter. It is based on the idea of her previous work "gleichzeitig" , but this time it involves different artists from various art forms (dancers, musicians, live artists and visual artists) and explores different methods of structured improvisation within this exciting interdisciplinary setting.

The performance was on the 14th August from 1-5 pm. The audience was invited to stay as long as they wanted or return as often as they liked to watch the performance develop.

This work explores the awareness of the linearity of time and focusses on the process of layering. It presents the linear phases of a process as non-linear layers within the performance and preserves their discrete quality so that they can still be perceived as separate elements.

"... I wonder, maybe, if time stacks vertically, and there is no past, present, future, only simultaneous layers of reality. We experience our own reality at a ground level. At a level, time would be elsewhere, we would be elsewhere in time."
(Jeanette Winterson)

performing artists:
- Chemaine Cooke (dancer)
- Vanessa Grasse (dancer)
- Marie Hallager Andersen (dancer)

- Sohail Khan (Performer and Live Artist)

- Richard Ormrod (musician)
- Yvonna Magda (musician)

- HB (visual artist)
- Rebecca Strain (visual artist)

- Philippa Thomas (filmmaker)

- Kathinka Walter (choreographer)

Romance

Romance 2008
The Bowery, Leeds
Handmade paper book


“Many an Irish property was increased by the lace of a daughter's petticoat.” Irish proverb

Inspired by the romance and desire of lace I swapped using a plain net on frames to create a sheet of paper for doilies and patterned netting. Lace as a prized possession of Victorian ladies is now reproduced on mass and available in pound shops. Doilies, which once adorned the houses of the rich and beautiful, can now be purchased in paper format for a few pence. In this book I have used discarded paper to reinvent the romance of lace.

Receipt

Reciept, 2007
Hammond's Cafe
collated reciepts and illustration in carbon on paper

I began accumulating my reciepts in March 2007 as a way of documenting my personal consumption of goods and services. As an artist I have worked with paper as a material, often using pulped paper to create sculpture and installation pieces. Through the process of papermaking the origin of the paper is often lost as it is destroyed to make a new material.

In this series of work I had become more interested in the value of paper. As I continued to collate and document I began to look more closely at my feelings at the point when ownership of goods was transfered and at whether those feelings reflected how the product was marketed. After paying and receiving a reciept I documented my immediate feeling as a word on the receipt.

Over six months I collected 57 receipts, not including the many bus and train tickets or items bought online. Of this collection I selected 16 receiptes that showed a range of experiences and strong feelings that relate to the point in time where I exchanged my money for goods and services which I may or may not have wanted or needed. I chose to present these in 'point of sale' Perspex displays enhanced by illustraions of my immediate feelings.

There are a few remaining pieces for sale

Winged

Winged
2007
Paper, Iron frame

"I become timeless when I work with fiber. Each line, each knot is a prayer..." Lenore Tawney

Whenever I am in need I ask my angel to be with me. I let its wings embrace me and in it’s presence I have the strength to persist. As an artist I have always been directed by the materials that I use. I accumulate materials, forgotten and discarded and through art I try to rejuvenate or reinvent them.

Thanks to St Mary’s parish church Mirfield and Bradford Cathedral

Situation Leeds

Title

Badge Project

Artist(s)

Monitor and Louise Atkinson, Adam Bridgeland, Simon Canaway, Helen Grundy, John Hall, Mike Lewis and Alexander Stevenson, Rebecca Strain

Description

Monitor commissioned eight artists to design a limited edition set of badges for each postcode area on the periphery of Leeds city centre. The badges are the culmination of the artists' research undertaken in each area, and encapsulate their experiences. Monitor invited the public to navigate Leeds to collect the full set of badges. To start off your collection, the Monitor collective designed a ninth badge for the city centre.

15 Telegraph and Argus newspapers, weather section removed,pages separated, bathed in water, folded, stacked

15 Telegraph and Argus newspapers, weather section removed,pages separated, bathed in water, folded, stacked
2007
Rebecca Strain
Accumulated Paper

I am traveling east today
The clouds are settling
along the way
They are low here
threatening
But I can see ahead
I can see where I am going
And it looks as though the
thick clouds are
drifting away

Just a few little splodges
and then a white sky
But there is a murky grey
There is heaviness here
as the masses block out
the yellow light of morning.
I am going east today
With the wind in my face

Dryness from heat
or moisture from cold
I can feel the change
Something is imminent
Somewhere light collides
with dark Somehow I know

My eyes are open
but they flit and stray
I know that something
will happen today
I should make preparations
Take stock and survey

click here for link to exhibition review and pics

Headspace

Head Space
2006
Rebecca Strain
Photography

Head Space- a place to go to where you can be left alone with your own thoughts. Made from a remnant of cotton/linen material found at the bottom of a basket, bought just to save it from being left there, and paper pulp made from a few Big Issue magazines bought over the weeks to save a person or two from complete despair.
I slowly rip the pages into squares deconstructing the message and returning it to a collection of words on coloured paper.
The squares of torn paper are then submerged in warm water and for a few days until the print is diluted and starts to come away from the paper. I take the clean dry sheet of white material out of the paper bag and lower it into the vat of grey water and pulp. The change begins.
I raise it out of the liquid. I hook the sheet on two nails on the wall. It hangs dripping. I lift out some pulp from the vat and thrown it at the hanging sheet. I throw all of the paper pulp at it. I get an old bottle of black poster paint and pour it down it’s front.
It hangs there in my studio like a portal for negativity. I am aware of it slowly soaking up all the moisture, fusing the material, paper pulp and paint.
The material is now discoloured and rigid, the magazine is now illegible and its fibres agitated, the paint is now just darkness.
I join the bottom to the top with panel pins to create a cylindrical form, hollow with and inside and an outside. I have created a space. A headspace, a breathing space, and a space where I cannot see anything that is around me, but my own breasts and hands and legs and feet, inside a form that has become resistant to negativity.

Confinment I and II

Confinement I
Confinement II
2004
Rebecca Strain
Found yarns woven and braided, accumulated paper for 9 months
Confinement

A decision,
Trapped, stuck, pinned,
Time to run away
Leave it behind, forget

I cried just once,
The day before I went
And then for 3 months
Healed and breathed

I swam and ran
Danced and played
Ate and drank and joked
And saw beauty

Then back, back to it all,
Carpets and bills
And meals from frozen
Like nothing had happened

The beach, the waves
The freedom
Remake my escape
Or live with confinement

Constructed II

Constructed II
2002
Rebecca Strain
Braided nylon ropes

Constructed

Constructed
2002
Rebecca Strain
braided electrical wire