The blown up head of Homer Simpson sits half submerged in the ground. It has been sliced through as in a building section to create different types of seating for students at the school in Bristol to hang out in. Pleased to say that the commissionerd liked this one on intial inspection....

 

 

The initial proposal for the outside classroom for the Building Schools for the Future Program is still in the pipeline. Above is a render from the proposal document, the full version is available online through the link below. 

Bristol initial proposal document

 

Pleased to find a letter on the doormat the other day to say that the sculpture commission for BAM ltd, at the Allies and Morrison development in Leeds City Centre, has recieved planning consent. The artwork will be clearly visible from the London Leeds train and the canal as you come into the train station. Look forward to updating the blog with some of the drawings and photos as it goes into manufacture.

Check out the the latest on the Road to Voting project through the blog:

http://futurehustings.tumblr.com/

Hannah Martin and Berni Valdes building a voting booth experiment as part of the Road to Voting project. 

 

Pleased to announce after two years of late nights I have graduated from the BA at sheffield university architecture school with a first class Degree. First I designed a housing scheme in the yorkshire town of Goole, then a polling station for Birmingham. Here is a concept drawing for the Goole project. I am please to be able to report that Architectural teaching at sheffield and the standard of the students was really impressive. There was a whole lot more drawing and communication education going down than in any art school I have been to recently.

 

After many, many months of doing up a house and rearing a baby etc i'm writing my first blog post in about a year and a half - if there's anyone still out there.

First entry is a child's chair that i have upholstered in the Nanling print fabric and it looks quite fine I think.

A quick thought; art biennale’s aren’t helping –

 

In January I spent some time reading about the urban transformation of Berlin in particular the process of re-use over successive decades of the Mietkaseren (rental Barrack). Interestingly Berlin seems to have had a series of influential exhibitions, stemming from a general discomfort with the way the 1960's large scale urban renewal projects were changing the city aiming to adapt it into to separate zones, economic, industrial, residential and so on connected through high speed rail links. The International building exhibitions - with typically german poetic themes such as 'the inner city as residential area'  and 'European monument preservation year (1975) explored and proved that 'renewal without removal' was a workable, profitable (renewing meant 40% to 60% of the new build cost) and vital undertaking. Apparently leading to a new approach by the city architects and planners to work with the old people, the squatting movement and the inhabitants to create more care in keeping the unique characteristics of the buildings, and the mix of residents and artisan businesses in areas such as Kreuzberg. It is an inspiring realization that the soft and intellectual undertaking of a city exhibition had a direct and real impact in changing the opinions and approach to the hard economics and business of regeneration. Having experienced first hand the last decade of art biennales and art fares, such as frieze, Liverpool biennale, Istanbul biennale, Venice biennale etc, and locally; situation Leeds, Manchester international festival, has the city exhibition become a celebration of culture, the individual creative and an attempt to place itself within a largely too broad global issue or debate (the theory led curatorial vision ), at the expense of something a bit more sensible and useful.

After a year and a bit studying for my part 1 in architecture at Sheffield University, renovating a house and studio for Laura and myself and most importantly of all having a baby, young Alfred Davies, it seems that I have re-hitched my saddle and slowly got back on the art/design band wagon with four projects about to kick off this spring and summer.

 

The first is a sculptural commission for the omnipresent builders and developers BAM properties, which is just about to be submitted for its planning permission.

 

The second is a project for Leeds University called the Road to Voting, http://www.theroadtovoting.org/ a bit behind my hoped schedule but the contract is nearly signed, and by all accords its time for a voting based artwork to leap from the moleskin notebook and into the world.

 

The third is a commission for a new School in Bristol headed up by public art consultant Aldo Rinaldi – other artists undertaking the series of commissions are Tom and Simon Bloor from Birmingham, the Arnolfini Gallery, and amazingly Nick Park of Ardman animation in collaboration with Conrad Shawcross?

 

Finally there is a design commission for some new offices for the Leeds based building developer St James Securities, the first proper building design I have been asked to undertake.

Eight dining chairs for the new Grizedale Arts Hq 'Lawson Park' have been upholstered in a printed fabric I designed. It features drawings of the wooden furniture found in the ping fang houses of Nanling village in China where we spent 3 weeks with Grizedale in May 08 (see artworks). Their lovely new building was officially opened on 10 July by Sir Nick Serota and can be seen through a webcam.

The exhibition ‘Double Signature ‘ opened mid-February displaying the work of four collaborative teams, my prototype of a lakeside pavilion is a ‘not to scale’ model of a structure that conveys an approach to the site, rather than defines a certain building, a model that oscillates between structure and proposed walkway. Laura’s textile prints and cushions approach the imagined pavilion from a different angle, dealing solely and in detail with the interior patterns/ finishes and internal feel of a building that will never be built or fully designed (e.g. it can only be built by the viewers imagination).

Opening the show whilst there was still plenty of snow on the ground meant it was an interesting and determined crowd that gathered in Fermyn Woods a gallery in the countryside near Corby, they came by car, on foot or by horse, a motley crew of surprisingly interested people, in rain coats wellies, some camouflage jackets and with children in tow. A different demographic to a urban art space that reminds you that contemporary art culture isn’t solely the preserve of the urban trendy.