RSS http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/fabric_at_lawson_park 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 . 2009-07-30 08:37:02 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/fermyn_woods_show 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. 2009-03-12 09:44:37 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/art_architecture_journal As the anniversary of our wonderful north road trip approaches we're delighted that Art & Architecture Journal has printed a special edition covering the northern way commissions - including ours. See the article by Alistair Hudson here... A B-road guide to northern Britain by Alistair Hudson. Plus our night sky image is the cover.    2008-12-23 12:47:52 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/china_prints Freshly printed samples of a wallpaper design featuring furniture from the ping fang houses in China (see more in Happy Stacking project).   2008-12-19 21:23:16 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/bonjour_brancusi Brancusi-ites across the world UNITE! I would love to meet all the people who share our enthusiasm for Brancusi and that endless column. So far some of those we have met are academics like Alexandra Parigoris from the University of Leeds, Jon Wood of the Henry Moore Institute, the curator of the Brancusi studio in Paris, as well as the cleaning contractor at the site of our column who referred to him as 'Brancuso', and Gabriella the Romanian student I taught last year. Recently two other Brancusi aficionados contacted me from Australia. Gail, and her Romanian husband Sorin (aka George) who has been welding away inspired by the big man. Here are some of George's sculptures which are displayed by the Romanian embassy in Canberra: Gail and George are currently undertaking a trip to the column and a lot of other places in Europe - there blog  is http://transylvaniaartstudio.blogspot.com with lots of pics of George's work.   2008-10-30 20:54:37 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/corby_pavilion Gwilym Sainsbury (summer studio assistant and Leeds Uni student) and I have been working on the new commission for the gallery Fermyn Woods Contemporary Art near Peterborough. It is a maquette for a new pavilion/ abstract sculpture for the remote-control boating and duck pond in Corby. Corby faces a lot of regeneration, an even newer town in a 1950's new town as the Government builds thousands of houses and a commuter train line to London. There is though still a lot of the original 50's town in Corby that wasn't as ideal as the designers had hoped, perhaps the closure of the steel making industry saw to that. Looking about one day a few months ago we became interested in the current boating lake pavilion, set in a nature park, it looks to have always been one of the poorer additions to the townscape, more a flat roofed wooden cabin. Obviously Gywilymn and I as artists/ self proclaimed celebrity architects are just the right people to have a lasting impact on the regeneration of Corby, so we have set about with cardboard, a glue gun and balsa wood designing a new  contemporary architecture style pavilion all be it at a scale only suitable for remote control boats. Hopefully we will create a mini lakeside proposal that will in a small way counter and comment on the current contemporary-esque architecture being built, whilst being inspired by new town sculpture such as Victor Pasmore's Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee.   Our sculpture also sets out to question if art can only ever be a kind of play architecture, a thing that could later inspire something that is genuinely useful, or a place to experiment for something that may one day become a real proposed building. Art seems to be stuck in this place, every time it steps out of it's passive role one finds someone else is doing it better as a profession or specialism. And so art remains the domain of the generalist, the in-between, whilst also providing the fodder for the magazine, art celebrity, an exclusive luxuries market and a stage for posing at the art gallery or art prizes. 2008-09-01 21:20:24 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/new_artworks_added Visit Artworks to see our latest updated projects. 2008-08-06 12:57:05 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/rethang_my_pingfang After the three and a half weeks we spent in Chinese village of Wuzishen (Nanling forest), one of the outcomes is my proposal for architectural changes to the streets of ping-fang houses in which the retired forest workers live. These are set to be demolished in the next 3 years and tower blocks will be build to house the residents. However the ping-fangs are unique houses much loved by those who live in them, built in 1958 during Mao's 'great leap forward' they are set on communal streets that splits the sleeping area and lounge from the kitchens and bathrooms. This ensures constant to-ing and fro-ing. interaction with neighbors and a sense of community.    The challenge is to create a far more holistic re-development scheme using the existing buildings that looks and smells like progress, modernises some of the very basic kitchens and bathrooms and attracts a younger generation to the housing, it should maintain the existing unique character and feel of the Ping-fangs. It would also need something to attract visitors, helping unite the division between the incoming tourist wealth (for the nature park) and the village. Click here for a movie that outlines the proposal so far for Mr Chen from the Nanling eco-resort company who seemed interested in helping to build a prototype/ show flat. Caption: discussing poposed architectural changes in the village market.    2008-06-11 15:55:41 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/sheffield_art_school_symposium I think this post will mark the start of my 'chronicles of a part time tutor' on the blog. Kicking the series off with my appearance at the Sheffield Hallam University annual degree show conference - 'What Price Autonomy?' If art education was in crisis in 40 years ago in 1968, in crisis during Joseph Beuy's free university, in crisis when I left art school in 1999 and is still in crisis now, at what point do we all agree that it has failed, close down the art schools and spend our energies on something else? I spoke along-with writer JJ Charlesworth and artist Becky Shaw and a graduating student called Jade (who wore a fury wolf costume?). The organisers were fantastically motivated young Sheffield artists , inviting me in true style by emailing from Berlin about three days beforehand - which gave me with a good opportunity to test my improvisation skills on the day. The Sheffield Hallam University are selling their airy, light, spacious, interesting, quirky suburban 1930's art department campus and moving the whole lot to the basement of a inner city modern tower block, no need for windows then? It seems and as JJ Charlesworth eloquently pointed out that basically art students are an expensive asset and their messy studios use more space per person that the average history student who can cram into a lecture theater/ library. This makes art students ripe for 'relocation' and their campuses great for redevelopment - moving only a few arty students and gaining maximum sq footage to cost benefit. After all university is a business that is run by managers and accountants, isn't it, and this is a great opportunity to raise revenue. The tendency to run education on a financial basis, accepting students to bring in more fees, reallocating spaces, selling assets, creating part time contracts is going on all around the UK. I only hope it is done out of urgent necessity as it certainly is not helping an educational process that was already deemed 'in crisis' before it all began. We discussed the students rights and if their fee's justify them as 'customers', and if the language of commerce is useful or negative in this situation, or was it that they should simply be entitled to good education regardless of their buying power? Given the widely accepted ineptitude of most institutions to set up a decent structure for their art students/ tutors, I did come out of the conference thinking that privatization and capitalistic models could hypocritically be the only way out of this situation, but on the students side rather than the institutions. One realistic option is for students to create opportunities through their course to make money, running business models such as clubs, shops, cafes that can then fund their own choices for invited speakers/ workshops, trips and exhibitions. An even more radical option as JJ suggested is setting up private art schools from private fees and private collectors patronage (which would alleviate the need for a lot of bureaucracy created by merged institutions). Currently in most universities there are around 40 students in each year, which must bring in about £160,000. I can only think that if purely spent on their education and tutor contact it would buy a pretty hefty course and some heavy weight intellectual/ artistic tutors. Protoacademy in Edinburgh was by far the best educational experience I have had, set up as a kind of parasitic organisation on the outside of the existing art school, it was funded from research money, however when I think about the costs involved they were low, around £30,000 a year. For this we organised seminars, invited guests, symposia, exhibitions, theory sessions, trips and a space to meet in - all this for only 8 students yearly fee? It brings to mind two questions - 1. is the formal art degree actually useful at the end of the day in balance with the amount of beurocracy and financial wastage university accreditation creates? and 2. what happens if students run their own course -is this time spend away from studio practice detrimental to their work? 1. Well actually in art a formal degree doesn't seem to be that helpful, its not medicine. Unless you are wanting to go back to college to do an MA (more payout), or retrain in another profession the degree is never ever mentioned. 2. As I was trying to explain in this symposium the possibility of throwing open the running of the course to the students does actually work - as was tried and tested in the protoacademy experiment, it also taught one the necessary real world skills of managing your practice in relationship to organising/ facilitating.   So although the blog isn't the place to explore this in a more balanced manner, the conference left me with the distinct impression that actually a more pure and total privatization of the art-school could be a good option for art educational reform, casually dispensing with the degree qualification, where groups of like minded people get together under a skeleton staff to run their own 4 year peer led educational experience? Posted by Bryan  2008-06-11 09:40:43 http://www.bryanandlauradavies.com/blog/parkamoor_fabric 17.5 m of fabric screen printed for the parlour of Low Parkamoor. Now awaiting curtain making.   Folk/Sottsass writing desk also for the parlour   2008-06-10 08:27:26