The Discarded Made Beautiful

'The Discarded Made Beautiful' Private View gallery (6.4.11)

2011-04-07T15:51:00.002+01:00

FRAME WORKSHOP VISIT & DIARY

2011-02-23T15:53:00.006Z

(Mo, Malcolm, Steve and Borin, 19.2.11)

We met with Robin Peters at Frame Workshop & Gallery, 22 St Nicholas Street, IP1 1TJ to discuss Freelance's 'The Discarded Made Beautiful' exhibition to run through April. 2011.

Dates.

1. Thursday 24 February, 8pm: Freelance meeting at Angela's to make final decisions on costings, initiate VistaPrint postcard invite to P.V. (Andrew). Print-run: 100 / more?

2. Monday 7 March: deadline for label text (to Mo): Name of artist, title, medium (in brief), price. Complete file to be emailed to Robin for production as card labels for show. Also deadline for Artist's Statement (or C.V.) text.

3. Thursday 24 March, 8pm: Freelance meeting at Angela's (brought forward a week).

4. Tuesday 5 April, 9 to 11 am. Delivery of work/hanging (Susie, Borin with a car).

5. Wednesday 6 April, 6.30 to 8.30pm: Private View at Frame Workshop.

6. Thursday 28th April, 8pm. Freelance meeting at Angela's.

7. Saturday 30 April. 'Discarded...' show finishes.

8. Take-down Monday or Tuesday following.

'Selling off the wall'.

We have enough stock, we think, to make this possible - accepting that the exhibition will change accordingly throughout the month it is open. Towards the end of the run, we suggest that any pieces which are held in stock will be brought out to be shown. The exception to 'selling off the wall' will be the Private View. Suggestion is that anything sold at the P.V. will remain on the wall with orange spot for the following week, to be collected by buyer then. This will make things less frantic on the evening of the P.V.

Table.

We do have quite a bit of material which needs to be shown on a flat surface. We will provide one large and one small table + white sheets.

Suspended work.

There are four screwed-in metal loops in the beams above the large front windows of the gallery (two loops on each side). The window to the right of the door (as you enter the shop) has lettering on it. Mark's mobile would look good on the clear window on the left. Anyone else who else would like to suspend work? Could suspend a horizontal rod from loops and hang more items from the rod?

Promo.

Press release to be written by Borin, OK'd by members at Feb. meeting. Ferial to send out to her mailing list. Any other texts to be written by Borin. All to be shared with Robin at the gallery before publication.

2011-02-18T17:08:00.002Z

'The Discarded Made Beautiful'

Following our meeting of 27.1.2011. Thanks for all attendees last night.

List of participants with count of exhibits

1. David Truzzi-Franconi. 'The Discarded Made Beautiful' cut sign

2. Borin Van Loon. Assemblages (7+)

3. Maureen Galvani. 8 large, 3 small die-cut/colour pieces + 1 galactic collage

4. Malcolm Moseley. "Artist's waste" jewelry etc. (50+)

5. Hilli Thompson. Melted jar (20), jar+key (6), Scrap glass bowls (6)

6. Sally Appleby. I pair papier mache shoes, opened up boxes - decorated (10)

7. Angela Harvey. Butterflies (30 or as many as are needed)

8. Mark Beesley. Spectacle lens mobile

9. Annabel Mednick. Triptych (40+)

10. Susie Medelsson. Figure group (7)

11. Steve Joyce. Collage / printed booklet (50 - 60)

David's masthead image. (a) small jpeg image for Annabel - will circulate this to all participants, too. (b) Jpeg/TIFF for Robin at Frames Workshop for publicity. And...

(c) 250 gloss colour postcards of image with invitation to Private view on the back; probably use Vistaprint. We also need to agree who will pay for this, once we know the cost: share or Freelance to pay? This card would be in addition to Frames Workshop publicity.

Biog. We need an A4 sheet from each participant with biog./cv/image if desired, plus the 'Discarded...' masthead.

Freelance/'Discarded...' A4 sheet. With masthead and Freelance logo: short description of Freelance and the idea behind 'Discarded...' show.

Exhibit labels. For each exhibit, one label: typeset, spray mounted on mounting board and trimmed to size (giving artist's name, title, price and description of work/materials e.g. 'mixed materials', 'magazine collage' etc. - or more detailed). For larger number of similar pieces at the same price, one label will suffice. We need to agree who/ how we will generate these.

Press release. 250-500 words + masthead + 2 to 3 images of sample exhibits. Approach Ferial to distribute these.

Malcolm to arrange with Robin at Frames Workshop for himself, Borin, Mo and Steve to visit the gallery at 9.30am one Saturday in March to discuss hanging/display etc.

Pricing. We originally set a price per item at £30 (£10 to gallery, £20 to artist). Now we see the range of work, it's appropriate to price below that if desired. Most people seem happy to sell at £30, but there may be a few exceptions which justify a figure of £50, or artist could put 'Not For Sale' on the piece. As we're not making a big thing about pricing in the description of the project - as one or two people said - it won't matter to gallery visitors.

2011-01-14T18:58:00.003Z

David Truzzi-Franconi (our thanks to him for a fine masthead)

Amazon mailer (corrugated card), staples, tape.

Sample pieces by Susie Mendelsson

2011-01-06T15:07:00.010Z

1. Fairy; 2. Meet the Buckles; 3. Tesco board of management; 4. Family values; 5. Happiness in a bottle

These figures were all made from items that would normally have gone into our recycling bin at home: plastic bottles, empty sellotape reels, toilet rolls, buttons, bottle tops, mince pie foil dishes, cardboard wrappers, boxes and the odd found objects like beads and belt buckles. All held together with copious amounts of glue. God bless Tesco packaging!

-Susie Mendelsson

2010-11-28T18:09:00.009Z

Update from November's meeting

Annabel has completed her tiny triptychs! Fashioned from the wedges she removes from the backs of her canvasses, individually decorated and bearing a miniature version of her paintings inside. The whole opus fits inside a modest-sized box.

Hilli brought along two dishes made from scraps of glass in her kiln. Not the greatest shots, but I wanted to get the light shining through the richly coloured glass. Here also a few of her 'jar melts' (my nomenclature). Anyone visiting Hilli's Christmas gift Open House will know that she's been very prolific recently and a whole family of fascinating jar melts has been created in a wide variety of colours and shapes.

2010-10-03T19:18:00.002+01:00

Update from the September 2010 meeting.

Angela, Sally, David, Mo, Borin, Hilli and Malcolm made up an enthusiastic meeting with wide-ranging discussions, as ever. When it came to'works in progress' Malcolm brought along an array of materials and tools (tissue balls, sandpaper, lolly sticks etc.) used in his normal painting practice. And normally thrown away. With a little modification/decoration they became rather more than the dross we normally throw away without thinking. Light and airy, some members wanted them as jewellery. Hilli brought along her prototype 'jam jar melts' (author's nomenclature). Intriguing pools of molten glass, some still showing the thread around the neck, now a ribbon-like folded decoration with coloured glass shining through, some looking like pursed lips. Satisfyingly heavy and bold pieces. We hope to include pics here soon.

Refinement of decisions about our project agreed at the meeting.

January's meeting will be the deadline for all participants to bring all their work to Angela's for the group to review and make plans for the show. We then have elbow room before the launch in April. We'd also also like members with a selection of pieces to meet Robin at Frame Workshop on a Saturday morning at 10 following the deadline date (Malcolm to arrange). Robin is very excited by our project as it is so different from his normal shows. We'd like to do postcards of, say, six pieces to be sold (for e.g. 50p each) at the show.

2010-10-02T16:47:00.002+01:00

Contributions from Annabel Mednick.

Borin's assemblages

2010-09-15T15:54:00.008+01:00

'The eyes have it' (foil pie containers, Guinness can widgets, Co-op stir-fry container, coloured card, black paint, red dye)

'Death and the maiden 1' (DVD disc, yoghurt

pot top, shotgun shells)

Death and the maiden 2' (DVD disc, waste kitchen surface, shotgun shells, filler, Alkyd paint)

'Interior furniture' (medicine bottle top, ring pull, aerosol top, sponge ring, size indicator from clothes hanger, light bulb, crown cork, cassette and mixed media, spray paints)

2010-08-12T17:00:00.007+01:00

Steve Joyce writes...

"The work was made with restrictions to make me create in a different way. There are six sets of images made from sets of 6 pages from discarded magazines, using one image as the basis for selective cutting through the whole lot, producing many interchangable parts. Each of the six images in each set were created from the parts but were compromised by the restriction that all had to say something different yet could not exist to the detriment of others; they all had to work successfully. Some sets where fairly easy to coordinate but others took days of reshuffling of the pieces. Initially the idea was to create the images to be made into sets of six containing one of each set and sell them as multiple packs, but after much work and pain that hardly seems right as others said if they are to sell for the price limit, so they will go as separate items, and I will produce concertina booklets from my images, in sets to sell for the price or under as appropriate." [4 sample sets of images by Steve]

2010-06-03T23:17:00.003+01:00

At the recent AGM, we discussed the strange phenomenon of the rather beautiful mouldings and protective packaging which stands between us and 'stuff' we buy. Andrew held a tiny, perfectly formed, clear perspex moulding of four half-egg shapes in his palm. It reminded me of a recent photograph I took of a clear plastic container for four small tartlets as I washed it in the sink prior to recycling in the blue wheelie bin. Gemlike and glittering. Rubbish really.

2010-05-19T23:00:00.002+01:00

What we have decided (autumn/spring meetings):

Date/Venue: the Frame Workshop in St Nicholas Street has been booked by Malcolm for the month of April, 2011.

Costs: £100 booking fee will be paid by Freelance to secure the gallery space which includes a Private View, drinks and a poster all arranged by Frame Workshop. [Discussion by members of one or even two (!) P.V.s to avoid things getting overcrowded in the relatively small space - use of targeted mailings by Freelance members in addition to gallery publicity. Wednesday and/or Saturday for P.V.?]

Deadline: work for 'Discarded Made Beautiful' will need to be completed by the end of February, 2011. Frames Workshop organise the hanging, but we will offer a couple of people to assist.

Brief: "The test for us as members of Freelance is to do our very best work on something that is not important, is made out of throwaway materials, but which is beautiful." - Malcolm Moseley. Within this guiding brief we have firmed up the overall guidelines; these are intended to help us all to produce work of great variety, but which is relatively small in physical size. The A5 size is a good guideline, but something a bit bigger would be acceptable - as long as we don't go mad! It has to hang together as a show which encompasses a reasonably large number of such small, gem-like pieces of work. We are aiming at 50 to 60 works at the initial Private View. Selling off the wall on the night or in the month after would mean that we'd have to have some extra stock in hand. We mustn't get too hung up on the 'does it have to be my own rubbish exclusively?' type of question. The materials used should be those which are often discarded in society; nothing putrifying or smelly, mind. Either 2D or 3D is possible: wall-mounted, free standing, or even suspended (bearing in mind the limitations of the gallery).

Pricing: Maximum price per piece is £30; one third of this goes to the gallery.

The above notes come from a meeting discussion and one or two subsequent points. We are all used to working to some sort of brief and the limitations agreed are intended to give guidance and inspire. As with all our special projects, we are all being challenged to do something a bit different from our normal comfort zone activity. Please come along to meetings with objects, sketches, pieces of work in progress; please check the blog every now and then to see images of work (or potential work) which we upload - email Andrew or Borin any images you'd like to contribute. If you're stuck, the blog will help you to decide what you do or don't want to pursue. "Rubbish can be beautiful when it's mediated by the mind of an artist." Who said that? I think I just did.

January meeting: Mo, Angela & Hilli talked a little about the Freelance project 'Discarded Made Beautiful' & what it entailed. Angela thought the rules seemed a little restrictive but I said my understanding was that the guidelines were a starting point only & it was up to us to interpret. She said for example, must we only use our own rubbish? I'm sure when we start to see what others have produced it will make things clearer. The good thing about Freelance is that we produce such diverse work.

Hilli wants to create some glass pieces for our next show & is looking for small pieces of scrap glass if anyone has any, though she has to be careful as to its makeup as it can have different melting points & properties. She described a piece which she made which one day disintegrated into powder!

First steps

2010-04-26T10:05:00.000+01:00

Some members of the group have produced their first few pieces using all types of discarded materials. The following are by Maureen Galvani using packaging waste, collage and hand colouring.

The discarded made beautiful

2010-01-11T20:10:00.000Z

An economic recession (global as well as national) might provide an opportunity to creative people like us. Art movements spring from these economic conditions (Dada, Abstract Expressionism etc.). After two 'glamorous', beautifully produced book projects by Freelance in the last five years, 'Blank page' and 'He opened his eyes...', could Freelance members participate in something less precious, more disposable?

Here are some of the ideas around which we will build a project:-

Waste produced by society; recycling of "useless" stuff (something which one member has been exploring since /blankpage) as a source material.
Discarded materials; interesting surfaces.
Miniature work.
Is there a need for a theme (e.g. The Alphabet) - or will the agreed structure of the project provide the theme?
Temporary work; cheap or free to create. Example: if we cut up a newspaper into squares, what could each member do with one square (we have the use of our photocopier to focus on printed content, produce images/multiples etc.)? Flat or three-dimensional?
Single items rather than multiples / published edition? Perhaps to be given away free? Option of taking photographs of pieces, producing postcards of them as collectables? Perhaps Waterstones, the Town Galleries and Mansion could sell them? Producing postcards might run counter to the spirit of the initial idea.
Could produce a pack of loose work.
Exhibiting the work. We intend to show the "work/s" in a gallery in Ipswich in 2011. The works will be affordable, adventurous (hopefully), in an "out-of-the-box" show which with the right launch/publicity should prove popular with those who "can't afford art".

Over the coming months members of Freelance will develop this idea, of "The discarded made beautiful". The ongoing development will be reported on this blog.