Christmas print sale, 9th December

| Claire

This year I’ve been making a lot (for me) of print work, exploring monoprinting and adding in a little bit of screenprint for variety. I’ve participated in the Hot Bed Press 20:20 print exchange, which saw a flurry of print activity and furrowed brows at Platform studios in St Helens as 9 other artists joined together to create a series of 25 prints at 20cm square.

To celebrate this joint enterprise, we’re having a festive celebration at Platform studios on Saturday 9th December from 1-4pm. You’ll be able to view the works produced for the exchange, see the works we’ve received from other printmakers across the UK, eat cake that has been baked to fit the 20x20cm guidelines and enjoy a warming hot chocolate.

I’ll have a selection of prints for sale, some are especially festive and others are things I’ve worked on during this year. There will be prices from £2 to £10, and all of the proceeds from these sales will be ploughed into producing a new programme of work planned for 2018 that works directly with people who have been displaced from their home countries. Available prints and prices are in the gallery below, if you see something you like but can’t make it on the 9th, then get in touch and I can post it out to you for the price of a first class stamp (an extra 75p).

 

First performance of ‘What are you waiting for?’

| Claire

On Monday 7th October, 4 people wearing crowd control barriers on belts waited in Runcorn Old Town.

What are you waiting for?

This work is included in the exhibition ‘Interval’ at the Brindley Arts Centre, Runcorn until 25th November 2017.

For more information about the work, visit its portfolio page

Interval – a Markmakers Exhibition

| Claire

My new work, What are you waiting for? features in the latest exhibition by artist collective Markmakers, which opens at The Brindley Arts Centre, Runcorn on 2 October 2017.  This set of six custom-made belts feature retractable crowd control barriers, designed to be worn by performers in a public space, creating moveable spaces for waiting as the wearers move around a street.  The first experimental iteration of this intervention will take place in Runcorn on Monday 9th October 2017 and if you’d like to join in or come and observe, then get in touch via my contact page.

The work is part of the exhibition Interval, by Markmakers.

What is an interval?
Is it just blank space?
Is there anything of interest in the gaps?

The latest exhibition by Markmakers invites you take an interval. Step inside the punctuated, whitewashed walls of the gallery and consider self imposed breaks in life. Explore concepts of time. Sit, stand, look or listen.

Have a break, visit interval.

The Brindley Gallery, Runcorn
2 October-25 November 2017

Meet the artists event
Saturday 7 October 2017, 12:00-13:00

The Brindley, High Street, Runcorn, WA7 1BG
FREE. Mon – Fri 10am – 5pm, Sat 10am – 2pm.
Closed Sundays & Bank Holidays.

Power Up by Chrissie Tiller

| Claire

Power Up, a think piece on the sharing of power and decision-making, has been released this week.  It’s written by Chrissie Tiller for Creative People and Places and includes responses to the questions that that are asked within the piece. Some of their responses were in written form, some the result of interviews, others emerged from practical workshops on the themes. A group of artists who had been involved in the CPP Northern Faculty of Social Art were also asked to make visual responses to the themes of Power, Reciprocity, Cultural Capital, Privilege, Participation, Values, Ethics, Collaboration, and Politics.

My responses were in the form of monoprints, which feature at points among the article. It’s currently available online, with a print copy becoming available soon.  For more information about the article, read Chrissie’s blog post about it here.

Explorations with the Foxton Centre

| Claire

Between March and September 2017 I’ve been working with a lovely group of people from the Foxton Centre in Preston at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery.  It started out with a request from Kyra Milnes, the Harris’ outreach worker to do some work which linked into their Martin Creed – Artist Rooms exhibition and has developed slowly and organically as we’ve developed our working relationship together.  We’ve shared stories, aired our grievances about PIPs, got lost (literally! we had to pick up two people from the police station as they had no way of finding us), shared our skills (Gail can find you the perfect charity shop bargain), fallen in the sea, searched for a set of false teeth in a receding tide, got a panda-face sun tan and learnt about how to make art together and alongside each other.

As a programme of workshops it’s been different to a lot of what is usually commissioned by galleries as we had a starting point, but there was no pressure to get to an end point.  We’ve created objects, drawings, sculptures and videos along the way, but a lot of the time it felt like I wasn’t doing much as an artist/workshop leader.  On reflection it’s been quite Creed-ian – nothing happened, but at the same time lots did happen, it’s all been a bit like the lights going on and off, you have to sit in the room for a while to appreciate what is already there even when you think that there is nothing. If anything, now that the workshops have finished, it’s like the group are in a great place to begin.

Here’s some of the things that happened over the last six months

The adventures of the inkpot and the quill, by Nirmala Dholakia

 

The Crosby Trip, performed by Neil Black

oooh, plan, you, see, lord

 

With thanks to Paul and Laura who work tirelessly with the Foxton Centre, to the always-present Neil, Gail and Nirmala and everyone else who worked with me over the past 6 months.

Drawings – July-September 2017

| Claire

I’ve had a recent flurry of drawing activity that has had a public showing over the summer.  A pair of monoprints titled ‘Helped up/Held down’ won the Drawing category at the St Helens Open exhibition at the World of Glass, these drawings are also due to appear in a national arts publication soon, which I’ll share when it is published:

And a set of three drawings that are part of the ‘Drawing the Collection’ exhibition, also at The World of Glass. They are based on observations in the hot glass studio of The World of Glass, observing how the ellipses of glass morph and change in the process of hand blowing different vessels.

‘Drawing the Collection’ is on show at The World of Glass until Friday 3rd November 2017.

At the library – a meccano portal

| Claire

On Saturdays 17th and 24th June at Meadows Library, Maghull we celebrated the legacy of Frank Hornby and the library’s Meccano collection. Families were invited to design and construct a full scale Portal Door to be housed at Meadows Library, becoming our magical gateway to a host of imagined worlds. Using vintage Meccano multiple generations explored building techniques, playing with both small, scale and human scale creations.  Together we imagined the worlds that might lay beyond a portal, with the initial idea coming from a 1930s Meccano instruction manual before scaling up our ideas using contemporary construction materials. The families ideas came together to result in a time travelling portal, complete with whirling rotor blades, steering wheel for setting the gauges and options of which world to travel to next.

Public View – The Bluecoat

| Claire

I’m really pleased to share that I’ll be exhibiting at the Bluecoat this spring as part of their ‘Public View’ exhibition, celebrating the Bluecoat’s 300th anniversary. The list of artists exhibiting is really amazing and I’m humbled to have been invited to exhibit as part of this show as an artist who has exhibited there in the past. The exhibition will feature works that have been shown throughout the Bluecoat’s history, some that were made at the same time as the artist exhibited there, or as a completely new artwork.

My history with the Bluecoat stretches back to around 2003 when I volunteered in the gallery whilst at University, then exhibited my degree show work ‘Sit and Draw’ in the old windowbox space in 2004. The Bluecoat have been brilliant at supporting artists as they develop their practice and invited me to exhibit in 2008 as part of Next Up and to create ‘Passing, Watching, Waiting, Following’ in the College Street space. Sara-Jayne Parsons invited POST Liverpool to exhibit as part of Global Studio and supported me to create ‘Two installations’ in the Vide in 2013 following my residency in Shanghai.

It is work from that latter exhibition that I will be representing in Public View, showing one of my pinned collages that acted as a study for the interactive projection work that featured in the Vide. I’m really thankful of Sara-Jayne Parsons and Bryan Biggs support over the past 13 years, and am really happy to join in the celebrations of a brilliant Liverpool institution.

For more information about Public View, go here.

Public View, The Bluecoat
Sat, 04 Feb 2017 – Sun, 23 Apr 2017 

Artists include:
John Akomfrah / Graham Ashton / Conrad Atkinson / Glen Baxter / David Blandy / Derek Boshier / Sonia Boyce / Mark Boyle / Jyll Bradley / Pavel Büchler / Chila Burman / Marc Camille Chaimowicz / Stephen Chambers / Edward Chell / Jagjit Chuhan / Pete Clarke / Maurice Cockrill / Sue Coe / Common Culture / Cornford & Cross / Graham Crowley / Adam Dant / Mal Dean / Jeremy Deller / Maurice Doherty / Sokari Douglas Camp / Bill Drummond / Alan Dunn / Stephen Dwoskin / Nina Edge / John Edkins / Stephen Farthing / Alec Finlay / Leo Fitzmaurice / Pete Frame / Neville Gabie / Malcolm Garrett / Georg Gartz / Melissa Gordon / Jean Grant / Tony Hayward / Peter Hagerty / Sean Halligan / Ian Hamilton Finlay / Rowena Harris / Susan Hefuna / Adrian Henri / Lubaina Himid / Lin Holland / Pam Holt / Nicholas Horsfield / John Hyatt / Andrzej Jackowski / David Jacques / George Jardine / Brigitte Jurack / Peter Kennard / Michael Kenny / Naiza Khan / Juginder Lamba / John Latham / Mark Leckey / Hew Locke / David Mabb / Elizabeth Magill / Bashir Makhoul / Clement McAleer / Don McKinlay / John Monks / Jacqueline Morreau / Paul Morrison / Val Murray / Niamh O’Malley / Yoko Ono / David Osbaldeston / Brian O’Toole / Tony Oursler / Keith Piper / Nicole Polonsky / Tricia Porter / Imran Qureshi / Peter Randall-Page / Paul Rooney / Marisa Rueda / Emma Rushton / Walid Sadek / Lesley Sanderson / Peter Saville / Yinka Shonibare / Jamie Shovlin / The Singh Twins / Mark Skinner / Robert Soden / South Atlantic Souvenirs and Trouble / Emily Speed / Imogen Stidworthy / Elizabeth Stuart Smith / Mike Stubbs / Pádraig Timoney / Ray Walker / Sam Walsh / Claire Weetman / Ann Whitehurst / Pat Whiteread / Tom Wood / George Wyllie

Landmarks and Boundaries, an exhibition by Markmakers at The Brindley

| Claire

The first new work I’ve exhibited in a while is now on show at the latest Markmakers exhibition at The Brindley in Runcorn.  A maquette for a maze of displacement is a video installation work that forms a study for a proposed mass participation public intervention.

Landmarks & Boundaries is the latest project from Markmakers; Halton’s contemporary art collective, and is inspired by the artists’ geographical location of living near to the coastlines of North West England and Wales, and their individual experiences, knowledge of tides, islands, pathways, histories, folklore and rites of passage.

Crossings at high tide, clothes as signifiers of personal boundaries, migration and the experience of moving through the physical landscape are among the subjects explored with media ranging widely from paint and print to sculpture, textiles and installation.

Expect the unexpected and join the artists for their gallery talk and reception on Saturday 17 September in the Brindley Gallery at 1pm, all welcome, refreshments will be served.

Opening hours: Mon – Fri 10am – 5pm, Sat 10am – 3pm
The Brindley Theatre, High Street, Runcorn, Cheshire, WA7 1BG
Tel: 0151 907 8360 | www.thebrindley.org.uk

Click here for more information about the work A maquette for a maze of displacement

Visit Markmakers’ website 

Residual Projects, South Square Gallery, Thornton, Bradford

| Claire

Seven artists, six residencies, one group show.
Claire Weetman, Ian Jackson, Alice Bradshaw, Rebecca Long & Cameron Muir, Leah Hislop, Tom McGinn
5 Dec 2014 – 25 Jan 2015

Opening night 5 December 7pm
Join me on the opening of Residual Projects to see the beginning of my mini residency as part of this new exhibition or come and visit on Saturday 6th & Sunday 7th December 12-3pm.

Residual Projects is the culmination of an annual traineeship programme between South Square Gallery and The Hepworth Wakefield, which sees Curator Charlie Booth make her debut. Charlie explains;

‘Residual Projects is a critical look at traditional artists residencies, where work will be created and installed whilst the gallery is open. The result will be a group exhibition which grows week by week as different artists enter and leave the space. This is an interactive project, where visitors are invited to engage with the work being created so as to better understand the processes used and decisions made.’

Residual Projects is a series of miniature residencies with seven nationwide artists using the gallery to explore their own artistic interests whilst the gallery is open to the public. The work they create during their residency will be left for the next artist to negotiate. The aim is to create a dynamic group exhibition which explores how artists can work collaboratively.
All participating artists will be creating new work which responds directly to the physical architectural or social history of South Square Gallery and the history of Thornton.

Throughout the evening of the 5th December I will create an instinctive performance piece inspired by South Square’s domestic history as a collection of Stonemason cottages. My intervention will involve the audience on the night; dividing lines will intersect the galleries floors and walls, marking out different possibilities of living arrangements within the confined space. This new work is a continuation of the socio-political piece Residential Mosaics shown at the Brindley earlier this year and ‘a remarkable architecture of stairs‘ which looked at the proliferation of high rise flats of Shanghai.

Residual Projects | Group show | 05 December 2014 – 25 January 2015
Opening night – 05 December 7pm
Christmas Closure – 29 December 2014 – 05 January 2015
Closing celebration – 23 January 7pm

Participating artists and residency dates (Exact dates are subject to change):1. Claire Weetman – Fri 5th Dec – Sun 7th Dec
2. Ian Jackson – Tues 9th Dec – Fri 12th Dec
3. Alice Bradshaw – Tues 16th Dec – Fri 19th Dec (dates tbc)
4. Rebecca Long and Cameron Muir Tues 6th Jan – Fri 9th Jan
5. Leah Hislop – Sat 10th Jan – Mon 12th Jan
6. Tom McGinn – Thurs 15th Jan – Sun 18th Jan

South Square Centre
South Square
Thornton
Bradford
BD13 3LD

Opening Hours | Tuesday – Sunday | 12 – 3pm | And by appointment