Aspex Gallery and Portsmouth Grammar School

As part of the National Gallery's 'Take one picture' project, Aspex Gallery commissioned me to spend a week at Portsmouth Grammar School working with Key Stage 1 children.  A 650 year old painting provided the inspiration to creating a collaborative piece of narrative collage,  that included giant painted and paper cut trees and creatures.  We had great fun in the making with the outcome being a huge layered wall mural. The children and staff were amazing and it was a joy to be in such a beautiful school.

making it 7 x 7 award

My recent work in progress as part of the 7 x 7 Award from Making Space.  This scheme is intended for makers who have aspirations to explore the boundaries of their practice, and aims to reveal the process and relationship between the craft of hand and mind, between object and word and through learning and making.   It aims to demonstrate that craft is the tool to investigate wider ideology, which is active, participatory and implicit in every day live. I am very excited in addition,  to have secured a place at UWE's artist book fair in April 2015, as part of this project.

God's House Tour Southampton

As part of the expansion of the new cultural quarter in Southampton, Dan Crowe, Director of Aspace, (an organisation that runs and co-ordinates projects that work towards growing creative communities in Southampton), gave myself and other members of the 5AM group of artists, a bespoke tour round God's House Tower as well as some of the city's vaults. We are hoping to engage with the various sites next year and create site responsive work as part of the refurbishment and opening of Gods House Tower. as a new arts venue in the city.

basing house drawing from nature paper cutting workshop

 A beautiful hot sunny day spent at Basing House, sketching in the gardens before returning to the old stables to convert our drawings into paper cuts. a lovely mixture of people came which is half the pleasure of workshops. The results were stunning, especially considering no one had cut with a scalpel before. 

Basing House workshop saturday 21 June 2014

I've been preparing for a workshop taking place this Saturday, 21 June 2014,  at Basing House in Basingstoke.  Not having been before, I was taken aback at the amazing history of the former Tudor house.  In it's time it was larger than Hampton Court Palace and had an enviable list of royal guests. The owner was almost bankrupted by them, so decided to curtail further visitors by demolishing half of it!

The surrounding landscape is beautiful and you could easily get lost on many of the walks.   Hopefully the weather will remain good on Saturday so I can take the workshop participants round the grounds drawing before going back to the former farm, where I'll show them how to translate all the work into layered paper drawings. 

Basing House walled garden 

closing event, sites of exchange, SPACE Gallery, Portsmouth.

You are warmly invited to the closing event of

Sites of exchange: materialising conversations 

Tuesday May 13th, 5-7pm 

Space, Eldon Building West, University of Portsmouth, PO1 2DJ

ALL WELCOME - light refreshments available 

Join the artists, Eileen White, Belinda Mitchell, Trish Bould and Kathy Oldridge, along with Dr Jane Greaves, Cosmologist (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of St Andrews) 

as they explore the exhibition, make and imagine dark matter.

 "To hold galaxies together, there needs to be 'dark matter', which we know very little about."  Dr Jane Greaves

You can contribute at any skill level, imagining through drawing, cutting, folding and stitching as well as working with crochet and knitted fabrics.

Sites of Exchange has developed over a five week period extending past dialogues and generating new ones.

Conversation takes many forms and shapes, they grow and develop through a series of improvised inputs that meander, have direction, pace and rhythm.  Exhibition making has given space for the artists to visualise, experiment, make new links and formalise new ideas and opportunities.

In particular new alliances have developed with creative writing and cosmology and new opportunities for exhibition and publication formed.

Both the developing exhibition and the methods of working have provoked analysis about the nature of conversation and research. How what might appear as  disparate thoughts can trigger new connections and shape new forms.

hope to see you there.

'sites of exchange:materialising conversations' exhibition, Space Gallery, University of Portsmouth.

The exhibition is installed.  Talks and workshops are taking place as well as an interactive Facebook page. 

Admission is free to the Eldon Building on weekdays between 10 - 5 pm. until 13 May 2014.

'sites of exchange' exhibition, installation begins at SPACE GALLERY, University of Portsmouth

sites of exchange exhibition, space gallery, portsmouth university, installing day 1
photo trish bould 31.3.14

 

sites of exchange exhibition, space gallery, portsmouth university, installing day 1
photo trish bould 31.3.14

sites of exchange exhibition, space gallery, portsmouth university, installing day 1
photo trish bould 31.3.14

sites of exchange exhibition, space gallery, portsmouth university, installing day 2
photo eileen white 1.4.14

unwrapping and placing the work in the context of the new gallery space.  has taken two days of systematic organisation involving many conversations, with each other, the space, the work and weary gallery assistants.  The ongoing processes involved in curation as well as practical considerations have been huge, but informed the journey of the work.  At the end of day 2 we adopted a code relating to our body,  in terms of the time and place the work was generated.  This has been employed as a device for materialising the structure. 

'Sites of Exchange' Exhibition SPACE Gallery Portsmouth University

I've been working at a variety of sites for the past two weeks, using new and different materials to add to the layers in my work,  re-translating all the conversations that have been taking place.

Its been a constant process of observing and then allowing things to develop, creating work that is a material response to a place and achieving an intrinsic 'knowing'  through the making.

Because the sun has finally decided to shine, I've been able to work outside using alternative photographic techniques, such as cyanotype and pinhole photography.  In addition there's been the luxury and total joy of being able to work at Badger Press for three days.  I am really enjoying the building of layers as well as their degrees of separation. The way a piece of work evolves when you start to work intuitively and organically creating a rich new surface, an expression of being in the moment, the concern being more about the doing and actions rather than an end product.

work in progress ......

8th space aspex gallery, 5 AM collaboration project

my turn out of the 5AM group of artists to spend time at the Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth responding to the groups' work.  The gallery display looks wonderful with the natural lighting enhancing the work beautifully.  Most of my time was spent making drawings of the other collaborative piece, working them up into new pieces and contexts.  My aim being was to create a responsive artists'  book, but time was against me.  Instead I managed a draft outline, a paper cut and a ceramic design.  Totally wonderful experience, which i shall be repeating on a regular basis, on alternative sites.