I have spent the last week sanding and gluing a new project – I kept two chairs from the Christmas dinner table – the table that was kept in the good room and only sat around for celebrations.  Goodness knows why but – hey it was part of my life.  I kept the large chair with the arms that was always dads chair and the other was one of  5  identical chairs that I had painted with cream gloss for some reason or other.

The earliest discovery of a chair created in Ancient Egypt dates back to 2680 BC while the most famous discovery of a chair was in 1352 when the throne of Pharaoh Tutankhamen was discovered within a tomb. Furniture of Ancient Egypt, including chairs, were designed for both functionality as well as a form of art.  I wanted my chairs to serve as both.

THE FOLLOWING IS NOTES FROM MY RESEARCH

The seat is the most important piece of furniture in Africa, usually taking the form of a stool or a chair. It serves as a social insignia because every person is entitled to a type of seat that corresponds to their social rank. It was said that a man was judged and respected according to the kind of stool he had. Stools can be bought by anyone, as long as the model is appropriate to the person’s social status. The stool was understood to be the seat of its owner’s soul.  When not in use it was therefore placed at a slant against a wall so that none of the souls passing by could settle on it. The Asanti say that there are no secrets between a man and his stool.

The golden stool is very carefully protected. No one has ever sat on it and since its arrival, IT HAS NOT TOUCHED THE GROUND. As an Ashanti symbol, the golden stool represents the worship of ancestors, well-being, and the nation of Ashanti. It is always lying on its own stool or on the skin of an animal.

One and Three Chairs, 1965, is a work by Joseph Kosuth.   The piece consists of a chair, a photograph of this chair, and an enlarged dictionary definition of the word “chair”. The photograph depicts the chair as it is actually installed in the room, and thus the work changes each time it is installed in a new venue.

Two elements of the work remain constant: a copy of a dictionary definition of the word “chair” and a diagram with instructions for installation. Both bear Kosuth’s signature. Under the instructions, the installer is to choose a chair, place it before a wall, and take a photograph of the chair. This photo is to be enlarged to the size of the actual chair and placed on the wall to the left of the chair. Finally, a blow-up of the copy of the dictionary definition is to be hung to the right of the chair, its upper edge aligned with that of the photograph.

The first part of my installation is celebrate the spiritual relevance of the chair, the ceremonies it was part of and the importance it was given in the room it was never allowed to leave.

Apparently, ever since I was little I have been practicing ‘decoupage’- I just thought it was a nice way to use one thing (books or maps) to make another (video cabinets, chairs, boxes) nice!  I covered the entire chair with my mothers bible – I had kept a little bible when I moved house but had no intention of reading it although I would not have charity shopped it.  I have no idea what happened to the other bibles we had at home, these belonged to my fathers side of the family.  The little bible had a book plate inside inscribed to my mother for perfect attendance at Sunday school.  We were not a religious family, my parents attended church occasionally – never during my life.  I went to Sunday school and church at Easter with the school.

Here is the first chair….in the corner at www.axolotl.co.uk

Step 2 – Dads chair …..

OK there is a recession, but why leave any money you have in a bank to watch the interest rates crumble to dust, invest in a beautiful original painting, then you can gaze at it daily and uplift your spirits.

What’s wrong with people??????????????????

www.axolotl.co.uk

The Axolotl Gallery holds a deceptively sugary appeal from Dundas Street; its bright purple shop front displays colourful, surreal paintings promising an array of delectable, cultural sweets for passing dilettantes. The interior, reminiscent of a boutique, is open and uncluttered yet holds various separate spaces to discover unique treasures, trinkets and memories.

The work that most pertains to this twee, knick-knack feel (whilst simultaneously undermining its apparent light-heartedness) is Sarah Wilson’s elegy to her adoptive parents through sculpture and installation. This includes found sentimental objects – such as ticket stubs, horse shoes, figurines, badges and condoms – encased and displayed in small boxes of resin. These intensely personal curios are arranged and fossilised to form new narrative meanings, the stand-alone piece being the half-encased work shoes of Wilson’s father, visually arresting as the thick, translucent resin distorts the worn texture of the leather, evoking a strange transformation of mundane objects into haunted relics and the absurdity of simple human endeavour in the face of mortality.

Sarah’s work is a beautifully personal collection of 18 framed resins, an engraved dressing table with its drawer full of buttons, a poem and a pair of army boots trapped in two huge blocks of resin.

Describing her work Sarah’s passion and enthusiasm is obvious,

“The project has been years in planning but finally came together when I lost my Depeche Mode concert tickets.  I turned the house upside down and I unearthed a huge treasure trove of memories I’d hoarded throughout my life.

When my adoptive parents died I was faced with the task of realistically clearing out their possessions, one day my son will have to do the same for me.  The little nut I found on a beach in Dubai and the chicken feather I kept will mean nothing to him, that’s when I decided to capture my memories in resin, and, like a fly caught in amber there is no order to how things were placed.

The dressing table was my mothers, I stripped back the old varnish and printed a photograph of her with her best friend from school on the top and made 72 resin buttons (one for each year of her life), each containing a scrap of lace from her wedding veil to put in the top drawer – old ladies always have a button box hidden somewhere!  I engraved the mirror with the words ALIENI IURIS – the Roman law of adoption and pinned a poem I’d written in memoriam to my dad next to the picture.

The army boots belonged to my father, I called the piece “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” – mum was his rock – lets just leave it at that”

The installation was very favourably received, people engaging with the pieces and a few tears being shed at the poem – Sarah still can’t bring herself to read it and the Depeche Mode tickets are still lost!

The saddest line I’ve ever heard,

apart from that one in Bambi

Is the bit in the Railway Children

The only film where Jenny Agutter keeps her clothes on

She’s is waiting at the station

The steam is swirling round her from the old train

Running towards him she cries “daddy, my daddy”

Even before my father died that line used to make me cry.

My father wasn’t a great man,

He died from cancer and left nothing for the world to remember him

The priest phoned me to ask for my memories

He was a stand-in priest and never knew my dad

I remembered him as a man who fixed things – Even if they
weren’t broken

Every weekend he polished his car

Each summer he grew tomatoes in the greenhouse

At the funeral we sang All Things Bright and Beautiful
It was totally inappropriate

He loved all things electronic

He loved cooking, and curries and MacEwans Export

His last words to me before he died were “I have loved you from day one”

He died and never got to meet my son

My mother and I giggled at the funeral and then we all went and got drunk

He wasn’t a great man but he was daddy, my daddy

I love the smoothness and clarity of resin and how it gives permanence by trapping objects like amber.   I have been thinking about what to do with a pair of leather army boots that belonged to my dad.  They are heavy duty boots with leather laces and metal segs in the soles.   I had considered encasing them in a square block of resin but this would mean they were imprisoned for ever so I decided to cast the bottom of the boots then when the resin dried, turn them upside down and cast the tops.

It gives the illusion that they are being cracked open like an easter egg.  I’m glad I decided against the perfection of a clear square – this makes them so much more interesting.

With all the building work currently going on I had to search the entire house, drawers and cupboards, everywhere.  I realized I have a strange collection of things I keep – not just in case – but because they have a sentimental reason that I can’t really remember.

Every time I tidy a drawer these objects get put back – these include a nut I found on a beach in Dubai, a chicken feather I found attached to an egg in the egg box, the plastic penguin I was fleeced for a euro for in Berlin.  My wisdom tooth, a Spice Girls ring, the bracelet Charlie won me at the fair and is luminous yellow, some shells and some strange stones – etc etc the list goes on.

When I am old a gray these things will just be chucked in a bin cos they have no meaning to anyone at all so I decided to cast them in resin as a series of plaques or coasters – this is an ongoing project as I keep uncovering ‘treasures” – its a 3 dimensional list and it makes me very happy RESIN ROCKS!

oh yeah – I never found the Depeche Mode tickets so had to buy another set off ebay!

The concrete floor has been laid and the windows are being painted.

I asked some scaffolders for a piece of their rope – I think they were so surprised they gave me 3 metres!!!  And by god what fun you can have with rope!!

I will put the 11 pieces I did last night in later when they dry – they look great – and I borrowed the wood from a skip!

Still toying with the idea of painting versus photography – may do both but here’s the first set of paintings anyway.

and you cannot have a circus without elephants – so I borrowed they best I could from the safari park!

I catch up with Edinburgh based artist Sarah Wilson at her studio in Leith, she is cursing the Scottish weather as she cannot finish her outdoor sculpture due to impromptu rain and apologising for her taste in music (The Selector blares in the background).

Sarah has painted and photographed for as long as she can remember but its only recently she has put her past to bed and really focussed on her latest project – The AXO Gallery due to open at the end of this year.

Sarah laughed “Do you think the 3 degrees would have been so successful if they had called themselves the 3 HND’s?”

“Not getting into Edinburgh School of Art for the 4th time made me realise that only I can make this happen”

Sarah has just completed her 3rd book, a series of retrospectives of all her old work dating back to school and college and some of her poetry from her stint as a performance poet.  “I felt it was time to move on, at 42 I really should stop being a perpetual student and put myself out there as a professional artist.  I have an HND in acting, graphic design and contemporary art practise – and I am pulling it all together for my latest project”

Sarah has always been ambitious, she crawled from a typing pool at Scottish Widows and worked in their marketing department for 7 years, unfortunately her asthma, which she has suffered from since childhood caused her to take early retirement at 23.  “I nearly died on a Scottish Widows fun trip to Paris” she laughed “that’s what made me decide that there was more to life than office work”.

She went to drama school (the year below Euan McGregor) and blagged herself an equity card, got an agent and did bits and pieces for ages, never quite getting the big break.  “Acting is hellish!  I sat for hours in a bath of my own blood with my throat slit for the film Jack of Diamonds – it bombed and I got cramp”

Sarah then worked for Radio Forth in Edinburgh “I got the job because I had jumped out of a cake dressed as Marilyn Monro years ago for Big Al’s 40th birthday and they remembered me.”

“Radio Forth was great fun, I met a lot of interesting people and was sorry when the format changed and I was no longer needed.  I remember my mother being mortified when her favourite tabloid printed an article about the Edinburgh Festival – I was named and shamed as the woman who showed Irish comedian Michael Smiley her breasts for a fiver – hey I was drunk and I needed a taxi fare!  Rob Newman offered me £3.50 cos he didnt have enough – I offered to lend him the rest!”

She also worked as a stand-up comedienne appearing regularly at the Stand comedy club in Edinburgh and comparing at her own club The Rabbit Warren.   “Then my mum died and nothing seemed funny anymore”.

Sarah’s latest venture came about when her partner bought a house with a huge warehouse attached.  “This was the chance of a lifetime and I am very lucky, the garden is full of skips and workmen.  I am having a concrete floor fitted and walls lined, there will be disabled access and a wee office for my kettle!”

AXO gallery is a sister gallery to Axolotl Gallery, a large space in Dundas Street that her partner plans to open as a shop and gallery for contemporary painting, prints and photography.

“Rather than have an opening showcasing my work I plan to showcase the space.  I want people to come along and see its potential with a view to exhibiting there in the future.”

And by using her marketing skills she plans to have an opening like no other.

“I have always been fascinated by the circus, probably because I have never got to see one, when I was little the circus would come to Murrayfield every year and I would go along, unfortunately my allergy to all animals and straw and sawdust meant I would be removed wheezing and eyes streaming before the show started!”

I want to have my own circus and I have been researching like crazy – as early as 275 bc Romans witnessed performances by elephants.  It is Barnum and Bailey and the Ringling Brothers that really interests me- pre 1919, a time when ‘giant posters in lush colours foretold the wonders that would appear in town, usually for one day only’.  The circus has always been a larger than life creature, showing up out of nowhere and then, as quickly and unexpectedly as it came, disappearing once again.

The memories of these colourful days are all black and white photography and I hope to capture that feeling”

For those lucky enough to go to the opening may not be aware that they are part of the artwork, as the actual piece will be created on the night and for those that visit the gallery after, the circus will have left town.

“‘It’s not just my work that will be on show, I am collaborating with four other artists; Sarah Green, Elaine Boyd, Jill Farquhar and Jill Skulina and Estrella the Elephant”

Been playing about with photos – taking shots through different things – check this oot

and from Die Kunst ist Super! a week bit of FLUX

Duchamp van photographed through a kaleidoscope !

The Celeste Prize is an International contemporary art prize and a network for arts professionals – check it out on www.celesteprize.com 

We had arranged to meet a few of the artists with a view to inviting them to exhibit at AXOLOTL Gallery.  

www.celesteprize.com/tommasoneri (Italian painter)

www.celesteprize.com/hyerimlee (South Korean – graphics photographer)

www.celesteprize.com/clementpricethomas (United States – Installation) ***** MY FAVOURITE********

www.celesteprize.com/surabhisaraf (Indian – Video) ********MY FAVOURITE VIDEO EVER*********

the artist firing tomatoes at a poster of Hirsts skull!!