A Cause For Celebration!

Back in October I submitted a proposal for a solo show at Westbourne Grove Church Artspace and yesterday was absolutely delighted to hear that the selection committee had really liked my work and were happy to offer me a show this summer! This will be the first solo show of my work and I must confess feels like a bit of a “Jim’ll Fix It” moment! Westbourne Grove Church Artspace is a contemporary exhibition space in the heart of Notting Hill, London. The first time I heard of the space was when Kirsty E. Smith exhibited her show Close Encounters of a Frillip Moolog Kind, I really liked the space and thought it would be suited to my work. There are two tower rooms that have street level windows and a central lobby space. Here are some pictures of the space being used by other artists:

lobby space and tower room

The show is planned to run from 7th July to 10th August and is provisionally entitled Traces and Testament. I have the majority of the work I want to show, with a couple more pieces I’d like to finish and include before the date which shouldn’t be a problem. What I am a little more daunted by (and completely lacking in experience in!) is how to curate, and effectively publicise the show. How to know which pieces to select and how best to display them together so the show is more than just the sum of its parts? How to write effective catalogue descriptions, press release, and then get people to actually come?! Well I guess the learning has to start somewhere and hopefully I’ll be able to pick up advice along the way from more experienced individuals.

Lately

Lately I’ve been mostly wrapped in a duvet due to a broken boiler (the upside being it motivated me to get to the gym so I could have hot showers!), and coffee staining many treasure map invitations with Oliver for his Pirate themed birthday party.

Work wise there are a few pieces I have either in progress or mulling over – mostly in relation to The Ebony Tower collaborative project. The 5ft bird cage piece is still causing me no ends of trouble, never quite going where I want it to. Part of me wonders if I should just let it go but overall I still think it has potential to work somehow and I think its probably good for me to have a piece sitting in my studio that I have to wrestle with. A slow growing piece that, in contrast, I find very restful to work on is made up of many different vintage doilies sewn together with gold thread. Having had quite a definite idea from the start of how I would like the finished piece to look suspended and lit, filling a large space – I have been free to enjoy the process of  growing the piece and watching it change. On Friday mornings I take the piece to a womens craft group that a fiend of mine set up recently, and work on it while women grow relationships with one another and pass on skills. As the piece reflects something of womens perceived roles and their impact as a relational group – this meeting place seems quite pertinent.

one of Deans linocuts

I mentioned the Ebony Tower project – this is something I have been getting very excited about again recently. Dean and I feel we need to start looking more definitely for a venue(s) to put on this show – partly so we have a deadline to work to and partly so we can consider the space we will be working with in some of the works that are created. We are also considering bringing a third person on board to the project, someone who could specifically help us make the most of the curation of the show as we feel that is an area we are both lacking in expertise in. Hopefully this may also help us with funding applications to get finance to tour the show nationally and maybe even overseas.

Ebony Tower work in progress

Although not art related I have to give a plug to The Primer Design Research Foundation website that has just gone up. The Research Foundation is a new charity set up by my husband Rob Powell and Jim Wicks with the mission of making DNA detection technologies available to countries that currently do not have access to such health care benefits. Following on from the success of their commercial company Primer Design this charity will now provide a means to improving the quality of life of others.

Bristol Gallery Feedback

Fairy Tale, wood and steel, Hywell Livingstone

Unfortunately I couldn’t make the private view to the To Be Confirmed exhibition and so still haven’t had chance to view the shows work altogether yet. I saw a few of the works when I went to drop off mine and particularly liked Hywell Livingstones Fairy Tale and Luke Mitchells Photographs. I’m planning to go up to Bristol on the 20th of Feb so look forward to seeing all the work properly then and I’m sure I’ll post some pics on the blog after that.

So far the show has been reviewed by Theo Wood on a-n and I was really chuffed to see my name in the Recommended Viewing of the arts section of the Big Issue!

Things Left Unsaid

New piece, “Things Left Unsaid”.

Things Left Unsaid, 2010. Ring boxes, gold thread. Chantal Powell

there is a little magic in the air

the illusion of an original idea!

Well first let me wish every one a happy new year! Its been busy family time for me over Christmas and I’m feeling inspired and excited to get back to work. Well I was until about 10 minutes ago – thats when I came across someones work who I hadn’t seen before (thats what comes of still desperately playing art knowledge catch up!) which includes work with sewn together peacock feathers very much like the piece I was feeling all proud to exhibit next week in Bristol.

New York artist Carol Bove  “uses objects, artifacts and images from the past to create elegant, enigmatic works that often take the form of sculptural assemblages. . . Bove is continually fascinated by the way the forms and ideas of art and culture can re-surface in different places and at different times. . .Bove can be seen as a kind of cultural archaeologist, rescuing objects and ideas and examining their survival in the contemporary world. If objects are imprinted with the particularities of the environment in which they were produced, how do they operate in our time? Can they only appear to us now as remnants, recollections or souvenirs? Are they reappearing now or did they never go away?

So should I be pleased that I am of similar mindset as a successful artist who has exhibited at the likes of the Maccarone Gallery New York,the Kunstverein Hamburg, MoMa, and the Tate Modern, or just gutted that my soon to be exhibited work isn’t as original as I thought?

Detail from Untitled, 2009 - Chantal Powell

detail of Carol Bove's installation at New York's Maccarone, 2007

Exhibiting at The Bristol Gallery

Guardian Angel by Phil Sayers shown in The Bristol Gallery

I was really pleased to hear today that The Bristol Gallery want to show four of my pieces in their next show, To Be Confirmed, which will be running from January 16th – February 25th 2010. The Bristol Gallery, located on Millennium Promenade, Harbourside, Bristol, is a contemporary art gallery representing international, national and regional artists working in a wide range of media. The show that they are running at the moment, New Contemporaries I, includes a number of artists whose work I admire such as Susan Bowman and Fran Richardson so I’m delighted to be part of the gallery’s next project.

I’m particularly excited as it will be the first opportunity I have had to show the peacock bed piece publicly. The other pieces they have selected to show are, Someone to Watch Over You, Fragile, and Wonderland.

To Be Confirmed: 16th January – 25th February

Gallery Opening Hours: Monday – Friday: 9am – 6pm, Saturday: 10am – 5pm, Sunday: 11am – 4 pm, Late night opening: Thursday until 8pm

The Bristol Gallery, Building 8, Unit 2, Millennium Promenade, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5TY  Tel: 0117 930 0005

Mat Collishaw

wonderland – age 4

A piece I’m working on at the moment that reflects on childhood memories, secrets and innocence. My little boy’s reaction to it was great. He crouched down and gasped as he peered in. He said he wished he could keep all those special treasures so he could look at them all the time. When my brother-in-law caught sight of it he said it made him think of playing marbles as a boy.

wooden chest, dust, glass and acrylic paperweights, feathers, fairy lights

Wildgoose Memorial Library

If ever there was a place that was a work of art in itself it has to be the cabinet of curiosities that is the Wildgoose Memorial Library. The library is an ongoing accumulation of materials that inform Jane Wildgoose’s work as an artist and writer. The WML is arranged in a domestic setting with a combination of found and made objects alongside books, all of which can be “read”. Jane says the objects are designed to “facilitate meditation and free association on subjects pertaining to the mysteries of the living in relation to the dead, transience, memory, and immortality”. The library is arranged into 10 sections that include, “The Vitality of Death” and “The Miss Havisham Archive”

To see  a virtual tour of the library click here. To see the library in person contact Jane via the website www.janewildgoose.co.uk

One of Jane Wildgoose’s projects that focus on her thoughts on “Spirit of Place” is The Curious Case, an exploration and reflection on a small suitcase full of objects that used to belong to a patient at All Saints Hospital.

You can read her thoughts here and view The Curious Case here.