Holly Daniels - Fairy Dwelling




Holly Daniels Fairy Dwelling

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

Our twelfth Dwell sculpture, 'Fairy Dwelling' comes from Holly Daniels. Holly has previously exhibited with Collect Connect in the Freed Book in 2013. Holly's story for The Freed Book is titled, 'Have I got News For You' and presents a satirical narrative. Holly continued in a similar vein with 'Warnings & Ransoms' for the Patternotion Book also 2013. For this publication Holly wrote,



Have I got News For You (Detail)

"I know that the cartoons I produce won't change anyone's political opinion; at best a cartoon enlightens and provokes debate, at worst events have moved on by the time of publication and the cartoon makes little sense at all. From my own perspective, these cartoons are my way of trying to reclaim a little bit of control in a world in which democratic choice is limited and power is put into the hands of the few who aren't necessarily concerned for the many...." (Holly Daniels, Patternotion 2013).

One can't help but be reminded of the recent extremities that satirical cartoons can provoke in today's world.

 

For the Dwell book Holly has provided us with something quite different. Fairy Dwelling is a delicate paper sculpture complete with a tiny swing and window.

I love how the tiny swing makes the dwelling seem large enough to live inside, a clever use of size and scale in keeping with our belief in the diminutive size of fairies.



Fairy Dwelling near the Thames

Holly's photo (above) shows Fairy Dwelling made out of patterned and textured paper and we can see how carefully made this sculpture is (it takes a steady hand to make Holly's sculpture as well as we see here).
 

We  placed Fairy Dwelling on the North bank of The Thames near London Bridge. We found this richly coloured and textured industrial remnant on which to put the sculpture - perhaps a Dwelling for an industrial fairy or two!
 

We were also enjoying playing with the swing like quality of the crane compared to the miniscule swing in Holly's Dwelling.
 Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

DR



Helen Hunt - Thoreau's Room

Helen Hunt - Thoreau's Room
At the Mile End climbing wall,  next to Regents canal, London

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

Henry David Thoreau's cabin

Today on the London streets we have a little piece of Massachusetts on the streets of London. Artist Helen Hunt has brought a replica of Henry David Thoreau's cabin to our attention with her fabulous net from the Dwell book. Hunt has been exhibiting with us since our south coast magnet exhibition on the gates of the pier in St Leonards and Hastings. She has a growing reputation on the wider UK scene for her delicate painted moths on the pages and covers of antiquarian books.

Wood-tiger by Helen Hunt
Courtesy of http://www.helenhunt.co.uk/

Hunt's art is inspired by the changes that the seasons bring to the natural world and this is evident in her net for the dwell project. It is inspired by Henry D. Thoreau’s hut at Walden where he lived simply,  surrounded by nature and wrote many beautiful pieces on what he observed in this place. His hut was a rudimentary dwelling (noun) itself but the act of observing, pondering and writing on Nature could also be considered to be dwelling(verb).

She was keen to combine a quote from Thoreau’s writing done while living at Walden with many visual references to the animals and plantlife that were around him. Helen Hunt's dwelling gives you the sense that Thoreau was completely immersed in his surroundings and that Nature worked its way into interior space as much as he went out in search of it. On the outside of the built net we can see this quote from Thoreau journal (3rd January 1853), "I have a room all to myself; it is nature."

Page 23 Dwell Book
Helen Hunt

Here Helen Hunt presents us with something to dwell over in our minds, Walden is one of the most challenging books for us all in the 21st century because it rocks the very foundation of our consumerism. When I read it in my formative years I was shocked by the fact that you could own but one pair of trousers for all your adult life. I tried and failed with my pantaloon experiment but you'll not with this net which received an Average difficulty rating from the book's author Dean Reddick.

"I have enjoyed working in this way and am satisfied with the end result. The real proof of the pudding will be to see whether people are able to follow my instructions and make ‘Thoreau’s Room’ - and most importantly, whether they enjoy doing so!"
Helen Hunt (2015)

Well that's a challenge to you, time to get making! Maybe afterwards you'll take Thoreau's room back into it's natural habitat. We placed ours beside the climbing wall in Mile End, next to Regent's Canal, London.

Regent's Canal at Mile End, London

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

 To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

AL.

Gavin Blackhurst - 46 Malbet Park

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

46 Malbet Park

Today we have Gavin's pristine sculpture, 46 Malbet Park. This is the first time that Gavin has exhibited with Collect Connect and we extend a very warm welcome to him.
Gavin's is the most precise net that we have in the Dwell book and his instructions are equally clear. This photo of the completed net was sent to us by Gavin, we challenge you to make the net as carefully as this!

As Gavin is new to Collect Connect we do not know a lot about him. However we like to have a guess and we wonder if Gavin is an architect. I have had a look at google maps and Gavin's net is accurate enough for me to reckon I can see the house in Malbet Park, Edinburgh. This makes 46 Malbet Park unique to Dwell as it is the only accurate model of an actual house in the book.

In this photo we can see 46 Malbet Park nestled in a metal grill opposite the Monument in the City of London. The Monument remembers the Great Fire of London in 1666 and, like so much of post-fire London, is designed by Christopher Wren (and Robert Hooke the natural philosopher).
Gavin's sculpture brings a little bit of the Scottish Capital Edinburgh onto the streets of London and reminds me of how ubiquitous dwelling is. It also reminds me of how many people the Great Fire of London must have made homeless.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

DR

Eve Allsop - Home

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.



Eve Allsop, Home beside the Banana Bridge, Mile End, London

 

Today we have Eve Allsop's Home dwelling on the streets of London. Our exhibition is in its 8th day now and has been featured in Artists Newsletter as one of the highlights for the coming week, so we better not let them down.

'Somewhere Between My Fingertips and the
 End of the World I Hover'  - Eve Allsop

Eve Allsop has been exhibiting with us since the Brighton Open in 2011 where she immediately piqued our interest with her idiosyncratic brand of non-conformist creativity. I will never forget seeing the bound figure in 'Somewhere Between My Fingertips and the End of the World I Hover' with someone else's photo glued to the face and wearing a t-shirt with '+1 Add as friend'. It chilled me with the thought of warping personas and losing one's own identity.

Eve Allsop's net is the only one in the book and exhibition to reference an online haven or dwelling. It is a clever play on the ubiquitous HOME link that we see on every website or blog, yet I have never thought of that HOME as a real home until now. We increasingly gather 'friends' around us but we may never have met them in the real world. This net gives us the opportunity to bring them out of ephemeral internet and give them a moment of permanency in the real breathing world.

Eve Allsop

I think Allsop has captured several interesting themes here and these are reflected in her also wider work as an artist. Her practice is a study of cyberculture and the evolving function of the self portrait. She is interested in the way communities and identities manifest themselves online, as if rejecting tangible reality for a limitless, digital utopia. An internet profile is an extension of one’s public persona, and can be seen as a comforting realm of self-importance.

Eve explains more, "I explore ideas of anxiety, obsession, fantasy, revolt, incoherent narrative, and cyberspace as physical territory. Hyperbolically echoing the aesthetics of social networking and amateur photography, my work addresses the inescapable banality of daily life and the conflicting notions of freedom and enslavement that come with virtual escapism."

Home is placed at the Green Bridge in Mile End or as the locals affectionately call it, the banana bridge, due to its yellow underside.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

Ella Klenner and Fausto - House by the Wild Sea

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.



Ella Klenner and Fausto - House by the Wild Sea

Today's Dwelling is Ella Klenner and Fausto's House by the Wild Sea. Ella first exhibited with Collect Connect in The HideBird Magnet Show as part of the E17 Arts Trail in 2012. Ella lives and has an art practice in the German town of Bad Oldesloe in the north of Germany.


House by the wild sea by
Ella Klenner and Fausto

Ella's art works cover a wide range. For example the whimsical and beautifully elegant House by the Wild Sea to the eerie and atmospheric Allien below and her beautiful nature studies of woodpeckers and foxes. It is great to have Ella join us for the Dwell Project.

Allien

We note that House by the Wild Sea is by Ella and Fausto but we remain uncertain of who Fausto is. The partnership has worked well for Dwell giving us a net which is deceptively simple and a finished piece which is dynamic, potent and evocative.

We placed Ella and Fausto's House on one of the many stairs leading down to the River Thames. This particular staircase is on the North Bank near Tower Bridge. The river water was sloshing and slapping against the worn stone steps, chucking up globs of frothy, murky water. We placed the small, frail seeming paper structure on a step and waited for the river to claim it. The little house survived a few splashes before being swamped.




One of the things I am enjoying about the Dwell project is the sense of fragility and freedom that comes with placing paper structures in the city. There is an uneasy relationship between the lightness of the paper and the indurate environment of London. House by the Wild Sea provokes similar feelings in me; the plain little house with its garden fence stands alone against the backdrop of the vast sea and the house is all the more precious because of its vulnerability.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

DR

Eleanor Bedlow - Container Dwell

Container by Eleanor Bedlow

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

Eleanor Bedlow at work

We keep up our theme today for all things East London, from Dean Reddick in Walthamstow to Eleanor Bedlow in nearby Leytonstone. Both are active and well known artists in their respective communities but Bedlow's journey didn't start in the capital city. She grew up in Kagawa Japan before moving to London at the age of 11. She gained a degree in Fine Art from Falmouth College of Arts in 2005 before studying observational drawing at the Prince’s Drawing School in 2008.

Lift - Eleanor Bedlow

She first came to our attention when she exhibited the brilliant 'The Lift' along the seafront at the Brighton Open in 2011. We welcomed her back into the fold last year for FAB Fridge in 2014 but in between she has filled her working life with many exhibitions, curating and experiencing foreign cultures. Although Eleanor Bedlow is best known for her imagined worlds it was the real world experiences that caught my eye during her 2 month teaching residency at the International Institute of Fine Arts in Modinagar, India.

Page 15 Dwell: A book of nets
Eleanor Bedlow

We were all really chuffed she chose to publish a net with us for the Dwell project because her work has a sensitivity to her surroundings and how the memories of these places stay with us. Her dwelling is unique to the book as it requires no glue or sticky tape, just good old engineering and plenty of skill. Although it looks simple it is one of only 7 nets in the book that has received a COMPLEX rating from Dean. For me it reminds me of the open wooden structures we find in gardens and public parks. It's floor is crazy paved and I imagine a miniature band striking up a tune whilst families play on scorched grass and over-excited dogs dig under rose bushes.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

AL.

Dean Reddick - Mr Net

Treehouse, Dean Reddick by Euston Station

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

Dean Reddick - Treehouse

The first four days have seen our dwellings beside the water, either the Thames or the Regents Canal. Today we're heading inland to find a place for Dean Reddick's miniature hideaways. Dean is the driving force behind the Dwell project and is also a well respected artist and art therapist. Until recently he was an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmith's College where he helped organise the 'Defining Art Therapy for the 21st Century' Conference in 2013. The event tag line was 'Finding a voice, making a mark' and it this ethos that runs through his personal practice and his projects for CollectConnect.

Hidebird E17 Arts Trail

Dean Reddick has been exhibiting with us for many years and with myself for even longer. His name is carved into Walthamstow folklore (where he works and lives with his family) because of his legendary Hidebird exhibition. Nearly every year he erects a bird hide in his front garden. The hide is inhabited by artist's bird sculptures and we as spotters and twitchers are relegated to the outside space. This is typical of Dean's work, his sense of place in the community and his playful attitude for Nature and Art.

Dean Reddick

There are two Dean Reddick dwells in the book, Shelter One and Treehouse. Today we find the latter in a real tree, not just a paper one, near Euston Station. One of the reoccurring themes of the dwell project has been not just the physical space for dwelling but that for the mind to inhabit, a place to dream. Treehouse is another of these, it harks back to our childhoods and the treasured memories we still nurture inside us. For who could refuse the chance to build a treehouse once again, to escape and play in the skies.

Shelter One, Dean Reddick, British Library

Despite a brief sojourn in Coventry to complete his Art degree Dean Reddick is a Londoner and has lived here all his life. He supports Arsenal and is proud of the capital's culture and history. This exhibition is very close to his heart. His second constructed net is located outside the British Library, Euston Road and is called Shelter. Dean explains a little more about the project and why shelter might be relevant at this moment in society.

"Dwelling seems to me to be a fundamental state for people animals and plants. There is the concrete dwelling, a place such as a home, a nest, a den. There is the idea of dwelling on something, to think and mull over, which suggests that the mind is a place where thoughts and ideas can rest, at least for a while. For me, the idea of dwelling implies a private space or state of mind even though a dwelling might be shared. Finally I hope that Dwell also makes us aware of the social economic and political aspects of dwelling; dispossession, homelessness, war, asylum and refugees, habitat destruction and the emotional states where we cannot dwell but must endlessly move so that we become strangers in our own bodies."

Dwell Book
Sampson Low Ltd

Its wonderful to see Shelter One beside our national library for it is here that all CollectConnect books are preserved for future generations as well as The Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

AL.

Catherine Wynne-Paton - Raft at Sea



Catherine Wynne-Paton - Raft at Sea

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

Today we are cast adrift with Catherine's Raft at Sea.

Catherine has recently graduated from Hereford College of Art and we are very pleased to welcome her back for her second Collect Connect exhibition.

courtesy of http://www.wynnepaton.co.uk/

Catherine's work 'explores the gap between random and meaningful, centred on text, seeking to locate the liminal place when meaningful becomes random'.(http://www.wynnepaton.co.uk/)

 This image, taken from Catherine's web site, suggests something on the verge of being recognised, either a representation on the way to becoming seen or a form that is disintegrating or dissolving. I find this visual tension appealing.


Raft at sea is likewise a very appealing piece of work. I particularly like the simplicity of the net. The detail here shows the net for the logs for the raft. It is hard to imagine from the flat net how the neat little raft comes about until one has a go at building it.

Here we can sea Raft at Sea on the Regents Canal at Kings Cross.
This area of London has undergone massive redevelopment recently including the canal area and both Kings Cross and St Pancras International railway stations.
The raft proved to be surprisingly buoyant and floated quite happily in the somewhat murky canal water before eventually becoming waterlogged and needing rescuing!

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.



Catherine Wynne-Paton - Raft at Sea

Bryan Benge - Cityscape



Bryan Benge Cityscape

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.
 



London Bridge

Our third sculpture, 'Cityscape' is by Bryan Benge.  He has been an exhibiting artist since the 1970's and is a regular exhibitor with Collect Connect as well as organising Collect Connect exhibitions (The Future Bound). Bryan is a member of The London Group and a Lecturer of Art and Design. One of the great pleasures of being involved with Collect Connect is working alongside Bryan.

Bryan is currently working on 'Episodic Schemata', a series of surreal images in which space and form are somehow twisted together to create disconcerting feelings of vertigo and where narratives never quite come into focus.

Cityscape gives us the possibility of reinventing the capital's famous skyline. Why not have Big Ben East of London Bridge and have the Bridge itself spanning Bermondsey rather than straddling Old Father Thames?
 



The Shard

We photographed Cityscape in front of the grandiose glass spike 'The Shard' by architect Renzo Piano. One wonders how Bryan's reimagined skyline would look against the backdrop of one of London's famous Parks or a busy shopping street on a Saturday afternoon?   DR


Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.