Rebecca Harris - a r t i s t

Thursday, 17 May 2012

Crowd funding pitch for D.I.Y. 'Natural Blonde'

update: please note the project is pending approval and not currently active...

I'm about to embark into the world of crowd funding, wish me luck! Hope you can help out too? Don't be shy and please share even if you can't help at the moment, you might know someone who can!

Here's my pitch:

Hi my name is Rebecca Harris, I'm an artist who makes objects from objects.

I'm currently having fun playing with natural tights and fake hair! This work is researching the fetish through an exploration into the materiality of the these lying little objects for beauty.

Do you like them, they're very naughty and funny aren't they? I've called them 'Natural Blondes'.

They form part of a body of work in which I have been researching into the commodity fetishism, in particular the home improvement or D.I.Y materials. Marxist commodity fetishism comments on how society projects certain values onto objects manufuctured for consumption. People no longer make what they need, stuff is made by a face-less worker and market value is thus bestowed upon it. What interests me with the D.I.Y consumerism is the halting of labour, suspending its manufacture and turning this into a item for sale in which the consumer then becomes the labourer to 'finish the job'. Some of the objects I make interrupt this use, brand new objects destined for the anatomy of the home are now reconfigured into the guise of art.

I'm getting there stay with me, although you have probably guessed where this is going now?

Right, what I have decided to do for 'Natural Blondes' is to create a D.I.Y. art pack, yes, the art object comes 'flat packed' ready for instructions on how to install it. This will be on display in my MA/pg dip at the Plymouth University summer show. This is not a first, I think there have been some famous artists who have sold their work to major galleries, they just supply the instructions of how to make it (Anya Gallaccio for example who sells instructions to re-make the real flower installations). Well what you get here is everything you need to make it at a great cost from an emerging artist.

What I need then is some money towards the costs of this project. It will be available in a limited edition set of 40, includes every item (apart from the tools, i.e. hammer) you need to make one 'Natural Blonde' anywhere you like in your home, instructions of how to install and a signed high quality postcard image stated the edition number. Therefore, by introducing the D.I.Y. objects into the guise of art I am now returning art into the guise of doing it yourself.

Don't miss out on sponsoring this project, and one of the sponsoring incentives is to own one of the editions. Oh and be quick! I've put a short time frame on this, just over a week's time, ends on my birthday actually so why not make my day and fund the project?

Any amount will be helpful so if you only have £1 then don't be shy, as Tescos say every little helps!

Any extra money made will go straight back into funding materials for other projects.

finalising work for assessment

It's that time of year for deadlines. I'm coming up to my final practice based assessment in a couple of weeks. The written based module is due on Monday and I'm fairly confident I have that under control. I really like the way this MA is arranged, full time over two normal academic years. So I get a summer holiday before starting again! Well, I will have work to do over the break and what's great is I get time to incubate ideas, let work and thoughts develop. Doing a full time 1 year MA seems ridiculous to me, over far too quickly!

Anyway, before I start waffling on een more than I have done so in my essay today at least I will share some images with you. I spent the day in the studio yesterday setting up possible works to include in my assessment and the following summer show. Oh another perk of being f/t over two years is we get to show with the degree students, we're labelled as pg dip as we're not quite MA level yet, that's next year's show!

So the works I'm selecting go by these so far, some of which have photographed beautifully!

I'm considering embracing the humour and surrealism within the work and its seems only right to play with words for the titles. These I'm thinking of calling 'natural blondes'.

and these lovely ladies 'life sucks'

Not sure on the title for the above piece, something along the lines of 'domestic drain'.

This title has to be 'Naughty Hose', so think I need to make a partner for it!

Stuck on the title for the last two, any ideas?

Friday, 11 May 2012

Bread and Roses exhibition

Saturday, 5 May 2012

QFTW - Nietzsche

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

- Nietzsche

Thursday, 3 May 2012

Live in Bread & Roses

Very excited to announce I will be exhibiting as part of a group show at Motorcade/FlashParade.

"Motorcade/FlashParade is an artist-run project space in Bristol, providing a platform for emerging artists and hosting an annual programme of exhibitions and events. Initiated in 2009 it is fast evolving into an exciting test space for contemporary practice, supporting and encouraging the development of new work and fresh ideas."

The exhibition is curated by Julie McCalden who selected Live for the group show Bread & Roses which forms part the Bristol Biennial Community Arts Festival. Here is what Julie McCalden says about the show:

"Art, as a shifter of perceptions, is a terrain which can change how we think about ourselves and the world. As such, it is a potential catalyst for producing social change. An encounter with artwork that is unusual, surprising or delivered in atypical ways can disrupt our customary behaviours, allowing us to see and think differently. Bread & Roses attempts to operate in this arena, opening up a space in which something new can take place.

Comprising both on and off-site projects, the exhibition consists of selected existing works and new works produced by invited artists, chosen for this catalytic potentiality, however unquantifiable. In accepting this immeasurability, the project remains about possibility.

Many of the works share a subtle political undercurrent, underlying the desire to see the world differently in order to change it. These pieces provide a grounding from which to view some of the more poetic works in the show. The current political climate lends this project a sense of social and political timeliness and urgency.

The show takes its name from a poem penned in 1911 by James Oppenheim, but commonly attributed to a Massachusetts textile strike in 1912 where it was used as a slogan by the women strikers – we want bread but we want roses too. It has since been appropriated for a variety of cultural and poetic interventions referencing it’s succinct recognition that basic necessities are not enough; we need life to be worth living too. In a world characterised by a sense of inevitability, this exhibition seeks to unravel common sense notions to reveal other possibilities beyond the limits of our imagination."

Friday 1^st June

Preview: 6pm – late

Saturday 2^nd June

Group critique: 2pm

Exhibition continues:

Saturday 2^nd – Sunday 3^rd June, 12-6pm

I think it's going to be a exciting show and I'm very much looking forward to see the whole collection of curated works. I will be attending on the Friday preview and Saturday critique so maybe see you there?

Saturday, 28 April 2012

QFTW - Mona Hatoum

"I have always been dissatisfied with work that just appeals to your intellect and does not actually involve you in a physical way. For me, the embodiment of an artwork is within the physical realm; the body is the axis of our perceptions, so how can art afford not to take that as a starting point? We relate to the world through our senses. You first experience an artwork physically. I like the work to operate on both sensual and intellectual levels. Meaning, connotations and associations come after the initial physical experience as your imagination, intellect, psyche are fired off by what you've seen."

From Mona Hatoum (Contemporary Artists), Phaidon Press ltd

Very busy with my essay at the moment so am sharing snippets of quotes I am using for that today, hope you like?

Thursday, 19 April 2012

website decisions

Yesterday, after checking site stats for my Axis profile, blog and website, I was quite shocked by how little traffic the website got compared to the other two. So in my usual fashion I posted on Facebook and Twitter requesting advice from others about whether I should drop the website and its subsequent costs. I was really pleased to get such a big response! Then furthering my usual response here I am blogging about it, hope I don't bore you, but I am sure there might be something of interest to those looking at their own online profiles?

Here are the figures so far this month:

website - 25

Axis profile - 609

Blog - 1,056

It's quite a difference! Now as I blog with Google and you could argue Google is the most used search engine I get a lot of traffic directed towards this site through the keywords I put on my post. Also, the blog is a constant update of information drawing the visitor back.

Axis is just great, I love my profile and this is a community where a lot of traffic is happening and in business terms it is known as spin-off (that's why you normally see a Boots near a Superdrug). So if a curator is looking for work they have a lot of artists all under one roof so to speak. (I recently had an invite to exhibit in Bristol via Axis, more news to follow soon.)

I couldn't recommend Axis enough, and if relevant, get yourselves over there and put in an application! It's just £28.50 a year and if you're a recent graduate, or about to graduate, they have a early career artist profile you can apply for at about half the yearly cost.

So for my website, my problem is the costs, it's not the domain name costs I worry about, they are quite low (I use 123.reg by the way) it's the hosting. Being an emerging and quite poor artist you try and do everything yourself. So I do my own website, I can't do all that html stuff so I use wix.com to get a professional look that is easy to achieve by yourself. Last summer I paid a yearly subscription to get a premium account, no ads, more bandwith etc (I really don't want a free one with ads on). This costs about £45 for the 12 months, not too bad. However, I have recently looked on their site and the yearly cost is now £93 or I could do a monthly instalment plan for £9.30 (mine is due for renewal in June so hoping for an special offer again by then). This doesn't seem like a huge amount to some, but for me, at the moment, and with the other things I am paying for, it is. So this has led me onto question how feasible continuing with the website will be. Hence my call out yesterday.

So for those who responded on Facebook and Twitter thanks for your feedback. Dan says a domain name adds credibility and I agree, this blog has it own and others I have had in the past link to here and they aren't really that expensive on a bi-annual basis. Linda likes the blog as it gives more insight into the work, and I think what I do here is really great for my audience. I love to share processes, other artist's work and ideas etc. One response I got from Hannah, exhibitions officer at the Plymouth College of Art gallery, is that she always looks for the artist's website. It was this that made me realise that it doesn't really matter if you get a small amount or hundreds of hits, what if I got one hit today and that turned into an exhibition offer? That's all it takes surely? Quality over quantity.

So, for now, I'll keep going with the website, see it as a unique online portfolio of my work. One word of advice I would give though is to try not to do too much online, I am finding it hard to balance time and having too much updating and housework on lots of profiles is not good and you don't want to neglect them.

I'm sorry this post is really quite boring!?

Tuesday, 17 April 2012

hmmmm human hair?

So it's still ticking away in my head - human hair (see previous post)

I have pretty much convinced myself that fake hair is exactly what I want to use, but with a MA group critique in the near future I want to make sure I have covered my ground. So when I read this quote (below) from Mona Hatoum I felt convinced fake hair is the medium I want to use.

"human hair [...] is a challenging medium for any artist, not least as it arouses often conflicting responses to do with sensuality and repulsion"

Mona Hatoum

It is exactly those conflicting responses I want to stay away from, I'm only interested in the sensuality of the hair, you have this with fake hair, when you realise it's human hair you are equally repulsed. I see fake hair as like a drawing, a representation of human hair that doesn't have the baggage of abjection.

Friday, 6 April 2012

Quote for the weekend - Mona Hatoum

"When you present someone with a statement in an artwork, once they get it, they either agree with you or dismiss your argument and move on to the next thing – no need to look again."