September Update

You're invited to....

TRADING STATION, Friday 21st September at Curve Gallery

TRADING STATION is POST's second project. Exchanging with Istanbul, it seeks to uncover methods for artists to work together internationally, making the most of personal relationships and finding useful ways to develop work together using virtual methods. The interim results of this exchange feature in this exhibition at Liverpool’s Curve Gallery and showcase various responsive works developed within the exchange project.

Claire will premiere her four channel split screen film called 'Watermark: An intervention in four directions' which was produced during her two-week residency in Istanbul at the beginning of September.

Artists
Gülçin Aksoy, Nancy Atakan, AtılKunst, Cecilia Kinnear, Susan Meyerhoff Sharples, Amanda Oliphant, Claire Weetman, Robyn Woolston.

 
PREVIEW EVENING
21 Sep: 18.00 - 21 .00

EXHIBITION CONTINUES
22 Sep - 13. Oct 2012,
Thursday - Saturday 13.00 - 19.00

OPEN CONVERSATION:
These events will profile the artist’s physical and virtual methods of exchange, with the opportunity for invited guests and
audience members to participate.
22 Sep. 14.00 - 16.00
6th Oct. 14.00 - 16.00

CURVE GALLERY
Carlisle Building, 67 Victoria Street, Liverpool. L1 6DE. United Kingdom

TRADING STATION is funded by Arts Council England, Grants for the Arts.

Art Merseywide - The best of the open exhibitions
25 September to 1 November 2012
Liverpool Academy of Arts, Seel Street, Liverpool
Open Tuesday to Saturday 12 - 4pm



This exhibition will display some of the best artworks from the Open Exhibitions held in 20011/12 by the greater Merseyside boroughs: Halton, Knowsley, Sefton, Wirral and Liverpool.  Claire will be exhibiting her drawing 'One Minute: Van Gogh Museum'.

There is something disconcerting about a dead zebra...
29 September - 27 October 2012
Private view: Friday 28 September, 6pm
Part of Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival
Warrington Museum & Art Gallery
Museum Street, Cultural Quarter, Warrington, WA1 1JB

This Markmakers exhibition tours to Warrington as part of the Contemporary Arts Festival.  For the past two years, the artists' collective Markmakers have been exploring the concept of narratives. Reading and drawing, investigating and creating, members of the group have produced a diverse range of responses exploring story, folklore, personal history and the threads that bring it all together.



Claire will be exhibiting her book installation 71 Steps (After David Nash), which documents her collection of stones from this artwork at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.


Not From Here
An exhibition by Platform members during the Liverpool Biennial 2012, as part of Independents Biennial.
15 - 28 September 2012
At Baltic Creative, Jamaica Street (entrance off New Bird Street), Liverpool, L1 0BP
Claire Weetman has been working with other artists in St Helens to develop affordable studio space in the town.  This exhibition features artists from this emerging St Helens group, looking at the theme 'Not from Here'.

In other news...

Future travels to Shanghai
In May, Claire was awarded the METAL International residency to Shanghai Fine Art University, China as part of the Liverpool Art Prize events.  She will travel to the city for four weeks during November 2012 where she will develop her work including research on public squares and calligraphic techniques.

Watermark, how an idea became a piece of work.

I'm currently out in Istanbul working as part of a residency for POST Liverpool. It's the second time I've been here (the last time was March 2012) and I came with a plan to re work the 'Watermark' piece I made. Well, today that happened.

'Watermark, an intervention in Four directions' took place on Barbaros park, which is a public square in Besiktas. It's quite a transport hub with ferries, buses and Taxis galore and as a result there's lots of people passing across the square; the sort of place that I love to work in response to.

I've been looking at pavements for the past 12 months and thinking of them as a canvas for my work, so when I originally found this space it was perfect to make a piece of work on.  The courses of paving stones run from corner to corner of the square, and this is the predominant direction that people move across the space.  As I had no permission to make work here I needed to find a way of making a drawing on the floor without leaving a mark when I was finished. 

I think I was influenced by seeing lots of water traces around, pavements being cleaned, mechanical sweepers leaving a wet trail behind them, so I decided to paint water onto the floor. The basic method was trialled in March, using a small paintbrush, a Jam jar of water and a touch of bravado. At that point I only travelled in one direction, and having worked on some sketches back in my studio in St Helens I decided to make a better version of the work while I am here in Istanbul again.

I've had a 30cm paintbrush made (this involved me, a man in the market who makes sieves out of wood and mesh, a verbal language barrier, a diagram and some hand signals), bought a big roasting tin  (not your typical souvenir) to hold the water, am probably the only person ever who's travelled with gel filled knee pads, and arranged for a filmmaker to document the while thing.

So that brings me to today, when I made my work following the paving stones in four directions, using 20 litres of water, avoiding a world peace day celebration with international folk dancing, getting filthy feet, a bit of a suntan, and very sore knees.  9 hours after starting (only 4 of those were performance hours) I painted the final square, and now you'll have to wait to see the film, which gets edited tomorrow...

This residency is part of TRADING STATION, a POST artists exchange. It is funded by Arts Council England and UK trade & investment. Thanks also to all my assistants today, Dilek, Dilek's friend, Mandy and Sue.

Metal International Residency Award

Visual Artist Claire Weetman has been awarded a 4 week residency in Shanghai as one of the two prizes that were offered alongside the Liverpool Art Prize.  Through a partnership with Shanghai Art School and LJMU’s School of Art and Design, Metal offered a month-long international residency opportunity for visual artists living and working in the North West region to travel to Shanghai, China. Shanghai Art School will host the visit and provide accommodation and access to a studio for one month. The award is envisioned as a professional and ideas development opportunity for artists and is part of the city twinning activity between Liverpool and Shanghai.

Whilst in Shanghai, Claire proposes to develop 'Watermark'; an intervention that she created on a public square in Istanbul as part of the POST artist exchange project TRADING STATION.  Alongside that Claire aims to further her research into movement through public squares and to develop mark making skills inspired by Chinese calligraphy.

The International Residency Award was announced at the Liverpool Art Prize 2012 where, fellow member of artist collective POST, Robyn Woolston was awarded the Judges Choice prize and Tomo received the People's Choice prize.  A fourth award of the Metal Studio residency went to Anna Mulhearn, who will have use of a studio at Metal Liverpool for 12 months.

http://www.robynwoolston.com/
http://www.quangowangism.com/tomosecurities.html
http://annamulhearn.weebly.com/
http://www.postliverpool.com/
http://liverpoolartprize.com

There is something disconcerting about a dead zebra

Markmakers exploring narratives, 19 May - 23 June 2012
The Brindley, Runcorn.

Halton's contemporary arts collective, Markmakers have spent the last two years exploring the theme of narratives.  With work including print, drawing, animation, painting, sculpture and ceramics this will be a diverse and intriguing exhibition.

Claire Weetman is exhibiting a piece called 71 steps, as an installation and artist's book inspired by the drawings and prints of John Cage that feature collected stones.  During a markmakers excursion to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Claire collected 71 stones from the '71 steps' of David Nash's installation.  Taking them back to her studio, Claire drew around each stone, before creating a detailed drawing of each one using pencil on black acrylic paint - a technique inspired by paintings by Giuseppe Penone.  Claire plans to complete the story of these stones during the exhibition at the Brindley by returning the stones to the steps at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

www.markmakers-artists.co.uk

Watermark

Watermark was a 90 minute intervention on Barbosa Park, Istanbul on 29 March 2012.  Claire painted water onto a course of adjacent paving stones, drawing a line that follows a prominent route taken across that space by pedestrians. The water dries and the line documenting the movement of the people fades and disappears, echoing the temporal nature of people's presence in that place.

Spread

Spread is the third in a series of animated drawings onto mountcard.  They take inspiration from Richard Serra's verb works, where he created sculptures in response to words such as 'to roll', 'to crumple' or 'to cut'. 

I'm going to take some of the words from his list, but also include words that have an inherent feeling of movement in them too, then create a series of drawings using cut away mountcard.  So far I've made 'descend', 'curve' and 'spread'.  More to follow over the process of time.  Longlist of future words includes:

scatter, pair, surround, lift, follow, fall, shuffle, jump, loop, grow, criss-cross, ramble,

Large artworks - free to a good home

****These artworks have now been taken to a good home by their new owner****

Claire Weetman is moving studios during April and has two large artworks that she can no longer store. These are available for free, collected from St Helens. If you are interested in owning either of the works below, please email claire@claireweetman.co.uk before the end of April to save them from the skip. These are also listed on Ebay where 50% of any selling price will be donated to Charity.

Untitled: Four Panels. 2008
Paint marker on perspex.
Four sheets of 12mm Perspex, H2.44m x W1.22m


Untitled, Four Panels was created in 2008 during the Liverpool International Artists exhibition at Novas CUC. It comprises four perspex panels, with drawings on one surface of each. The drawings, in black or white, mapped and followed the movement and silhouettes of visitors to this exhibition.

The original installation was four panels displayed in the centre of a room in parallel, however, for preservation of the drawings, they would be best displayed fixed to a wall, with the drawn surface behind the perspex.

These would be ideal for a public space, or as a feature wall in a large home. You can take all four panels or fewer if appropriate.



Stepped 2008
Two rows of perspex panels, standing vertical from a white formica-clad base box.
Base is 2.4m long, 0.75m deep, 0.20m high. Panels stand perpendicular to the base to a height of approx 0.75m
Stepped features drawings of legs and feet, captured from a street in Stuttgart in 2008. They are line drawings onto 14 pieces of perspex, which overlap each other in two rows, creating a 3-dimensional representation of the people passing along the street.

The drawn surface is protected in a sandwich of two pieces of perspex, which then slot into the base box and are bolted together using discreet chrome fixings at the top. The base box has a slight chip to it's formica cladding where a cleaning machine damaged it on first installation. The perspex panels do not have rounded corners, so may prove a risk if displayed in an accessible public space. Stepped was created as a commission, but was unable to be installed following risk assessment that the corners of the perspex were an injury hazard for display in a public space.

Journeys

:Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk
www.chapelgallery.org.uk
24 March – 5 May 2012
Tuesday - Saturday
10.00 am - 16.30 pm

From the epic to the intimate, fifteen contemporary artists exhibit work that relates to journeys, whether the discoveries of global travellers or the imaginative voyages of the mind. Through media such as print, painting, installation and film, these artists critique the ways in which humankind is perpetually on the move.
Claire is exhibiting a collection of five drawings from her ‘One Minute’ series of work, including three new works made especially for this exhibition. Pencil and graphite drawings trace the movement of people through the architectural spaces of the Van Gogh Museum-Amsterdam, Earlsfort Terrace-Dublin and Lello Bookshop-Porto plus two works created in 2008 featuring Kyoto Station and Liverpool ONE. (http://www.claireweetman.co.uk/oneminute.html)


Journeys includes work by artists: Stephen Clarke, Jean Davey Winter, Gerry Halpin, Joanna Kinnersly-Taylor, Carole King, Hannah Leighton-Boyce, Rachel Marsh, Jenny Pope, Amy Russell, Catriona Stamp, Rebekah Tatlow, Andrew & Caitlin Webb-Ellis, Claire Weetman and Wendy Williams.

Platform: Presentation

www.platformartsthelens.co.uk
25 February - 15 April 2012
Tuesday - Sunday 10.00am-5.00pm
The Godfrey Pilkington Art Gallery,
Mezzanine Floor, The World of Glass
Chalon Way East, St Helens, WA10 1BX
Free admission to the gallery

This is part two of a two-part exhibition that began at the Godfrey Pilkington Art Gallery in its historical home of the Gamble Building and concludes in it's new location of the World of Glass. 'Presentation' is an exhibition that showcases the artwork that was produced during a fortnight period at the Godfrey Pilkington Gallery in the Gamble Building, where studio spaces were created in the gallery. Artists worked in the gallery showing visitors the processes behind creating their art works and allowing artists to share their practice with each other. In this intensive period 12 artists have produced new artworks in the gallery studios; a selection of the artworks are shown here at the new Godfrey Pilkington Gallery, covering a diverse range of disciplines including painting, drawing, photography and sculpture.

Claire is exhibiting the work ‘Four Minutes -Victoria Square, a four-part, ink on rice paper work which charts the passage of pedestrians and vehicles across the square below the Godfrey Pilkington Gallery’s home of the Gamble Building. ‘Production’ and ‘Presentation’ exhibitions were curated by Claire for Platform.

Exhibiting Artists:Paul and Gillian Adams, Stephen Ball, Hannah Bold, Mary Christie, Tony Glover, Handle with Cake, Sharon Leahy Clark, Isabel O'Rourke, Jacqui Priestley, Claire Weetman, Angela Wilkinson, Philip Wilkinson.

Peel

The past 2 fridays I've been attending a workshop at Salfor Uni on Stop Frame media. Led by the most helpful technicians Craig and Steve, I've been picking up tips on setting up, lighting, image sizes and this week have had my first foray into editing with Final Cut Pro and DVD studio pro.

I spent a couple of hours last week with limited materials and equipment producing and photographing the work, and here's a rough edit of what I've produced