Have you made work?

Question number 4: Have you made work?

Nina Chua

Yes, both as Nina Chua and as Association

Ying Kwok

answer pending

Jessica Longmore

Yes

If so, why have you collaborated?

Question number 3: If so, [refering to question number 2] why have you collaborated?

Nina Chua

I’d been working singularly in my studio for a long time and had got to the stage where I wanted companionship and critical dialogue to be part of my studio life, so first and foremost I collaborated for the shared experience and the sense of possibility.

Now, I’d like to add to the list: challenge. I enjoy the challenge and the negotiation of ideas that comes with collaboration.

Ying Kwok

Put myself in the creative thinking mode.

Get some pressure and excitement

Jessica Longmore

To stimulate my own practice and put myself in a position where I don't know what will happen next.

In the meetings preceding this residency I had become aware of what a huge challenge working in this way would be. This realisation had manifested itself as sheer panic and these moments of panic have continued through out our time at Islington Mill. So in terms of why I have continued to collaborate, despite the difficulties, is, it has made me work harder; it has made me let go of some aspects of my work, brought clarity to others.

Have you collaborated?

Question number 2: Have you collaborated?

Nina Chua

Yes. We have collaborated to create a series of shared events and experiences

Ying Kwok

Yes.

I responded to the reaction and interests of other members.

I have done something, which only makes sense in our collaboration.

Jessica Longmore

Yes - or have I cooperated? I've done both.

Jessica's answers to question number 1

Please list the most significant moments of the Islington Mill Residency (as many as possible)

Islington Mill

Role Forming

Pink

Disintegration of roles

Wall of newspaper

Conversation

Tension

Democracy

Instruction

Care

Wasteland

Communication

Desire to preserve

Association

Please can we change the name of our blog to Association.

To Jessica

Please remove all the photo's you have published on this blog that show me.

Do you want it to come together?

Please answer the above question.

Nina's answers to question number 1

Please list the most significant moments of the Association residency (the more the better).

Wednesdays – discussion followed by immediate action

Time limits, constraints and appointments

Trashing the studio

Clearing the mess in the studio – putting it back to white, undoing our actions of the previous week

Finding a big piece of foam and a plant in a carrier bag on plinths in the studio

The graceful rock that Ying showed me during our walk

Wang Jun and Hong’s contributions

At any point, discovering new work in the studio

Outdoors space – orange tiles, the graceful rock, rail arches and people living there, bits of land turned into car parks

Labeled pens and pencils

Small dialogues forming in the studio and on the blog 

Ying's answer to question number 1

Please list the most significant moments of the Association residency. (The more the better)

Every single Wednesday in Islington Mill.
Live elements and spontaneous response every time when we get together and need to produce something.
The excitement, pressure and confusion of doing Deconstructive Drawing.
Totally different ways of response from different member.
Trying to analyze and understand different member’s personality.
The mental status/ routine parallel to the actives and experience we create during the residency.

Important questions

During the final week of our residency at Islington Mill, I asked the members of Association four important questions about their experience of the project. The answers to these questions were intended to inform what we decided to present during our final open studio, but they also relate to my thoughts on the success of the association as a whole.

In the subsequent posts, Nina and I will document the answers given.

The Studio as a Wasteland

Touch

Salford and Manchester

Live Drawing Wednesday

For our penultimate open studio we invited the public to take part in a live drawing event. Between 4 and 6pm Nina and Ying went on a series of walks to the areas of wasteland, that surround the studio. Every time they returned to the studio they brought with them an object collected during the walk and added it to the still life that Ying had set up earlier in the studio. As our visitors arrived, they were asked to select paper and drawing materials and to join Sarah and myself in drawing the gradually accumulating still life. During the progress of the open studio many drawings were completed and exhibited throughout the studio.

During this event I took the opportunity to try out an idea that I had recently been considering. I interspersed various instructions amongst the table of materials that we had provided for our guests. These instructions came from the previous open studio, where we left guidance to our fellow Association members to encourage them to preserve certain aspects of the studio during the clean-up process. I wanted to see whether these instructions affected the decisions our visitors made.

Penultimate open studio

Please join us for our penultimate Open Studio event.

Wednesday 17th March 2010

4-6pm

Ground floor gallery, Islington Mill, James Street, Salford

Or if you can't make it, please follow our progress on the blog:

www.mutuallyadvantageousassociation.blogspot.com

See you tomorrow!

ASSOCIATION

(Nina Chua, Ying Kwok, Jessica Longmore, Sarah Sanders)

Studio Sickness/I Hate Pink

I've been feeling the need to be out of the studio recently, which is why I've been spending a lot more time on the blog. It's the halfway stage of the residency and it feels like things are starting to stall.

I'm reading around the issue of collaboration. I've posted some links on the blog of what has cropped up along the way.

Trying to make sense of it all, so far.

This project has, so far, been punctuated by moments of intense stress; where individually we are all butting against this idea of collaboration. Whether it is the feeling of responsibility towards the group and necessity to perform under pressure, which occurred in the first week; or the desire to seize control, quickly accompanied by the fear of loosing it.  Amongst these issues, the question which runs through this whole process, is why. Why are we doing this, why do we feel the need to collaborate.

Considering this project further, I am trying to see how it sits within my own practice to date.  It appears to be a logical progression from the last exhibition I was involved in, IV at the Rogue Project Space in Manchester. IV, although not considered at the time to be an exercise in collaboration, was where four artists (Tom Baskeyfield, Julie Del'Hopital, Sarah Sanders and myself) together agreed on four rules with which to make work by. The result was four pieces of work, one by each artist. The most dynamic and contentious of the four devised rules was: No. 1, We will not discuss the work;  this one statement, immediately destroying any potential for future collaboration.  After reaching a consensus of opinion and common goal, the artists divided company to individually re-assert control over their own work.  At the time of conception this rule was not intended as a display of arrogance by our selves, in the form of a refusal to communicate with the audience, but rather a process where the artist relinquished control over the work once it was in the public domain, consequently allowing the audience to form their own opinion.

IV at the Rogue Project Space, Manchester (Clockwise from top right: Julie Del'Hopital, Sarah Sanders, Tom Baskeyfield, Jessica Longmore)

An ongoing project of mine is Objects for a Studio. Here I spend a single day making work in another artist's studio. I have done this with ten artists in Manchester, ten in Amersfoort (The Netherlands) and will be taking the project to Chongqing (China) in November.  In Objects for a Studio, I arrive at each studio armed with only a camera (or other means of documentation) and the intention to create work within another artist’s space, using only the objects I encounter there.  Despite the communication between myself and the host artist and the presence of myself in their studio, surrounded by their work - I have absolutely, at no stage, considered this a collaboration.  This project explores the psychological space of the studio, and its ability to both protect and restrict the artist's creative process.  By placing myself in the highly personal domain of this other artist and giving myself the strict time frame of a single day, I hope to provoke the extremes of emotion that the studio creates. It is not. therefore, a conversation between myself and the host artist's work.

Day 6, 2009. Jessica Longmore. Digital print. From the series Objects for a Studio 2: Amersfoort

Referring back to this current residency; it is this highly charged atmosphere which has started to fascinate me with regards to Association.  Four artists all working in the same studio; at once tip-toeing round and trampling over the work around them. Every day another issue crops up; another conflict arises and I wonder whether our friendship can stand this process.  Issues of control, authorship, leadership, restriction of free will and professionalism are not necessarily subjects that tend to crop up between friends - or are not topics we constantly wrestle with.

So - so far, my answer to the question why, is that I am interested in how my work will respond to this tense social situation.  But as a psychological experiment, are these the right people to work with?

The Act of Writing

This not part of our residency, but if anyone is online now, Sarah Sanders is doing a live performance between sunrise today (Monday 15th March) and sunrise tomorrow.

The Act of Writing

"Its all getting too conceptual"

A brief diversion from the studio takes us to the surrounding wastelands of Salford.

Map showing location of Islington Mill & surrounding area

Instruction

Dear Sarah,

There is a mark on the studio wall made by Jessica using a mop.  I instruct you, at any point during Wednesday 17th March 2010 to re-create this mark.  

Nina  

Ideas for Association

Association guide to collaboration
An outdoor exhibition

An indoor exhibition 

Re-create past and current work

More ideas needed.
Comments and votes welcome.   

Please Leave This

Association Meeting No. 7: We Are Collaborating

Trying to preserve something.

Aftermath continued...

Aftermath

The subsequent photos follow the Association Meeting on Wednesday 3rd March.

Encounters

Association Meeting No. 6

Text from Sarah sent 11.22am 03/03/2010: For the meeting tonight please wear warm scruffy clothes, bring lots of materials, alcohol, food and bedding. I have one extra sleeping mat and bag for one of you. X

Response begun...

...and

Changes discovered

Association Launch

On 28 February we launched Association

We invited guests into the studio to celebrate the start of our residency and view the completion of the first stage of the project: Deconstructed Drawing.

What if I gave you a title?

An exercise, to test how willing I am to relinquish control over the work. I left a proposal in the studio for the other 3 artists.

What if I gave you a title, could you make work under that title?

What if I gave you a piece of work, could you give that work a title?

These questions were accompanied by a labeled piece of work and an envelope containing a title.

I await a response.

Call-Out to Collaborators

Staging the studio

The studio is a mess.  The studio is our shared space.  There's work in there.

Call-out to collaborators:  1 day, the four of us to spend staging the studio.