Artist Talks
MILK
MILK was set up in 2015 by a group of Newcastle University graduates, who were all practicing artists with a mix of gallerists, curators, collective and artists. The group is aimed to provide a platform for emerging artists to exhibit work. As everyone involved are practicing artists, they perceived a lack of opportunities and recognised exhibition spaces in Newcastle for early career and emerging artists. M I L K seeks to address this discord with a varied programe of exhibitions and events focused on supporting early career artists both regionally and nationally.
The graduates had previously raised money and decided with the rest of the funds to use an empty shop unit in Byker to host art shows over the course of one month. Within this month there was four art exhibits, showing artists who took an interest over social media. The final show had over thirty artists.
The group didn't have enough funds to hold the site, so were accepted for a short period of time in the Newbridge and Laign gallery until they found a new site.
The group held three exhibitions in the Workplace gallery over three months, as well as holding a show outside the region called Ultra Sunrise. Milk travelled around London showing work for a small amount of time as well as Manchester.
The graduates took a domestic space in a house to show gallery styled art, by clearing out a living room to look like a white gallery space. This was to show work to an audience who weren't the type to typically go to art shows. The show was called SLUGTOWN, due to the amount of slugs in the building.
Adam McDade
Adam McDade is a local tattooist who has studied illustration and design at Sunderland University and is now going onto taking a six year PhD.
His main focus is line work and experimenting with color, with inspirations taken from wood engravings and pop culture.
Some of his work has been used for; Walwick Hall in their themed rooms, the Northern Correspondent, Stanley Kripper book posters and Tangentially Reading book drawings.
In May 2017 he became an apprentice at TripleSix tattoo parlor. Western tattooing (contemporary) is his main focus and how culture try to make out that tattooing is only now becoming popular. However, it has always been around, its just only developing.
McDade said he has a tenancy to over-complicate tattoos for different parts of the body and to also try and incorporate his own style into them. This is where he made a process to working around this. To stop over-complication,drawings are first created with his left hand and then outlined with his right. Finishing them off in colour digitally in Photoshop.
Making the intangible, tangible.
Within his work and research he looks at three points:
1) contextual research: understanding and documenting what we know
2)ethnographers: employ personal reflection to generate new knowledge
3)practical research: inform and investigate through action
As well as needing to know what factors impact the outcomes of a tattoo (diagram one).
The role of a tattooist is being able to create the art as well as helping to keep the art.
To get his clients he makes bonds through tattooing and creating flash sheets, which are tattoos pre-designed and priced to sell and tattoo. Location, population and culture all impact what tattoos people get. As well as people also like to know what the context is behind tattoos, so creating factual zines helps Adam to connect with his clients.
For his PhD McDade documents all his tattoos, research and activity in a journal to help know what he is doing.
I really enjoyed this artist talk and learning about Adam's ways of working around difficult situations and how all his work comes out in the end.
Lothar Gotz
Lothar Gotz when creating a piece of work tends to respond to a given fact or space.He is interested in architecture, space or interactions of people moving through a space as well as always having a fascination with colour in a minimal style.
For his first installation in the Uk he was given a space in a centre in Norwich and created two parallelogram, one in green and one in pink. The shape was a response to the architecture in the specific space and was reduced to a simple colour and shape to make it minimal.
In some of Lothar's stripe pieces as the work wraps the wall, the stripe would get disturbed by a change in architecture, changing its direction or colour. On of his stripe projects in the Mapping gallery he used the stripes to give the victorian architecture a sixties aesthetic. Another stipe project included when he moved one stripe painting from one idea/space and moved it into an old church, collaging it and giving it a different arrangement.
When doing these wall paintings Lothar Gotz will often leave the gallery space empty allowing the audience to feel the power of colour.
Piccadilly underground was a temporary piece of work, where he was given old spaces to decorate before later in time shops were installed in these spaces. for this piece all artists involved were only allowed to use vinyl to decorate the space.
Shapes within the work are often mimicked by the spaces shapes and arcitecture.
Lothar Gotz got the chance to paint the inside of a WW2 bunker, which was previously used to store nuclear weapons. The inside was painted in yellow and black to match the warning sign on the outside of the bunker.
Waiting for a New Life was a piece which was showing the idolised living for one person. The installation became a still life due to the painted walls and the objects which were hand bought and placed in specific places.
when creating some pieces of work Gotz added a personal touch to them by relating them to a novel. By moving around the wall pieces often created different pieces of work.
It was great to listen in on the Lothar Gotz talk as i have studied his work in the past and its great to get an insite on why he created each piece and the thought process that goes on behind each piece of work.
Ralf Brog
Ralf Brög categorises his work into series and works on at least two or three series at one time. He often co-operates with other people to help create the ideas which he does not have the skills himself to create.
Fuzzy Logics (1) works within painting but also moves between the work with print making and drawing. Brög takes existing paintings and isolates the colour schemes within them. These pieces can often contain ten to twenty colour and are often best seen through screen print. Brög will reduce the complexity of the artwork by reducing the tools, which also helps make the painting anonymous but the real title could be hidden within the title.
Zero RPM Records (2) are created by an applied etching technique to vinyls which are then created into prints. Each genre of music creates a different textural print and in ralf Brög's opinion vinyls which are electronic styles of music create the most beautiful prints. This series has a combination of three-dimentional work, prints and wall drawings.
MB_106&MB_83 (3) is an animated sculpture that moves direction as well as speed, throughout the day. As the sculpture moves the perspective of it changes.
Stations-Beam Me Up (4) is a sculptural piece which was made from the remains of an old bus shelter as well as fiberglass and resin. This piece was placed in a sculptural park and depending on the weather the bus stop will glow or go translucent, showing the people standing within it.
3 Modellraume_Theatre (5) is an installation in a public trainstation which focuses on sound. The installation is a mix between sound pieces, sculptures as well as visual drawing work, overlapping the sound to help create an overall visual. Over time the sound will change and hopefully be a continuous piece.
I really enjoyed the talk with Ralf and found it very interesting how he has managed to combine different elements of media and techniques to create different series of work.