mandywilliamsblog

Before (C) Mandy Williams 2012

At the beginning of January I took part in a large benefit for Visual Aids in New York. Called Postcards from the Edge, it’s an annual event which attracts a lot of artists and buyers. It took place at Cheim & Read this year, and raised over $82,200 making it the most successful Postcards benefit ever.  I was delighted that my contribution, Totem, was sold and only wish I could have been there myself to have seen the work, which included images from William Wegman, Yoko Ono and John Baldessari.

One of my aims for this year is to focus on creating new work. I’ve been shooting with a specific theme in mind, though this will develop more fully over the next few months. As a side project I documented a local housing estate at the start of the year, photographing the windows of the abandoned flats as the site awaits demolition.  I’ve initially set some of those images to a soundtrack and uploaded it to vimeo, but will revisit the idea later as the main project advances.

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Immerse 2011 (c) Mandy Williams

A quick post before the year slips away. 2011 has been memorable and I feel lucky to have been involved with some excellent exhibitions this year at MASS MoCA, RWA, Bristol, and at Raven Row and Bearspace Gallery in London. The Bearspace show, Print & Design Now! has just finished this weekend.  I went to the private view in Deptford back in November and there was a lot of interesting work on display.

Over the last couple of months I have been trying to see more exhibitions in London. There have been some inspiring shows and I have come away with a desire to spend 2012 creating a lot of new work. Ideas have been building up throughout the year and it’s time to explore where they might lead. I’ve been experimenting with sound, video, photography and text.

For this year’s Photomonth, I re-visited the place where I had grown up, photographing the landscape in a visceral way to evoke emotion and memory. As part of the project, I wanted to add a short video. Finally complete, it’s now on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/artphotofilm/immerse

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A quick update leading into October.

My feature in Printmaking Today magazine (Autumn 2011) is out now – it was part of my award from the RWA show in February this year. It’s a great magazine, full of information about printing techniques and current exhibitions, along with generous profiles on contemporary artists. It’s not available online, so I’ve scanned part of it here. Check it out if you see it in the bookstore!

(c) Printmaking Today, Autumn 2011

Also this week I found out that my photograph, Totem, is a winning image in the Artslant 5th 2011 Showcase. Last year House #6 also won in this category.

Have spent much of September finishing off a project for Photomonth 2011.  Immerse is now live on the web and tries to capture the sea where I grew up in a visceral way that evokes emotion and memory. It was a surprisingly difficult project but hopefully I’ve succeeded in my intentions. Ideally, I’d like to add video as well.

(c) Mandy Williams 2011

At the start of November, ASC are holding open studios again and I’ll be taking part – it’s the same weekend that Print & Design Now 2011 opens at Bearspace Gallery.

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Summer is definitely over but it’s been one to remember. To begin with, it was such a pleasure taking part in the Resonance Open at Raven Row. The exhibition lasted for six weeks and received good reviews. One of my exhibits, Lost Voices, was referred to as ‘a techno-echinoderm hybrid from some nightmarish Lovecraftian rock pool’ on the Sparks in Electrical Jelly blog review – a truly imaginative description.

Totem (c) Mandy Williams 2010

Before the show ended I was notified that I was a PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris Official Selection 2011 for my submission, House #6, and also had a work, Totem,  chosen for Print & Design Now 2011, a touring exhibition presented by Bearspace Gallery, selected by Julia Alvarez, Owen Ward (SW1 gallery) and Mary Alice Stack (Own Art).  Although I had shown Totem at House Gallery in early 2010, this version is quite different.

 
Private view at SW1 Gallery

The show opened in late July at SW1 Gallery with a busy private view – it was a chance to see some wonderful work from a large number of artists. It’s a touring exhibition, and will be on view in Deptford at Bearspace in November before going on to other venues.
There’ll be other news in late September/early October so will post again soon.

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I recently had some of my photography from ‘Re-Collect’ featured in Slightly Lucid, a lovely blog from Montreal, written by photographer Aislinn Leggett. The blog is always highlighting work I find interesting, so it was great to be included. The images are from 2009 and 2010; the series is ongoing.
http://www.slightlylucid.com/mandy-williams-re-collect/

Friday (c) Mandy Williams 2010

I was also very happy to have two pieces of work selected for Resonance Open, a sound art exhibition curated by Ed Baxter, Director of Resonance104.4fm. The Open features contemporary sound art from local and interational artists and is part of a larger exhibition, called Gone with the Wind, which highlights seminal sound art pioneers Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi and Walter Marchetti. The exhibition is running at Raven Row, one of my favourite London galleries. It’s a non-profit exhibition space spreading across 4 floors of two conjoined Georgian houses in Spitalfields.  I recently saw Hilary Lloyd’s exhibition there which looked wonderful in that space and there is a continued focus on showing experimental and improvisatory work.  The two pieces I am showing are The Space Between, a lightbox with sound featuring words from Kobe Abe’s Face of Another (2001) and Lost Voices, a sound work made of blow-torched mobile phones (2010).  This last piece was exhibited at House Gallery in 2010 but I have recently re-mixed the sound. The show runs from 9 June to 17 July 2011.

The Space Between (c) Mandy Williams 2001 and Lost Voices installed at Raven Row (c) Mandy Williams 2011

A short video of the Resonance Open can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/2562368125623681

I shall also be participating in the Parallax Art Fair, La Galleria, Royal Opera Arcade, Pall Mall, London from 1 – 3 July 2011.

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It has been a busy start to 2011. I’m currently showing work in two group exhibitions including ‘An Exchange with Sol Lewitt‘, a two-part exhibition organised by Cabinet magazine in collaboration with MASS MoCA, curated by Regine Basha.  My photographic piece, ‘Conversations‘ is part of the large group show on view at MASS MoCA.


Conversations (c) Mandy Williams

I also have two photographs, ‘Parade’ and ‘House #6‘, in ‘Open Photography 2011‘ a juried exhibition, showing at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. It was great to visit Bristol and attend the opening and I was excited to discover that ‘House #6‘ had won the Printmaking Today magazine award for best original print. A feature in the magazine will follow.


June 17 from ‘Inside’ (c) Mandy Williams 2010

My small video, ‘Inside’, that I finished at the end of last year has also been screened – recently in London at an International Women’s Day celebration with a selection of short films and improvised music and later this month at Lightworks 2011 where it was selected as part of a festival of film, sound, installation and new media. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend Lightworks but I did go to the London screening and was pleased to have been a part of the celebratory event.

The last couple of months I’ve also been developing ideas for some new work which will include photography and text and am looking forward to immersing myself in this project next month.

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Nearly 2011 – wonder what the year ahead will bring?  2010 has been a really good year in many ways – some great exhibition experiences including Art Projects at the London Art Fair in January, two group shows at the Museum of New Art Detroit (the ‘Saatchi 10′ and the hugely popular ‘Facebook show‘), plus several really enjoyable group shows in London. The last two group exhibitions – at Strand Gallery and Viewfinder – were both photography shows but looking back on 2010 one of the most exciting things for me has been working in different media and completing two very different pieces of work. ‘Lost Voices‘, shown at House Gallery in March, was a mixed-media sound work, and more recently I’ve just finished the short video, ‘Inside‘, which I began over the summer. The video can be seen on vimeo at http://vimeo.com/artphotofilm. It’s experimental and true to my original intentions. It’s inspired by Bachelard’s ‘Poetics of Space’ and the lit house as a beacon, hut, and refuge, and Derek Jarmans’ video ‘Journey to Avebury‘ where his use of static camera shots and uncompromising editing highlights the mystical and ritual elements of place. The opening and closing frames were filmed at Dungeness, one of my favourite places.


Still from ‘Inside’ (C) Mandy Williams 2010

Earlier this month, I had some work of mine represented at the Aqua Art Fair in Miami, as part of the Golden Frame Awards. The end of this month is going to be spent in the studio – uninterrupted time to experiment and shape new work.

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(c) Mandy Williams

A quick update as my photography book is now published.  It’s called Inside and you can see a 15 page preview of it at: http://www.blurb.com/books/1630424


The photographs focus on the home and represent different bodies of work produced and exhibited between 1998 and 2010.  It includes images which will be shown at the ‘Home’ exhibition opening this week at the Viewfinder Gallery.

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It’s been a few months since the last blog and a busy period – I’ve been producing a lot of new work and it’s been an interesting process switching between different media.  I’m currently editing the video that I began shooting in May and it should be completed soon – next month twelve stills from it will be exhibited as part of this year’s Photomonth festival.  I’ve also begun looking through my photographic work since 1997 and selecting images for publication.  I was inspired by a friend who had produced a book but  it also seemed like a good idea to gather images together and see what connections there were.  It’s surprising in some ways to see how consistent the interests and explorations of themes have been even when the execution and style has become quite different.  The first proof has come back for editing and I hope the final book will be ready next month.

 
l-r (c) Mandy Williams 1997/2010; (c) Mandy Williams 2010

October is looking busy with a couple of other shows in London and an artists open studio event. One of the exhibitions is at Viewfinder, a photographic gallery that was based in Greenwich but recently relocated to Brixton. It’s a 3 person show called Home which was curated by Louise Forrester and I’ll be exhibiting with Bill Jackson and Marysia Lachowicz. This is the first time I’ll have shown this work, which is black and white infra-red photography inspired by the JG Ballard story, The Enormous Space, and the film, Home, written and directed by Richard Curson-Smith. It’s less about horror though and more to do with exploring the boundaries between retreat, refuge and withdrawal.  The second show is the annual exhibition organised by London Independent Photography. This year the selectors were Paul Ellis from Photofusion and Lucinda Chua from Proud Galleries and I have two works in the show. The exhibition will be at the Strand Gallery.

Our open studio weekend will be a great opportunity to meet with other artists in the building and see different work. I’m really pleased it’s been organised and hope it will become an annual event. It was about 3 years ago that they ran the last one and on that visit I thought it was a fantastic location, with studios looking out over the river – I didn’t know then that I would be in one of them!  Far away from London, but also in October, MONA Detroit will be exhibiting an extended version of their Facebook show with many more artists and I’m happy to be included a second time.


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