More voluntary work

I recently worked with the worldwide known artist Ben Pepper. He has done various commissioned work all over the world and this time he is setting off over to Berlin to work over there and asked for help in screen printing large monopoly money designed by him at Islington Mill. And so I helped him print them out in a range of different colours

The Love heart in the centre of the print is Ben's personal design that goes on most of his art pieces.

Here is a look into some of his other pieces of work

Panopoly

I volunteered to work with Panopoly. They are an organization dealing with artists across the world. Particularly performance artists. They organize events and exhibitions and I was asked to volunteer as a model, hospitality worker or a performer, I didn't mind which one and so was asked to perform which was a bit scary but I was excited to face a new kind of challenge. The artist that I was working for was called Anthea Bush who is based in Amsterdam and created four feathered helmets which were initially just sculpture pieces but she was asked if she would perform with them. My job was to wear one of the helmets but with it being so heavy I just had to sit or lay down with it on whilst the other performers with lighter helmets were able to wander around and perform different acts.

Here are a few images of the helmets:

This is the helmet that I was wearing...

Voluntary Work - Hulme After School Club (Adventure Playground)

I started working at an after school club on a thursday night with kids from the age of 4 to 16. Unfortunately I was late finding out about it and had to wait for a CRB check to come through so I missed out on a big chunk of the term but I still managed to get involved at the end and get to know a few of the children. They were great! Although pretty scary at times!

The objective was for 'childrens university' set up by the Manchester Metropolitan (MMU) to go into the adventure playgroung youth club in Hulme on a thursday night to get involved with the children and teach them about art and the environment. The kids were taught all about how recycling benefits the world that we live in and given examples of the damage that we put on the world like the melting of the ice caps. They were told that by recycling we can prevent it from happening.
All of the children then got together and with the help of the volunteers gathered objects that they wanted to recycle and took them into the youth club. So we had a huge collection of cereal boxes and egg boxes and milk cartons and cardboxes. Because the children had been told about the recycling benefit on the rainforests and the icy areas of the world, they started to make a rainforest including all of the animals and trees out of recycled objects and the same again for ice land. The ice land also included under water so there was lots of fish! The kids also set to work on making a model of Manchester as it produces a lot of polution which is very hard on the environment. The kids loved finding out about these factors. They could be factors that would be very boring for a child but it is important and so by encorporating art and fun into their learning they were happy and willing to participate.
One little girl in particular I grew a soft spot for. She was adorable. I helped her make a two story house with an attick and a stair case. And it was beautifully decorated in dots because as she explained "My mummy says I'm dotty, so I'm guna make my house dotty!", and it had an ace little man with a dog and a sofa and TV.
There were a few chalenges in the work as a lot of the kids had finished school and consumed however many E numbers before they had got there which made it all...Interesting. Luckily there was a few youth workers on hand that knew how to sort them out and break up fights which was very useful as even in the short time me working there I saw plenty of punched noses...Aren't they cute! There were also challenges in that the child isn't allowed to be handled which can become a problem if a child falls over and they want a hug. This is all down to happenings in the past with stories of child abuse and other unimaginable things. People are trying to be so careful now.
In the last week of working with the kids, we took them all over from Hulme adventure playground to MMU link gallery which was a scary experience trying to shift that many kids over busy roads but we got there safe in the end. In the link gallery the volunteers set up all of the children's work into 3 sections, the first being Manchester, the second being the rainforest and the third being Ice land and the sea. This was a great experience for the children as they got to see all of there work up on the gallery walls which must have made them feel really proud of themselves. The children's work was also put into a competition where three pieces of work were going to be selected as the winners and the wining children got a reward. All of the children from this also got a certificate and the those children over 7 got a passport which they can get stamped every time they complete something from children's university again.
This was such a great thing for these children as without trying to sound stereotypical, unfortunately due to living in a disadvantaged area only few of these children will experience higher education. In their situation very little people around them will go to university and so the child wouldn't be very likely to aspire towards this. And so by introducing childrens university to them they are getting and insight into the achievements that they can make.
Because of the economic crisis that out country is in now there has been a cut in the grant to Manchester Young Lives (an organisation run, providing the same facilities across Hulme, Whythenshawe, Ardwick and Moss Side) of £75,000 meaning that Hulme adventure play ground has had to shut down. This is a major problem! The children of that area needed the youth centre. It provided counciling if they needed it, the safety of a confined and supervised area for them to play in. It kept them from the dangers of the street and even gave a few of them an escape and an insight into a better life. It is really sad to see this taken away from them.

But conservatives hey! All for the rich and none for the poor

BERLIN

Berlin is by far one of the best cities I've visited. The overwelming essence of culture is mind blowing. Every street corner was packed with history and stories that in my opinion are far better than any art gallery I've been to. There seems to be mass freedom to all artists, if they want to "paint the town red" they will do it and do a fucking good job, a lot of these artists are non commissioned and purely doing their work to strongly express something or maybe even just purely to go crazy on a huge paint/spray paint piece across a huge wall just for the hell of it! Either way their free spirits and they're having a bloody good time!

Whilst in Berlin I visited a few art galleries. The first one being the Hamburger Bahnhof which was strange, as most art galleries are, but I didnt enjoy it much at all apart from the very few pieces that I felt I could relate to. The work that I came across in this gallery is typically the work that puts me off art and the only inspiration I feel from it is to make my work better. A lot of it was modern but nothing that made me overcome with thought. The first art piece you came to was a holding pin full of live reindeer and above them little birds in cages which drew us all to the conclusion that this is why the gallery stank of shit. The idea was based around a ritual that a certain tribe took part in where they would enlighten their spirits through the consumption of fliagaric mushrooms and for some reason they decided to drink the urine of animals such as birds and reindeers and rats etc that had been eating the fliagaric mushrooms. I thought the concept was quite fun but I can never help but think what is the point.
I did feel excited though to come across a few famous pieces by Andy Warhol such as the Elvis Presley print:

Tacheles
Tacheles was originally a department store in Berlin but later became used by the Nazi's as a prison. After the second world war it was damaged and abandoned. Now a group of squatters live there and create fantastic art pieces. Living there now for them is soon coming to an end as the police are trying the force them out but they're fighting back and building up barricades to stop them from coming in. Here are a few examples of the work produced within the Tacheles society:

The collage above inspired me the most from the Tacheles site and I have began to create my own collages using images taken from Berlin and creating pictures of the friends that I went to Berlin with.

I am pleased with these images but I am going to re-do them with smaller images because then I feel that more detail will show through. The next step I am taking with these images is to work out how to animate them so that the faces move because I want to make a Techno music video. The relevance is that Berlin is where techno originates. This will be brilliant once it is complete.

Animation Inspirations

I was attracted to this video because I feel that it looks very similar to my painting for the shelter exhibition...

I really want to try out animations again. I feel that they are frustrating but I am always so proud of the outcomes

I have bought a load of clay and I am going to create some animated shots. I love the jittery effect of the clay animation. It is so effective and somehow feels a bit more realistic and relative to normal life. For example Wallice and Gromit episodes. Absolutely brilliant