The opening night to the show was in my view a success. I had spend a huge amount of time planning it and I had put a huge focus on all the supporting aspects of it.
I had hung the work as pre planned and work shopped though with local welsh artist Aled Hughes.
I negotiated a free hire of the gallery for a week as it was in collaboration with HATW.
I did have to pay a £50 fee for the hire for the event.
I opened at 6 with a musical act on at 7 playing followed by talks from myself, Hannah Morgan the founder of HATW and Edel Marie a friend and vice principle of a high school in Bristol.
I had donation based entry and work for sale including zines.
I made enough through entry and zine sales to cover the venue hire and make an additional £20.
Read MoreRichard (Team Beard records): It’s a community that comes together, you know within either a music scene or certain area that starts something off, usually getting the kids involved, cause once the kids are involved things kinda bubble under and build form there before anything become popular. It may take a yea, two years for something to start, then all of a sudden it’s the next big thing, but you know there’s been a lot of ground work put in.
I feel like i’m fairly lucky with the origins of this project born out of a relationship with punk rock. ZInes have been a staple part of the scene and I’ve explored them through the previous modules
It’s a great low fi way of reaching an audience and it is normally fairly low cost meaning its accessible to the community. Heavily used in the earlier days of punk in the 70’s and 80’s they were normally photocopied. Nowadays there is a rich culture of art in the punk rock scene and I talked about it briefly with Exhume an artist that also tuns a record label an episode of my Never Going Home Podcast.
Read MoreI started finalising my zine designs. I think I’m lucky because my links with punk scene make it fairly easy to introduce given that zines were a big part of the earlier movement. I worked out costs and my deadline to get the shipped and and monotone is the only available option. I feel that it’s interesting given that I shot heavily in Black and white at the beginning of the course and begrudgingly y took the advice to work in colour more which I now work predominately in. It’s an interesting concept born out of a forced design out of my control maybe. I thought maybe I could print the zine in monotone and offer a download link to have it in colour ? It might be . a bit messy but there may be room to use it as a creative idea. Right now it’s not an option to print colour so it’s whats happening. It’s almost feels like a tip of the hat to the earlier work, I think I’ll release the earlier developmental work which is mostly monotone through the zine as its both culturally expected and a great way to ease in to the more contemporary photography that it has evolved into. Perhaps I can bring an audience on a journey and print in full colour when it becomes viable.
Read MoreLO4 LO6
As I’ve been planning on releasing a zine to compliment the prints and the podcast I thought it would be a great opportunity to collaborate with other artists in the punk scene. The previous artists I’ve reached out to have become really tied up in projects but I mentioned the idea to a friend of mine from the The Run Up. I shot a video for them and also did a podcast with Larry the front man. Dan is the bassist and is a really talented illustrator. He made a design for me and I’m going to get a run of them made to add into to the zines for sale. I also mailed a bunch of them out to different bands that tour across Europe and the US, it’s a deep part of the punk rock culture and a great way of low fi advertising.
Read MoreTRANSCTIPT
L: Originally to be honest it began as a means of getting out a lot of stress and pent up stuff through lyrics and music. I was more writing the songs for therapy than I actually was for getting them recorded. It was literally more of a writing the songs for myself and I was never really intending to record or get out and tour them even thought I cam front hat background of touring and doing stuff.
F: Like a cathartic thing?
L: I’d kinda hit a point of rock bottom, where I’d kind of given up on the idea that my music could be important in some way, so I was more just writing for myself. IT was only really a case of a good friend of mine Matt O’Grady, who recorded and ended up producing my record, he heard some of the original demos and encouraged me to record them properly and get them out properly and from that I focused on touring and I’ve been busier in the last 4 years than I ever was in bands.
Read MoreOrganising exhibition with Sho and collaboration with HATW. Getting Brightr involved from the tour before and his work with mental health. I talked to everyone about the opening night and we talked in depth about issues the project looks at and what HATW does. Social media is a great way to reach an audience for this kind of project it took a little bit of learning new skills and disciplines but it was well worth it for the potential reach I feel.
Read MoreAfter taking onboard what Aled said in the last meeting I came back to chat with him about hanging work. I have been living with these prints on my office and lounge wall for quite some time. I’ve even gone into the gallery with my test prints to visualise where they would go and how the audience would experience the show. Building on the using of dyptechs ideas ( in a sense that place them side by side as standalone images not as printed dips) I ran through my selection and talked about my thoughts on it
Read MoreLooking at developing the work, the placement is to long maybe and need to Aled’s advice on the choice of words. His input was to use the words sparingly and in a way that they would not be obviously recognised as lyrics. His thoughts behind that was to enable as much freedom to the viewer to decode the images. That has always been a really important part of the creative process for me to enable such a great degree of freedom in viewing my work.
I checked in with Stella and we discussed my intentions and as well some key issues that I had some reservations on.
Read MoreWith a only a short time left before the exhibition I have a pool of images to select from. I printed them as test prints and had a stack of 5 x 4’s. I then taped them to the office wall and would see them every-time I would enter or leave. I think it’s important to ‘live’ with the images. I was feeling a little weird about the space and how many images to show and how so I went in to speak to Aled Hughes a previous tutor and ex co worker of mine. Aled has know me for over 10 years and has taught me at college level as well as working as a lecturer when I was a supporting staff member to the Ba Hons Photography teaching Staff at Cardiff Met. Whilst there I was just starting the project so Aled knows me and the work really well. He’s also a successful artists with many solo exhibitions and books. I feel he is a perfect person to talk some ideas thorough with.
Read MoreI experimented with positioning not just one image but a few and placing text in more of a deign that would be seen in print media like booklets. I thought it had potential but not really for the zine or exhibition. I brought it up with the cohort peers and everyone there and Wendy agreed it wasn’t as strong as the single image work.
Read MoreTRANSCRIPT
D: I used to go to shows and get all me angst an
F: You were telling me it was really aggressive like, you know people would like…you were telling me about suicides, not suicides in general, it was like a manoeuvre?
D: You’re talking about crowd killing are you?
F: Yeah something like that you told me but I forgot. At hardcore shows…
D: So there’s, I dont know how much it happens anymore, cause I just dont go to those shows but it used to be that like you’d have eople like almost doing marshall arts in the pit and I think it still does happen actually because my friends actually still post videos taking the piss out of it. All my metal head friends like what are these guys doing?!,lll
F: Isn’t it weird have you noticed a correlation between metal head fans and soft nice cuddly people, lik emetal fans I know are the most chill laid back like
D: Cause again they’re sort of getting all their aggression out through their music. The music that they listen to or maybe the bands taht they play in. They get it all out there so when they’re just being people they’re just..
F: From the outsiders perspective they're all like oh they probably eat kittens and stuff.
D: Yeah I totally agree.
My attitude was, if you’re in the pit you might get hurt, but if someone falls over you pick them up!
Read MoreStill constantly shooting and busy with the podcast i felt the urge to just pick up my camera and go, so I took the dog with me and watched the sun come up whilst listening to some music that means a lot to me. In all honesty the stress of running 2 businesses and doing the Ma spending a lot of money on equipment to develop the work and my deadline looming I felt a little overwhelmed. Then I remembered why I started the project in the beginning and it’s who I am as an artist. I also say that a good creative strategy is to jolt ones self out of a rhythm, be weird get out side when you normally wouldn’t. I took a tripod and an 8 stop ND filter with the hopes of slowing down the water for a misty seascape. It didn’t work as dramatically as I thought but I think that was for the better another happy accident. This is the scene that I looked at whilst going through a rough time with my own mental health. I took up running with an addictive nature and it did fix me for the time being, I’m drawn to the water and I feel there’s some poetic peace that we all expire at some point and the oceans kind of represent this everlasting cycle of life like rain falls rivers flow into the sea, I guess it’s a very nihilistic view on it but , everything will end and that ocean just goes on forever constantly fed by the life around it. It’s depressing at one point in time and not at another, it’s all about how you frame it I guess. I included a song that seems to fit perfectly with the notion I’m probably failing to articulate with words here.
Read MoreI went and shot more portraits with Dave an old friend of mine. I went out with him after I recorded a podcast. Dave’s always been similar to me in that we share the same taste in music and we both have suffered with mental health. On the podcast we open up and talked about dealing with mental health issues. I linked it into the work and also talked about HATW ( the mental health non profit) its a great medium to reach people and I’ve run a few targeted ads to audiences on facebook with similar interest and the results have been great. I feel that by opening up about mental health and dealing with it, that in itself could really help someone find a way to cope and make them feel better. It's also a great way to build an audience to show the work to and also raise money for a great organisation that helps.
Read More24:50
F: Just let them listen to it and they’ll make their own mind up.
J: I totally agree.
…
J: I love music, I loved music I love playing gigs, it’s literally one of those things that’s incomparable to anything else apart from once when I did a talk about my archaeology project and I got to speak about that and that same feeling, that kind of performing feeling where this is something I’ve worked on, created and putting it up to show and if it goes down well it’s a amazing and if it goes down crap it’s terrible but at the same time you still did it.
Read MoreF: Most punk rock bands are kind of like not big projects. I think there’s a perception that if you sort of do bigger things. What am I trying to say, punk rocks bands are generally lo fi not glitzy not glamour, just like living in vans slumming it but like, but there are a handful when you get to a certain level where you start doing bigger things and you touring further and further. But there’s a jump, definitely a jump in’t there between like playing 5 UK dates and
L: We’re not there yet so.
F: It take a commitment a life commitment where you’ve got to arrange work schedules, your relationships, living arrangements everything you can’t just go off on a tour like. I think Dan was saying you’re aiming to tour like 20/16 weeks a year or something silly.
L: 16 might be it, but Dan has grand plans and if we go right back tot the start of that erm, this band was just meant to be a practice room and it’s a great way to have a bit of stage fright therapy erm you know love a bit of that. You know, just get some things out and enjoy making noise again. And Dan was like no no don’t worry it won’t get serious, but then 16 weeks is pretty serious. So we’ll see.
Read MoreIn support of Kruger she fought back by calling them out online ‘ '“A clusterfuck of uncool jerks” and started copying their own model to fight back. She sold skateboards with text saying don’t be a jerk. She’s fighting back and using different mediums and culture to deliver the messages. That’s what I’m trying to do with my approach, having an exhibition a zine a podcast and stickers it is all legal currency in the culture i’m from and building an audience within.
I think it’s reflective of society today where we live in world driving by likes on posts and followers. Social media is destroying our relationships with each other and reality. Here’s another post where i covered similar issues with body image and social media here - . ( That covers Essena Oneil’s writing)
Read MoreConfirmed booking with show
Artists: Chris Chucas
• Exhibition dates: 16th -23rd Nov 2018
• Set up from: 15th Nov from 12pm
• Hanging /Display of the exhibition is your responsibility, please come prepared & bring all
equipment/tools necessary
• Opening: Friday 16th Nov 6-8pm (fee applies)
Read MoreI had recorded a podcast with Jake. I really think that choosing to start a podcast to reach my audience with the work and to talk about the themes I’m bringing up in the work is one of the best things I’ve done. There a great way to reach people and they as audiences get younger and I get older it helps keep us all connected which is something I feel like we are all missing out on a lot. It comes up a lot in other bands songs. The more I progress with the work and look back on what I’ve done the more I feel that I’m documenting a generation of people ( maybe a very specific sub culture in this case) but on a broader spectrum what am I documenting? A generation of people that have had a turn, people are stugglying got make ends met, fighting to survive with services and funding help and support being cut everywhere you look.
Read MoreLO4 / LO7
After experimenting with the dyno label maker I decided to try out a Neon Pioneers logo for it I was pretty happy with the results. …..
I experimented with a few more images and placements. I realising now more and more that this might take a little longer than I had originally thought. I want to use the exhibition launch and all the attention for it as a way to get the brand out there. It might be a slow process but I could use the website and social media channels as a online blog/ magazine format until I find other artists with enough time. I think its a good idea to get a logo for an identity for the brand and get it out there at least.
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