Liege Printmaking festival

Before last week’s visit to Liege, all I knew about Belgium was that it was a country famous for beer, chips, chocolate and Tintin… Now I know that it should be also renowned for super warm and friendly people, grand old buildings, and the Liege printmaking festival!

The station itself is a wonderful piece of architecture by Santiago Calatrava which was rebuilt in 2009. Covered partially in snow from a heavy fall 2 days ago, the light filtering down was like some complex binary pattern.

You can even see the rocket from Tintin to the far right of this shot…

The gallery where the international printmaking festival show is held is in the Musee des Beaux Arts, Liege, or BAL for short. It’s very central, just set back from the river by less than 100 metres, and a very grand large space.

I was pleased that they had hung so many of my prints. It is the first time that 28 prints  from the series Shift have been shown on one wall like this, and the projected animation was on the facing wall, which made a good link between the two.

This festival has been held every other year on nine previous occasions, and selects a mix of artists from all over the world. This year, I was the only artist from the UK, outnumbered by those from Brazil, Congo and China. Artists from Japan, Poland, Romania and the US were there too, alongside a larger number of French, Belgian, Canadian and German artists.

The uniqueness of the event was the mix of events in the museum as well as a satellite festival of art events with openings on the following days. We had an evening reception, and then, the following morning, breakfast in the museum with pain au chocolat, strong black coffee AND chocolate truffle eggs!!! This was a great opportunity to look at the work again and share a chocolate high with the other artists.

For a TV report of the event in French please see the following link

http://www.rtc.be/reportages/262-general/1454329-neuvieme-biennale-internationale-de-gravure-a-liege

And for a lot more photos of the show itself please see my facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151307272056481.1073741825.566891480&type=1&l=28665e1192

I found myself exploring the city on my own the following day. The city is ancient, with narrow walled cobbled streets that wander uphill. It is a place that feels full of secrets.

I had bought a grey furry squirrel hat in Brussels in a flea market, which looked like half an arctic fox had also been incorporated into the brim, and played around with the idea of juxtaposing my modern day tourist self with this item from the past…

In the evening we all gathered in the Musee d’Ansembourg which was a glorious palatial mansion along the Feronstree, still decorated with old clocks, stucco ceilings and these coloured glass windows.

I was inspired by the dark mirrors and the glossy floor reflecting the afternoon light. I think it would make a wonderful venue for new narratives.

Another day of wandering the streets and I went up and down the montagne de beuren (the hill with a view) ending up at a small convent like gallery called the Musee de la vie Wallonne, where there was a great show about murder: the perpetrators, reasons, repetition, punishments and depiction in the media. My favourite section was the bit on facial recognition from prior to the discovery of unique fingerprinting: here are photos of ears and noses categorised into different types…

All in all, a lot of food for thought.

 

Printathon

East London Printmakers have an annual summer show, and this is the 14th one. We decided to celebrate the Olympics as we can practically see the Olympic site from here, and this is particularly possible from the gallery which will host our show, which is located in the Olympic park.

There has been much laughter about how the word Printathon resembles the phrase “print a thong” and lots of knicker and nappy jokes have been flying around… I’m showing a piece I did in collaboration with photographer Paul Weaver, proposing that the Olympics include the sport of Flight, and how it should be judged.

With 65 artists, there are going to be a lot of inspired, ambitious, humorous and aspirational pieces on show, so if you are around in the next month, please come and check it out. The party is on the 7th June from 6-9pm, venue Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery, and you are all welcome, bring your friends!

 

Insectorium

Well, even though I love making prints, there is part of me that wants to be a flying creature. Today, I spent a couple of hours with photographer Paul Weaver making weird insect-like pictures. Here’s a couple of them… We had fun!

 

Another investigation into Flight

Montefiore Flip

 

Investigating Flight

I’ve been enjoying remaking Muybridges’ “Animal and Human Locomotion” by putting together this sequence of photos taken by photographer Paul Weaver, “Investigating Flight”.  If I could fly, this is what I’d do, wave my arms around in a vertical sort of butterfly motion…

 

Time Slice project with Angus Leadley-Brown

For leap year, and in particular, leap day, I wanted to make a leap in time.

Last year’s dancing sequences were partly about celebrating this transient moments of weightlessness, so it was appropriate to team up with photographer, Angus Leadley-Brown who has developed an impressive circular bank of cameras to recreate what feels like being in the matrix- flying and frozen in motion.

We did the shoot in Stoke Newington Library, and there is a video of the set up of the cameras, which took 5 hours, and the final jumps, all here

And for the movie of the jumps themselves, without the previous set up, please go to this link

 

Wuongean.com is back

Argh! About a week ago I noticed that wuongean.com had been hijacked by a lingerie/ dating agency website. Luckily, I can confirm that it is now happily back in my possession and hopefully will never stray again.

http://www.wuongean.com
 takes you to the website with all my print works since 2007.

On a different note, here are a couple of pictures from my latest book, crossing that bridge about my dress as it danced across a bridge in Portland in 2008…

 

Moth to a flame

The ancient fortress of the Malatesta family in Montefiore in Italy is more than 600 years old and full of tales of mystery, madness and revenge. Wandering around the old rooms with whitewashed walls and imposing panoramic views it is difficult to imagine a series of love affairs and arguments taking place in the same bit of space that we now occupy. However, when I got to a room near the top of the castle, with a high arched ceiling and spot of sunlight tracking across the bare floor, I felt a strong feminine presence, and was intrigued to hear that it used to be the room in which Costanza used to live. From what I can gather, she was extremely wealthy and had had a string of lovers after her husband was killed in battle, only to be murdered herself by her very own uncle who had objected to her German boyfriend. Her ghost is supposed to be there, and I managed to terrify myself a lot by taking pictures with a flash and staring appalled at a series of photos with floating white circles in them… real evidence of ghosts or was it the lens?

When I finally got over my fear of Costanza, I made a series of photos of my feet leaping and dancing in the space. If you view them sequentially and rapidly, the feet look like they are flames that lick and lap at the floor. I’m not quite sure what the final piece will be: possibly an animation, possibly prints, (maybe even a mezzotint!) but will go back to take more photos in July. For more info please see
http://www.opificiodellarosa.org/en/index-uk.html

Okay I’m not sure if Costanza had white knickers on from Marks and Spencers, but you get the idea…

 

Flight

I have been interested in flight and escape (ever since February’s ordeal in loneliness in Yorkshire), and have just had an interesting session in the studio with the photographer Paul Weaver, trying to put together some material for a new flip book or animation about weightlessness.

This is just a selection. I really like the ambiguous shapes and abstract shadows. The only thing is I’ve gotta practice levitation a bit more. Two days after the photo shoot and my bones still hurt!

Look at what Paul made of the latest series of photos that we shot. He’s animated the whole thing!

http://www.photizm.co.uk/paulweaverphoto.com/flight.html

http://www.photizm.co.uk/paulweaverphoto.com/flight2.html

http://www.paulweaverphoto.com

paul@paulweaverphoto.com

 

My creative space

Last week, a lovely photographer, Jens Marott, came to visit my creative space.

I pulled out a Halloween mask that I’d made last year and put it on the back of my head.

This is the picture that he took!