This is My Life 2017 “Projections ” Exhibition opens at the Embassy Theatre this week.  The portraits were created by the students of Linkage Community Trust using digital projections and traditional painting techniques. There are 19 portraits in the exhibition and the work can be seen until the end of August.

It was a pleasure to work with the students and staff at the Spilsby Unit.

This is My Life, an art exhibition and event at the Embassy Theatre Skegness, opening the 21^st of September 2016.

Your Invitation:

About: This is my life is an art exhibition and event which seeks to explore all aspects of disability through the eyes of those who struggle with various conditions. Our hope through the exhibition is to help those who struggle with various conditions to build a “wee” bridge from their side of the gap which makes it easier for us all to enjoy life within our community. To do this, two artists myself and Jason Wilsher-Mills have been working with various groups to help people to create images and texts which reflect how they feel about their lives or there place in the community. This includes the family and friends of those living with the condition as they are also affected by circumstances. The work created in theses workshops will be shown at the Embassy Theatre Gallery alongside work by six prominent disabled artists in the exhibition “This is my Life”. The exhibition work of the six artists is curated by Shape Arts, a national organisation which promotes artists living with various disabilities. Sometimes within a system people talk to you, make notes, record details, which are important to create programs to help but it can seem that although you have been heard, no one is listening. This exhibition seeks to reintroduce the personal human experience back into the conversation. Some of the work may not seem profound in its imagery; the profundity is born in the maker how the work is made and the memories the image records.

What: The Exhibition of work will run from the 21^st of September until the 12^th of November and will be opened on the 21^st of September at 2.00pm with a large digital projection of the work created in the workshops with Jason Wilsher-Mills, after the digital projection which will last approximately twenty minutes there will be a new performance work by the students of Linkage supported by Rhubarb Theatre which will last again approximately twenty minutes. After this Jason Wilsher-Mills will give a brief talk on the Disability Discrimination Act banner that he was commissioned to make for the Houses of Parliament where it is on permanent exhibition, a second copy of the banner will be on show during the exhibition.

The exhibition will then be officially opened.

Participants. The six artists in the exhibition are artists, Simon Raven, Jason Wilsher-Mills, Rachel Gadsden, Tom Shakespeare, Brigitte Mierau and Natalie Papamichael, who all face challenges

through various disabilities. (Individual artists details are given in the additional information notes). Alongside the work of these artists will be work created by students from Linkage working with Jason Wilsher-Mills and work created by sufferers and supporters from Lincolnshire’s Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Cafes and other groups working with artist Malcolm Tait.

The event has been generously funded by Arts Council England with strong support from Magna Vitae and The Embassy Theatre Skegness. Also crucial in producing this first event is Shape Arts who curated the exhibition and Rhubarb Theatre who supported the creation of the new performance work.

To view some of the work that will be on show at the exhibition go to our sister blog https://thisismylife.live/

See you there 🙂

This work began life as a piece about place, there was two reasons for this. Firstly a curiosity about the influence place has on who we are and secondly the object that started the piece was a holder for a mobile phone to use it as a Sat Nav., it turns out I didn’t need it.

So the work is about my journey, all the places I have been to that are prominent in my memory. It is like life is a mechanism that has been churning out events and circumstances I have responded to and they have influence the places I have gone to or lived in.

However the more I got into the piece I discovered that the places that most readily came to mind were places where I remember meeting someone who influenced me, and so on the back of some of the place name in the glass bowl is a record of who that person was. The one that springs most readily to my mind frequently even today after about fifteen years was a meeting with a priest in Padua, Italy.

I was visiting Venice and on a day trip to Padua to look at the paintings in one of its famous churches saw that there was notices everywhere to say there was no photography permitted. Not a problem I enjoyed the paintings and in the afternoon went to view some paintings in another church. I was walking round the church with my camera hanging around my neck and this priest came up to me pointing at the camera, I hastily babbled “Non” “Non” which the sophisticated amongst you will realize is French, the only two Italian words I knew were “Si” and “grazie”. Anyway I kept trying to make this priest understand I was not taking photographs, without much success because he kept going on at me, he obviously did not speak English, and I did not have a phrase book. This seemed to go on for a long period which was probably only about seven or eight minute but when you seem to be at loggerheads with someone it is a long time. Anyway after the said eight minutes in desperation the priest took my camera in his hand and proceeded to take photographs saying Si Si! At last the penny dropped and what he had been trying to tell me for the past eight minutes was that it was OK to take photographs in this church. What struck me was that having decided to do me a kindness despite the language barrier and my lack of common sense he persevered until I understood, most would have given up after about a minute. Such a small kindness but always remembered.

About two and a half years ago I was diagnosed with something called Pulmonary Fibrosis (it has a broad range of outcomes) and so the timepiece is indicative of the finite time we all have. But what I realized making the work is how little towns, countries and places influenced me and how much people have.

Other views can be found in Gallery 5: Making and Assemblage

I have always been fascinated by the relationship between the precise formulae  that exist in the abstract world of mathematics and the imprecise way they translate into the natural or real world.

The spiral this image is based on can be described by the equation     is named after  the 3rd century Greek Mathematician Archimedes.

The original line for the spiral is taken from an exact computer linear drawing of the spiral but as I widened it to a central ball, the precision is lost as I create the image by hand. The sections in the image like the central ball are simply creative and intuitive processes as I build the image.

I wanted to incorporate natural spirals into the piece so as I live near the beach decided to use shell found on Anderby Creek beach. The work is framed in wood from an old palette which has been sanded down and waxed. The idea on how to incorporate the shells into the work comes from a Jasper John work  which has a target as the main image but four small cast heads are incorporated into the top of a similar frame structure.