In Process Residency - Day Four

 Polly Cruse from Satellite Artists came in  today to arrange the work and transform the space, the third curator and the fourth time it has been arranged/ moved. She seemed interested in layers of viewing and using the shadows and patterning within some of the pieces. I have time in the space tomorrow to reflect more. Not so many concrete blocks to shift today.

Just a lot of mobile phone images today as I have just got back from the pub.

In Process Day Two

First thing this morning I placed the black  Bunker-camouflaged-as-a-House on the plinth and messed around with the yellow acrylic rods. Some months/ years in the making.
Nicola Naismith from Satellite Artists spent the morning in the Project Space with me editing, sifting and sorting out which pieces she felt worked well together and could sit happily in this space. There seemed to be a mass of work that could become two or three different shows, or one show with different rooms. However, in the allotted area we had to play with, one pared down, rather bunker-oriented show emerged resplendent in greys and blacks with small splashes of yellow. 
Tomorrow I am picking up the projector, so my guest for Thursday will have some video to play around with too. I wonder if my old super 8 projector works?

The beginning of the sculpture after some eight years.

Framework for half of the glass camouflage-bunker sculpture in lovely powder-coated metal, nestled in the grass infont of the studio bunker, itself camouflaged by creping greenery. The title still evades me - 'Safe as Houses' seems too obtuse.

The bunker next door.

There must be some artistic use I can put this bunker to, right next door to my studio and with a green hat of ivy growing out of the middle. From the far side it is convincingly camouflaged and quite hidden from the air I should think.

In the Vale

Jumped out of the car half way between where (Great great) Auntie Min is buried and the power station that stands where her house used to be. The drone of the Spitfire engines that used to be sited at the power station still throbbing through my chest and deafening my ears. This house-bunker-house, camouflaged and now perhaps a lived-in-for-real home.

A sunny few days in Guernsey.

Sunlight through camouflage netting over a WW2 trench. Rather like a net curtain.

Part of the glass bunker design

Discussion with the metal work place sorting out the design that I couldn't do last year for various reasons. Luckily they'd kept the design, so just re-acquainting and a few adjustments. Should be done by the end of the month, when I can order the glass. First steps, at last, on the small version of the glass bunker after, what, at least 8 years. Working title is 'Safe As House', hopefully that will change. Also here, an image from a museum re-creating the domesticity of the internal world of a concrete defence structure.

Butler's Butterflies

Commission for a version of 'The Butler's Collection' 
- here reconstructed and revisited. 
This cage had to be returned to its rightful owner, so the 
small version butterflies now reside in a tasteful bamboo concoction. 
Still thinking about butterflies and moths, camouflage and mimesis, 
perhaps in miniature tableau form.

This shape might be a good base for the glass maquette of the camouflaged bunker/ house work I'd like to make, based around a German plan for a WW2 fairly common casemate in Guernsey.

I finally tracked this observation tower down to a field in Guernsey on my research trip. I've been drawing it from a small, old photo for a couple of years, what a difference to see it in a straw-coloured field sprouting satellite dishes and (radio?) masts. It seems to be masquerading as some utility resource for the Guernsey States.

Shell-shrine, bunker, Guernsey. Perhaps a sort of obsessive internal-space camouflage like the WWII domestication of other Channel Island German defence interiors with pictures and ornaments, while hours were wittled away waiting.

Observation post

This charming place is the Nicolle Tower, Jersey (a different branch of the Nicolles from my family). The 1940's Germans came along and added an extra floor to the existing tower, filling in crenellations with concrete and adding rubber roof tiles to camouflage their observation post. The bedroom (top floor) has a compass painted on the ceiling and as would be expected, far-reaching views on all sides of the coast and hills. It's also an interesting place to have a bath.

Shell Shrine camouflaged as a WWII bunker, Guernsey & the Shell Garden, courtesy of Branchage, Jersey International Film Festival

Alderney

An island three and a half miles by one and a half and so many fortifications:Napoleonic, Victorian and German WWII, all jammed on top of each other and around each other. Houses turned into defence fortifications then back into houses. Bunkers built on granite forts and camouflaged to look like stone and great angry-looking concrete slits knocked through the Victorian walls. Winding trenches breached by brambles. Anti-tank walls deluged under banks of sand. A very, very long breakwater with rusting railway tracks disappearing off the end. Organisation Todt on overdrive and the misery of the 'slave-workers' embedded in the wood-shuttered cement. The sense of watching and waiting, of being watched by countless, dank, dark gun embrasures, is immense and so often it is the sense of staring out over the sea to something invisible or perhaps about to appear through the fog.
All this and some stunning seafood too.

Not very camouflaged in Birmingham,

maybe a decoy instead.