Fluorescent-ness and collage - a start

I've amassed a new pile of postcards for collage purposes and have just started to play around with their possibilities. I'm still interested in the immediacy of scissors/scalpel and glue and the almost crass butting together or butting against of the monumental architectural structures. However, the research I was doing  with Nicola Naismith last month into East Anglian UFO sightings has awakened an alarming 1980's fascination in all that is fluorescent.  (It all started in Rendlesham Forest, with the fluorescent spraypaint markings on the trees.) This perhaps should have been unsurprising to me given my long interest in neon light (and the inability to afford to use it much), but the fluorescent thing has taken me by surprise.  I suppose my being drawn to 'nasty' yellow hues over the last couple of years should have been a clue??
Anyway, I will be experimenting with the nasty yellows and nasty greens and nasty pinks for a while, predictably, about ten years or so after everyone else 're-discovered' them. These images show the first, modest appearance of fluorescent green in the postcard collages.
The images are top to bottom: 'Double Bridge' and 'Poet's Garden'.

Rendelsham Forest Traces Poster

As part of Satellite's Touring Territories Project for the Space Exchange exhibition at Aid & Abet, Nicola Naismith and I have produced this double-sided limited edition poster. It is in a pile at the gallery and free to take a copy away, until they're all gone. It's part of our East Anglian UFO Archive in Space Exchange. 

We journeyed on a day-tour around Suffolk, re-visiting Orford Ness, interviewing a witness to a UFO sighting  and  ending up in the woods. Stumbling around the dark interior of Rendlesham Forest is quite an enclosing, verging on claustrophobic, experience with rows of trees leading off in all directions. As we came out of the wooded area at twilight, with 5 minutes to spare before the gates were locked, we found the well-populated  and barbecue-smokey camp-site, which felt rather surreal.

RAF Neatishead Radar Museum

Whilst investigating Operation Charlie's 1947 sightings of unexplained lights or Ghost Planes across East Anglia, but tracked at different points by the radar at RAF Neatshead, I became somewhat transfixed by the flashing, pulsating lights and whirring, turning machines in the Radar Museum. Some good examples of aerial surveillance cameras as well as fascinating radar equipment.  I was reminded of Stephanie Douet's sculpture, entitled 'Radar' of course, commissioned for the Air Field show I curated in Norfolk. I 'm eager to return to the museum for an in-depth visit.


Photo credits: Top - Type 84 Radar at RAF Neatishead.  Once used to detect Soviet aircraft during the Cold War. 2011 Chris Morshead, RAF Air Defence Radar Museum.
Bottom - A Type 7 MK Radar at Bishops Court, Northern Ireland in 1972.  Spanning 1942-1989, the Type 7 was the longest-serving Air Defence Radar. RAF Defence Radar Museum.

Rendlesham Forest

I've been away from Cyrus' Garden for a while as I'm caught up in the Satellite Touring Territories project  with Nicola Naismith - the blog, putting the Satellite Portfolio together, researching the  East Anglian UFO sightings for the Royal Standard, Liverpool, sending in the research documents to Aid & Abet, putting our talk together for the gallery on the 22nd October,  designing our poster for distribution and so on.  The Satellite Portfolio is currently on show and for sale at Aid & Abet, Cambridge: http://aidandabet.co.uk

I'm enjoying using some of the research images we took in Rendlesham Forest (whilst investigating the 1980 sightings) and literally highlighting some of the fluorescent paint markings we spotted on some of the trees.  I've ordered some fly-posters of the trees - black and white and flimsy paper. Perhaps we can take some on our next Tour, investigating Operation Charlie.

Satellite Portfolio

As Satellite Nicola & I are putting together a portfolio of 4 or 5 editioned prints from several Satellite members, but chosen by Aid & Abet.  The logistics of putting together such a seemingly simple task are proving problematic, particularly finding the suitable continer for the prints given our teeny budget and the size of the print. We've gone through several options and rejected as many, and time is ticking away. The turn around time for the printing is only a few days.  Luckily, Nicola is giving a logical and organised perspective to the proceedings, so we will get the task done and it will look great.
These are two photographic prints I am considering, both East Anglian bunker-types.  The top is one of several interior shots that I plan to experiment with at a later date as light boxes.

A new Project Space

Another development in terms of collaboration, exchange and interactive practice will be the latest initiative from The Queen of Hungary, late gallery of St Benedicts Street, Norwich.  Out in the green wilds of Norfolk, well, in a field really, stands our soon to be Project Space, newly vacated by Presto Park model car circuit and in need of a touch of renovation.
Yes, I've started another group blog to document this development with Stephanie Douet and Chloe Mandy. It is going to be a lot of work, but I think if we can generate some rural Norfolk art buzz and provide a useful resource for artists round these parts, it will be worthwhile.

http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/1515893

Busy with a project for Aid & Abet Gallery, Cambridge with an imminent deadline as part of our Satellite Collective. It's all about exchanging artist's spaces and exchanging ideas and dialogue. For Satellite, one of the interesting things is our lack of physical space but our borrowing of space and use of East Anglia as our cultural landscape. http://aidandabet.co.uk.  We've had a couple of trips to Cambridge for meetings and are now getting down to the busy bit.
I've started a group blog that between us will document the project and our plans and schemes developing from it.

The blog is on the a.n magazine website, http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/1329759.