Brick Lane, East End

One of the greatest things about the ACME residency was that if facilitated my move to

the East end of London. After graduating I knew I wanted to settle this side of town because of the thriving art scene but had no idea where or how. Now that I’m here I suspect that this part of town is not the best of places in the world to grow up but as an artist, here by choice, it’s a great place to be. 

Photos Ruth Caig 2010, Artists Unknown

I was reminded of this as I wandered down Brick Lane on a quest to Atlantis art store. For me, Brick Lane as a street encapsulates much of the East End of London's personality and not purely because of its famed Bengali Cuisine, trendy markets, quirky shops and Art Gallery's. What I love is the randomness. The interventions, quirky tagging and personalized store fronts.

Photo Ruth Caig, Book shop on Brick LaneEastside Books

A response to an earlier part of this blog questioned the part we play in change. Here unlike the Olympic site, you can see the evolution of the environment, see direct community intervention and reclaimed public spaces. I know it wouldn’t be to everybody’s taste but it feels like it’s ours, as though we have a say and if we are brave enough a voice to respond.

Artist Unknown, Brick Lane 2009, Photo Ruth Caig

Open House London 2010

Lloyd's Building. Ruth Caig. 2010

Did any body visit anything exciting for the Open House London event last month?

The event in London, runs over one weekend a year opening up little seen buildings for public tours.(this year 18^th and 19^th of September) I’ve known about it for a few years but as with many things, every  year it has come to my attention to late and the weekend has passed me by. Finally I got my self on the mailing list and this year actually got my self to one of the openings. A much anticipated visit to the Lloyd’s building.

My studio is about a half hour bus journey in to the City, close as the crow fly’s. I enjoy  taking trips out there to observe how the other half live, I have grown to love the Lloyd’s building. I love that such humor encases such seriousness, that such flamboyance hosts so many men in gray suits with matching ties.

Ruth Caig. Sketch book studies. 2009

For me the most exciting thing about the day was being allowed to photograph at will. I suspect Open House generally could be a photographer’s paradise. I’ve spent a little time drawing from this quirky building but photographic opportunity’s are usually cat ailed by the flamboyantly dresses security on the door. If your camera looks to official you will usually get moved on. 

Lloyd's Building, Ruth Caig 2010

As well as being a great morning out I’m happy to say that the images have led my work down an unexpected path, which is never a bad thing. Next year I will defiantly be buying a guide book and making a weekend of it. 

Ruth Caig, mixed media, 20x15cm, 2010

 http://www.openhouselondon.org.uk/

Donald Judd, the City and Me

One of the things that has become apparent to me of late is that when I’m instinctively drawn to the work of another artist the odds are, if I dig a little deeper there will be significant links to my work and practice. This morning I revisited the Donald Judd Tate 2004 exhibition catalogue. I was looking for a section I thought I recalled about colour and architecture but found something else entirely.

As my new work will both exist within and be made in response to the city it is interesting to me that David Batchelor’s text reflects on Judd’s use of Modern materials and colours as incidentally reflecting our experience of modernity, the feel and ‘colours of the modern city ’.

It is true that our experience of colours and in extension surface, within the city is often intense but also ephemera’. As an artist I spend much of my time trying to order these experiences with my camera and sketch book.

  

As a painter working with sculptural forms I do believe that Judd, although claiming to turn his back on painting continued to address painterly concerns, i.e. colour, structure, composition and support. Instead of leaving these problems behind he simply started began using an exciting new language to address them.

Supports where set free from the wall and became compositional elements within a site. Liquid colour pallets traditionally favored by painters where replaced by commercially applied paint or work built with materials for there intrinsic colour. Although new and ‘modern’ even the highly reflective, coloured and transparent materials could be said to explore painterly concerns. For century painters have strived to capture light and built up layers of transparency.

It’s interesting to me that much of Judd’s work is untitled and yet the descriptions of materials are specific and descriptive, emphasizing the materiality of the work and rooting them in the real rather than the contrived art world. ‘They are as Steinberg has said about Rauschenberg,  not windows into a world but objects in the world…They refer not by picturing but by presenting, not by evoking but by embodying that colours and surfaces of the city.’

see David Batchelor, ‘Everything a Colour', Donald Judd, Exh. cat.,Tate 2004, pp64-75

Instaling 'nowhere places of percived importance' London E15

As I touched on in my previous post I was a little nervous about installing my first guerilla intervention but in the speed in which the workmen were progressing imposed on me a natural dead line. The last thing I wanted was to return form my holiday to a freshly laid street in which my work would have no place. (As it turned out this was an unnecessary worry as the street still looks like a krypton factor assault course)

Sooo I dragged my self out of bed at 7.30 on a Sunday morning, donned my high viz vest and headed out like any sane person to insert work in to the central reservation of a busy London road. All was going well until I looked up half was through to see traffic police doing speed checks only 100yards away! What are the chances? After a small panic attack I got my head down and finished putting the panels in place. I need not have worried they couldn’t have cared less. I’m hoping this will get easier.

Ruth Caig 2010 London E15

Ruth Caig 2010

'Nowhere places of perceived importance'

I recently came across a document 'High Street 2012', published by tower hamlet counsel, outlining there intended regeneration of the street that runs along the end of my road.

(www.highstreet2012.com/HighStreet2012.pdf)

I had to laugh when I read that one of the objectives is to 'De-clutter the street by removing unused signage, railings ans street furniture.' Any body having visited our area over the last nine months or so will appreciate the irony of this. Locals and drivers have lived with the systematic deconstruction of the surrounding roads and the inconvenience that this has entailed.

Although no doubt the developments in the long term will benefit the community that survives the improvement's, I wanted to make a piece of work that will sit in amongst the visual chaos and give a tongue in cheek nod to those that have lived through the inconvenience that has ensued.

study's for 'nowhere places of perceived importance'

Living and working in E15 pre 2012

I graduated from Wimbledon in 2006 I was lucky enough to have been selected, almost immediately as eligible for a live work studio in the east end of London. The south edge of the Olympic park is around a five walk from the studios. Our area has seen many changes since I moved in. Although the future of our site is in jeopardy because of the obvious developments taking place, it looks as though I am going to be fortunate enough to actually complete near enough the full five years before IKEA ,the new owners, turf us out.

If I’m honest, I have to admit that much of what has been happening on my doorstep has passed my bye. Obviously there was an initial excitement as the main structures began to appear, but most of the changes until now have taken place behind locked gates, only to be glimpsed at while rubbernecking from the road or train.

I am going to use this place to share some of the things that are happening around me now, and as a place to document the work I am planning to make in response to both the things that have remained and the things that are going to changes.