Saturday, 6 April 2013

Peter Chassaud



Artist’s Statement

After a foundation course at Croydon and fine art painting, drawing and printmaking at Brighton, and working for many years in those media, and also writing and producing artist’s books, I have recently extended into the area of creative letterpress and typography and limited edition typographical prints. In 2009 I set up The Tom Paine Printing Press in Lewes, Sussex, where I live, to celebrate simultaneously the radical ideas of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), and the ‘art and mystery’ of letterpress printing which has been used to propagate ideas throughout the world.

I first encountered letterpress printing at school in 1959-64, when we used a couple of Arab treadle presses. Much later I briefly acquired an Arab of my own, and some 70 cases of type. I now have two hand-presses (a 19th century cast-iron Albion press and a replica of an 18th century wooden ‘common press’), and I’m building up a stock of metal and wood type which I’m using to produce semi-abstract compositions on specific themes: Artists, Writers, Political Philosophers, Alphabet, etc. These consist of words set from ‘random’ letters, or simply individual letters, set at angles to each other on the compositor’s stone (and therefore on the resultant printed sheet), and printed in black, red, blue, etc. I use traditional letterpress printing techniques, combining the functions of compositor and printer. I do all my own typesetting, using a composing stick where necessary, and I always print on dampened hand-made or mould-made paper to obtain the best impression.

I have exhibited these prints at the Whitechapel Art Book Fair and the Small Publishers Fair, alongside my artist’s books/poetic photobooks (the most recent of these being The East London Line – An Elegiac Meta-landscape (2010)*). I have shown these poetic photobooks at the above fairs, and also at the London Artists Book Fair, the Bristol Artists Book Event (BABE), the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair and other fairs at home and abroad. For printed work I use two press names: my poetic photobooks appear under the imprint of Altazimuth Press, while my typographical works appear under The Tom Paine Printing Press. My poetic photobooks are in many national and international collections, including the British Library, National Art Library, National Railway Museum, University of the Creative Arts and Manchester Metropolitan University.

As a painter, one of my major artistic concerns is with personal visual and poetic responses to landscape – what one might call the personal mythologisation of landscape – particularly urban landscapes with which I have had a long association, especially London. Another, related, concern is with the human body and dance, expressed though life drawing and painting. I often combine figures and landscape in a single image. I work simultaneously in many media, continuing with my painting and drawing practice, and also with installation, film and other work.

In 2011 I am showing my work at the Here Gallery (Bristol, 17 March - 9 April), BABE (Arnolfini, Bristol, 30 April – 1 May), London Olympia (Book Fair, 9-11 June), Oxford Brooks (Fine Press Fair, 5-6 November), Geneva, and possibly Whitechapel (London Art Book Fair, September).

Contact details: Peter Chasseaud, email: altazimuth@talktalk.net, Tel: 01273 476265; mobile 07956 821971.
Studio 3S3, Phoenix Brighton, 10-14 Waterloo Place, Brighton BN2 9NB.


* Others include Kings Cross (2004), Thames – The London River (2005), Afghanistan – A Journey (2007), The Euston Arch (2008) and Ypres Willows (2008).




Saturday, 30 March 2013

Sensitive and precise, Julia McKinlay's show at Here Gallery was a strong and striking combination of drawing and installation. Hostile Places was an exhibition of her visual research and reflections on a trip to Yellow Stone Park, and the Grand Canyon. 



Drawings and photographs from museums and research expeditions form the starting point for my work. My work explores the subjects of the animal, geology, landscape in the form of sculpture and drawings. I spent last July travelling through America hiking in the National parks and taking photographs of the extreme environments that I visited from deserts and canyons to mountains and glaciers. I was particularly interested in the geysers, fumaroles and bubbling mud pots at Yellowstone National Park, the wildlife that has adapted to live there and the structures that have formed as a result of the build up of minerals. I was fascinated by the bacteria blankets; colonies of bacteria that live in a flat, layered carpet like structure in the pools around geysers, which have incredibly intense colours.
The body of work that I have developed for this exhibition is in response to the harshness of the environment in Yellowstone, which has a unique situation on a volcanic caldera within a mountain range. Yellowstone’s altitude, the thinness of the earths crust in that area, and the channel of moisture sweeping in to the mountains from the Pacific Ocean have made it one of the most difficult places in the world for wildlife to survive. My work usually takes the form of large-scale sculptural installations, however because my focus has been details such as the colours and textures of the bacterial pools, the work is mainly in the form of drawings. I create objects that seek to combine the man-made with the organic. Gloss paint, enamel, and plastics are combined with wood, and natural fibres create a tension between the industrial and the natural. 


Saturday, 18 June 2011

Surface Tensions at Here Gallery February-March 2011



















Relic

Where we made love. It was my first time.
















Love made into a boat

A simple coracle woven from his hazel and my willow with a cotton hull, on a duvet river. Viewers were asked to remove their shoes and climb in.




The Moments Which Last

Take a pin and place it gently on the surface of the water. The meniscus at the bowl's rim will, if the weight is evenly balanced, give enough surface tension to hold the weight of the pins.



















Love Aground

A coracle grounded by earth

Wednesday, 23 February 2011

Surface Tensions at Here Gallery Stokes Croft

My first solo show! Excitement abounds as does love. This is my press release:


Exhibition by Christine McLoughlin
Surface Tensions
Preview Thursday 17th February
Exhibition continues until Saturday 12th March

Here Gallery, 108 Stokes Croft, Bristol, BS1 3RU
Tel: 0117 9422 222

Free Admission

Opening Hours:
Tues to Sat: 10.30 am –6.30pm (5.30pm Sat.)
Sun and Mon: Closed   

Christine McLoughlin is an artist with an Irish heritage originally from Newcastle Upon Tyne. Graduating in Sculpture and Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2009,
she has exhibited throughout the UK and Europe. Surface Tensions will be her first exhibition in Bristol.

‘I find meaning in the ephemeral and sensual in life. I love to translate the parallels I notice between the way materials are moved and changed by nature,
and the way people respond to shapes,
spaces and fabrics, into intense experiences,
which reveal a refinement of my hidden feelings.’

Surface Tensions will draw on the beauty found in water. For Christine, the simple and pure chemistry of seeing how full of water a bowl can be and the majesty of the paper clip not sinking in it has a parallel with a first love relationship where you reveal more and more of yourself and trust you won’t ruin the bond you’re building together.

The basement Here Gallery will be converted into an interaction between the viewer’s touch and Christine’s material creations. We will be drawn into her intimate installation and have space to personally reflect.

Friday, 20 March 2009

Open Heart



Open Heart at Roehampton University, 

London in October 2010






Fresh Spectacle, 

Glasgow School of Art, 2009




Personal Dance, Dancing to no music, 2008




Prayer, 2007





Underneath It, 2007




Connection, 2007