Seen from the street in the evening.
Getting on with work at the ESW.
One of the differences with the ESW hosting the Repair Shop is that they are well connected with the Edinburgh College of Art, from where a number of students volunteered to assist me in my art making. Here, in the background, Cecily Hughes is giving a toy truck a new paint job. The students are both Mfa and Ba, and each help out for two or more days, taking care of everyday business at the Repair Shop. This means welcoming customers and staffing the shop, which gives me more freedom to move about and use the facilities of the ESW without having to close shop, but also with making. The volunteers get a direct insight into the workings of a relational art project, but also direct experience in making, and above all in how one can think around making art.
My corner of the woodworkshop is admittedly messy, but that is to be expected when five projects are under way simultaneously.
The ESW have excellent facilities for working with wood, metal, casting, ceramics, stone and much more, which I of course try to get the full advantage of. The many possibilities means that I run up and down the stairs, cutting something here, grinding something else there, preparing a cast, instructing the assistants, ordering more materials, and building up more and more sculptures at the same time. It might look chaotic, but it is really highly efficient, and the payoff comes when a number of pieces suddenly come together in one day.
Sculptures displayed with images of what they looked like before their transformation.
At the end of the work period, we showed all the new artworks for one day only, in one of the exhibition spaces at the ESW.The owners would then come in and see what they and also the others had gotten, and after six o’clock they could pick up their artworks and take them home.
Getting all your questions answered.
This was also a final opportunity for the new owners to ask any questions they had about their new artworks, and also give me their feedback and impressions, which I highly value.
Playing an instrument he helped build, Casey Miller is not shy for attention.
Musician and instrument maker Casey Miller also very kindly played all the different instruments that had been made during the previous five weeks.
I arrived in Belfast on Sunday the 27th May, filled with ideas and ready to start working. First, I had to convert the gallery space of PS2 into a functional workshop, also capable of welcoming visitors and make them feel a bit more like customers in a shop than gallery visitors. Since the main activity of the art repair shop, turning objects into artworks, couldn’t start before the workshop was fitted and ready, I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. In keeping with Peter’s philosophy, we decided to use as much recycled material as possible, and only buy what was absolutely necessary. In a way, this turned building the workshop itself into something very much like turning broken objects into art.
Luckily enough PS2 has a room in the back filled with salvaged materials from earlier shows. Since Peter likes artists who dares take on the space and really transform it, he had more plywood and mdf than I could use, all painted in funky bright colours. I scavenged what was there, cut it up, and reassembled it into a simple shop cum workshop.
I spent Monday and Tuesday building, late into the evening, covering the floor with saw dust and wood chippings. The thing about building a theatre set, which this really is like, is that the fitting can be done swiftly and just using eye measurements, it doesn’t matter if it’s all a little bit wonky, as long as you paint it afterwards. The paint brings it all together and really tricks the eye. All badly cut edges, slightly too big gaps, and mixed dimensions of wood become invisible once they all have the same colour. The paint I had to choose from was also what was left over from previously, and I was lucky enough that someone had left a full tin of a lovely (or so) institutional green, which I used to tie everything together.
Wednesday was spent painting and dressing, with tools and furniture, and Thursday I could finally open for the first customer. Or actually, the first customer dropped by on Wednesday. Shiro Masuyama (the only Japanese artist in Northern Ireland according to himself) had heard about it and cleverly used the opportunity to occupy slots 1 to 3 in the newly built object shelf.
The final touch however, was hanging the big sign on Thursday. Now I felt ready to invite customers/visitors and get on with the important bit – making art.
