Hi this is Pitt and Hodson reporting live from the UN in Vienna - We are sitting at the back of meeting room waiting for the morning session to open. Chris has identified fellow cosmonauts and important delegation. Unfortunatly The Pakistan delegation hasn't turned up, so our meeting was cancelled.

Milky Way working!

Milky Way Test

NGA set-up / preview

ch - Making the Astronaut suit begins....

ch - Lunar observations

ch - Mission Control - Drawings and other work

ch - Mission Control - Week 1

ch -NGA Update / PREVIEW!!

ch - Mission Control continues....

Because I'm having such a productive time at the Pitt Studio, my mini-residency has been lengthened to finish on/around the 31st, so i've got another 2 weeks or so to complete a body of work... including my Space suit. I will be posting pictures of some of the work I've already produced soon... maybe Sunday night.

Over and out.

ch - Mission Control

From now until the 18th May I will be carrying out a residency of sorts at the Pitt Studio and Gallery in Worcester. As part of the work I will create whilst there, I will be constructing my Astronaut suit for use in Vienna, working on blueprints and the final design of INSP-1 and we will also be continuing with filming the documentary we started in London, following me through a multitude of creative processes. Please drop by if you can!

Please view: www.independentspaceagency.110mb.com

ch - assessment over

Just a quick post to let you all know that I have just returned from uni having taken down my installation as part of my 1st year assessment. The external examiners will now have looked over the work (one of them apparently is cousin to Helena Bonham-Carter!) and my fate is sealed... i won't find out what my mark is until next week probably... will keep you informed.

ch - Final proposal

The final final draft of my proposal was handed in promptly at 1:30pm yesterday, a good 3 hours before the deadline. I shaln't be receiving an email this time to tell me that I missed it! I thought it was quite good, but we shall see.

ch- Roll Up Art

I completely forgot that that I had submitted some photos of my work to be included in an exhibtion in Bucharest.... turns out my photo's were accepted (although i didn't hear if/not they had been) and during March they, and almost 100 other artist's work, were on show on a large projection screen suspended on the School of Architecture in Bucharest. I've had to give permission for the images to go on tour at other venues around Romania! I can now consider myself an international artist!

see: http://roll-up-art.blogspot.com/2008/03/news.html

i'm around 19th down the list.

ch - I did it!

I have completed the final draft of my MA proposal, all the 'i's are dotted and the t's crossed! wahoo! all thats left to do now is to continue reading and hand it in on the 23rd April!

ch - Tutorial

I've just come back from a tutorial with 3... count them... 3 members of staff! It was just to run through my draft proposal, outline any changes that might need to be made, think about other aspects that may need to be written about. Generally, just to make sure that my practice tutor, theory lecturer and course director know about the work I'm doing.

I've got 2 weeks to get the proposal moved from draft to final, including all references and bibliography, notation etc sorted... I can do it! ... can't I?

ch - Missed Deadline part 2

I was literally in Birmingham for an hour and a half this morning, but I was able to get quite a lot into that time. First port of call was the office at Margaret Street, after filling in an assessment receipt form, I handed in all three copies of my draft proposal. I've got a tutorial with 3 staff members on Tuesday to discuss the proposal and iron out any creases.

I left Uni after 5 mins and decided to kill some time before my train. I nipped across to the Waterhall Gallery, where i was greeted cheerily by the lady behind the desk. Veering round to the right I entered their current show art of the STITCH. The BM&AG website says of the exhibition:

This acclaimed international open exhibition from the Embroiderers’ Guild aims to represent the role of stitch in contemporary artistic practice, and is presented in association with Coats Crafts Europe. An unprecedented 944 entries by 608 artists from 37 different countries entered art of the STITCH 2008/9, highlighting the continued and ever increasing popularity of stitch around the world. In total 56 works were selected by a panel of international professionals and representatives from the arts and business sectors. art of the STITCH 2008/9 represents 54 artists from 13 different countries including Lithuania, Cyprus, Hungary, Canada and Japan.

It was a really great show, a testament to the skill of the artists and the versatility of sewing and needlework. It wasn't as you might suspect, a show of Women's Institute samplers and amateur cross-stitch, rather, a refreshingly varied and vibrant array of sculpture, drawing, applique and other sewn items. Some of the more stand-out pieces include a 'quilt' made of up Guinness cans cut into square pieces and stitched together. The squares were jumbled in such away that created a sort of disorientation akin to that of having drunk that many pints of the stout. The 'format' of a quilt also is no accident, it references what many a tipsy bloke (or woman for that matter) reaches for when home from the pub... a comfy bed and a chance to sleep it off. I'm not sure how comfy aluminium is to sleep under though.

The other piece that raised a smile was M Van der Stoep's Hermit Crab (pictured - taken from www.bmag.org.uk) a great example of 3D needlwork and soft sculpture. Hand stitched and embellished with fabric paints and wire I could almost see a cheeky glint in his eyes. The show is well worth a look if your able to get down.

art of the STITCH 2008/9 is a touring exhibition showing at the Waterhall, Birmingham, Deutsches Textilmuseum, Krefeld, Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, Hungary and Fundación Valentín de Madariaga-MP, Seville, Spain . A fully illustrated colour catalogue accompanies the exhibition at £6.00 (10 Euros) and is available through the Embroiderers’ Guild and at exhibiting venues.

ch - Missed Deadline part 1

So, yesterday I received an email from the faculty office telling me that I had missed the deadline for handing in the draft of my essay proposal (2nd April - 4.30pm) - oops! And that I had to bring 3 copies in as a matter of urgency. I'm off in to Uni in a few minutes to hand it in and get it signed off. I couldn't believe that I had done that, although it is still the Easter Holidays according to the course handbook... why put a Deadline within the holidays literally 2 days before the end of the Holiday? I know that a few people on the course are actually abroad and dont come back until this weekend?! Nevermind!

I'll post again when I get back!

ch - The Independent Space Agency

I have become increasingly dissillusioned by the Governmental Space Agencies and organisations, who are either too proud to reply to me or are unwilling to even contemplate working with me on artistic projects, (even though they profess to supporting the arts). It is to this end that I have made the decision to create my own Artistic Space Agency. Named the 'Independent Space Agency' or ISA, it focuses on new frontiers for Art. Ok, I havent got the Billions of pounds they have behind them, but why should the exploration and artistic uses of Space be their preserve?

I'm in the process of setting up a website for the agency, that will contain all the information and how perhaps other artists [you] could get involved - the address of which I'll post here when its ready or put a link at the top of the page with the others.

The logo above is the one I have designed for the ISA.

ch - Meeting

There's a simple way to tell if it's the Easter Holidays or not... the train was absolutely packed on the way to Birmingham and it was even worse on the way back this evening. The main reason I went to Birmingham today was to have a meeting with the curator of our show as part of the NGA. We met in Starbucks on Colmore Row, it was a really cool meeting. I explained the pieces I'm hopefully going to be showing (which for now are works in progress - they will be ready for the show though, I've no doubt of that.) and we discussed various other projects that we each are involved with. It was a nice informal chat but we got a lot talked about. After half an hour or so, another of the artists arrived and the conversations continued, we must have been sat there for an hour and a half or more in total! I'm going to post images of the works in progress as they... well...progress. Stay Tuned.

ch - a bit of a catch up..

Its been a while since I last posted so I thought I'd better rectify the situation! Carrying on from where I left off, the rest of my day on the the 5th March was a very good one. I met Robin at Central Hall and he took me on a tour of the space which is huge! Our show is going to be on the 3rd floor (i think) and it is immense. I'm plumming for one (or more) of the smaller, self contained rooms which are currently being used as storage. They're full of really great architectural features; stained glass windows, iron fire-places and cornicing.

I'm meeting the curator next week to discuss the show and what pieces I want/might show, it'll be great to get a lot more focused on the show and how it's all going to work.

As usual, I'll keep you posted!

np - There and back again

There and Back again

No it’s not a tale of elves, dwarves and wizards, rather a conclusion to our theory lessons. We have, as I understand it, travelled far and travelled nowhere. We’ve being following the avant-garde through revolutionary inception into crisis, to re-emerge in minimalism and conceptual art to be pressurised by modernity and suppressed by post modernism. And yet we find ourselves here at the end of the our practices aligned with postproduction and relational aesthetics sharing some ground with the original avant-garde.

Authorship, collaboration, relationships between art and science and now (new technologies), de-skilling of art, new skills and the role of the artist in the social realm, all of these ideas are still relevant and occupy us in our practices as artists today.

Postproduction beware: In the constant re-historisizing, sampling the past, present and the future, being able, being empowered to go anywhere, use anything. Are we in danger of autopoiesis. Art for arts sake, a self generating art?

Not a hobbit in sight.

ch - Tutorials and Meetings.

7:30am on the dot, that's what time I left the house this morning. I was at the station for 7:45am and the train arrived to whisk me on my merry way at around 7:50am. It was early aswell, which for a Wednesday morning is quite surprising. I do enjoy being out and about at that time in the morning although it means getting up quite a bit earlier than ususal - nothing a cup of coffee won't fix. It's now 9:55am and I'm sat in the library computer room along with two others who I think are year 2's.

Anyway, the reason I was up so perilously early is because I've got a busy day today. I was supposed to be in a tutorial round about now, infact I should just be leaving. My tutor was caught up in traffic so to let him get his breath back we arranged to meet at 11. "But 11 is when you're supposed to be meeting Robin Dobson from NGA!" I hear you cry... well fear not, whilst waiting for my tutorial he wandered along the corridor (to the office he shares with my tutor) and introduced himself to me, he explained that he recognised me from the picture that I'd provided him with as part of the proposal. We got chatting about various things whilst we waited for my tutor, he seemed really interested to know how the MA was going and what I was up to. I told him about the space work I've been working on, although he kind of knew a lot about it because unbeknown to me, he was the man who had been working in the same office whilst I've been having tutorials! I did though have a sneaking suspicion it was him! :-) - Robin suggested that we meet a bit later on at Central Hall, he was meeting another Artist there at 5:30 so to make it easier on my tutor and him, I agreed and am now meeting him at half 5. I've got a few other bits and pieces to attend today so the time should pass quite quickly.

So that's how you find me here in the library, I'll let you know how the rest of my day pans out.

ch - NGA 2008 - Venue Confirmed!

I received an email a few days ago from the organisers of the New Generation Arts Festival which I'm taking part in this year (see previous posts). The venue has been confirmed as Central Hall on Corporation Street, Birmingham. From what I gather it is a rather old building with lots of rooms and various other spaces - there are even school rooms apparently, so there may even be a balckboard or two kicking around somewhere which would be great!

Anyway, we're all meeting up this Wednesday (4 artists) with the organisers and our curator at the venue. I will keep you all informed!

ch - My day...

(The image above is a picture of a reflection of me in a wavy mirror which I found in the MA studios.)

I went into Margaret Street today, primarily to return some library books, I decided to have a bit of a mooch around the studios to see what, if anything, was going on. I started in the MA studios which were empty of students, there was however a fair bit of work around. Mostly large paintings, some were giant Cezzanesque landscapes made in a series of 3 panels. Large blocky brushstrokes in bright colours (but not overpowering) worked together to form Mediteranean landscapes complete with dusty roads, Cypress trees and white blocks which I took to be whitewashed buildings. They became clearer the further away I moved.

I turned the corner to the studio where I'd attended a group crit a couple of weeks ago, to find that virtually all the photocopies had been removed from the wall, the only trace of any work having been there were a few specks of black tape. Happlily the swinging paint tub was still suspended from the wooden bar, I pulled it back slightly and let it go... I don't know if it'l still be there next time! I'm guessing that the artist has removed them because she was going to re-evaluate the display of her work... I'm looking forward to seeing how her work progresses.

Down the corridor there was a tv on a stand, the screen was black but there was a soundtrack, what sounded like a group of young people talking about random things (which I couldn't hear because of the low quality speakers in the tv and the hubub of noise from downstairs.) Occasionally the title of the piece faded in and back out again. I didn't really engage with the work, I couldn't, it wasn't apparent what the subject of conversation was and the sound quality was poor. I wasn't sure about the blank screen either, if i were the artist, I would have left it as a sound recording played simply through a speaker. I'm also one of these people who doesn't like the title or the artist's name to pop up actually in the work like somekind of TV exerpt - this work and the others like it dotted around, had these features in spades. For me, the jury is still out with this work.

Next I wandered downstairs to the basement studios, I have to say that there was quite a bit of interesting work around. It is strange though, I had a space there until May/june last year and it was completely different! One of the highlights was a large house made from ice-cream wafers, marshmallow twirls and sweets! It was really cool!

ch - A day in the life of....

So, for those of you who have never been to Bromsgrove Station, here it is! The view above is towards Birmingham. Not terribly interesting I grant you, but it helps to gain an overall picture of how my day starts - it's not usually that sunny though!

ch - Field visit to Wolverhampton

On Monday I accompanied Nathan to his studio at Wolverhampton. It was really good to see where he studies and was great to meet the other members of his group and Sophie Hope. As part of Nathan's group tutorial we discussed our individual and collaborative practices, in particular the data sent to us by the mystery Moon Dust circle . Nathan also outlined his curatorial practice.

All in all it was a rather productive day, we got lots discussed and formulated!

artists impression of moon data

Files downloaded from NASA

Artists impressions - data transfered by C.Hodson

Last week we were sent these images, they came in a shroud of mystery, we are investigating, but on this evidence of a type of art work on the moon NOT OF HUMAN CREATION:

"J. Doe, J. Doe and I are all amateur astronomers, we are really competitive and have been feverishly mapping the Lunar surface for some time now and have been studying the moon in the run up to this weeks total eclipse. We have been particularly interested in Christopher Hodson's Kepler area. The Lunar mountain in the lighted upper east side of the moon, the web has been an excellent tool in recent years and has helped us in our mapping project. NASA and The US Department of the Interior Geographical Survey have been photographing the moon for some time. Only in the last two years have these images been loaded up (most of them are from the 60's and 70's.) on the web, the images are loaded up slowly and we are always the first to download them anyway, last Thursday John was on a flight back from a Tokyo astronomical conference when he received the latest downloads, without notice they made the attached files available on the web, fortunately John received them in real-time, by the time he touched down and met us back at our HQ they had been removed, Thankfully John downloaded them. We have tried to contact NASA as we have friends there, officially they have told us that if we have any files they are the work of hoaxers who have recently hacked into their site, we know this not to be true as our associates on the inside. One of our agents has obtained further evidence in a film of the files. When it is safe we will send it out, can you disseminate this information in the U.K? We’ve analysied the patterns in the dust they seem to resemble our own crop circles found throughout the globe. If you are interested in this story can you not mention our links to the people on the inside, also please don’t use our real names as we are pretty sure NASA are trying to block out our IP addresses."

J.Doe, J.Doe & J.Doe

np - London visit.

A fantastic couple of days in the capital - I attended a Graphic Design conference in Leicester Square at the Odeon, we heard from Sir George Cox amongst others talking about the Cox report and the future of the creative industries. That all got a bit anal and the hipocracy of the ad men and copy writers was wearing a little thin. Luckily I found some time to myself and snaked my way around London and saw some fantastic work. 1st. Rodchenko. In brief this left me a little cold - I also felt a little uncomfortable with the assosiations with the current Russian dynamic, most of the works are owned by Abromovich, only with the unfolding of modern history will show the ethics behind the relationship between an arts institute and a olygarch? Then downstairs at the Hayward, a fantastic exhibition of humour - highlights - Doug Fishbourne and Markus Coates.
3rd - Poped into the National Gallery to see the Forth Plinth proposals.
4th - ICA - Double Agent exhibition a brilliant piece by Barbera Visser. And then to top it all off, I met up with Kate Forde the curator who gave me a tour around the Wellcome collection. Perfect!

np - 2nd Semester Studio Practice SkABS working party

np - Richard Billingham Lecture

A lecture delivered by Richard Billingham to my college for the Foundation students rounded of a fantastic cultural week spent with Halesowen College (on return from a London field trip)

The jury's still out on Richard's practice, having said that he came to speak to perspective students (representing Cheltenham & Glos Uni where he is BA photography fine art tutor) so he was invited, and as such I shouldn't critique his work. But listening to him talk about his dysfunctional parents and the recent Zoo images. He remains detached, focused on the image , not the subject, he won't be drawn into debate about welfare state or repetitive behavior in zoo animals. But who can blame him? I'll have to think about this further?

Interestingly we had a John Robert's lecture on post-modernism and as a choice of final slides John jumped from the 80's to 1994 and a billingham plate of his dad in a dirty toilet. Horror and fear of post-modernity?

np - Postproduction for a new generation

ch -Lead Balloon

A regular party balloon is cast in Lead. Unlike a party
balloon this sculpture will be solid, taking merely its
shape. There will be no air or any other gas inside the
piece. On Earth, this sculpture can exist as a Lead object
on the floor, but if/when taken aboard the Space Shuttle or
the ISS would float very much like a real balloon. The
characteristics of the material (in terms of weight) alter
with the change in environment. It is a slightly humorous
play on the adage, “That will go down like a Lead Balloon.”
In my view, this work explores changes in gravity and the
realm of zero-gravity in a rather poetic way.
The following image is a visualisation of the sculpture as
it may appear if taken to the Moon, where it would weigh
one sixth of its Earth weight.

ch - Moon Proposals

So, since before Christmas I've been trying to develop ideas for artistic projects that could be carried out in Space, with particular emphasis on the Moon.

In order to give the work some kind of definite context, I went and bought a 1 acre plot of land on the Moon - it's at 32'W 14'N a few km away from a crater called Kepler. I've modelled the landscape (after I found a detailled map) with a 3d package, the result of which you can see above.

One of the proposals I think works the best out of all of them (so far) is a piece called Lead Balloon which will be highlighted in the next post.

One other proposal involves me dividing my 1 acre plot in smaller plots, within the rules lain down by the Lunar Embassy (yeah..I had no idea one existed either!) it states that I cannot sell my plot to anyone else, but there is nothing in the rules about me allowing others to run/work within parts of the land I own. The whole area of land is 63.3 x 63.3m , i'm considering a proposal where the plot is subdivided into smaller plots just under 4 x 4m which would provide me with 250 smaller plots. I'm quite open to receiving proposals from anyone who may want to use this land.

Some feedback from Roger Malina (Leonardo/OLATS, MIT) has led me to realise I'm being quite conservative with the proposals, he commented that the ones I've already formulated are too much like art seen on Earth. I can definitely see his point and am endeavouring to work with more radical, completely site specific works.

ch - It's a small World!

Nathan having met up wth Ruth Claxton brings back a whole load of great memories for me (#cringing at his own sentimentality#) you see, Ruth was the first Fine Art tutor I ever had, whilst studying at the Bournville centre for the Visual Arts. It was there that I knew being an Artist was, for me, not only what I wanted to do but what I should be doing with the rest of my life, and Ruth is partly to thank for that.

Ok, enough of the mush - what have I been doing......?

npQ 3.

Do you think there has been a sea change in art post 9-11?

© Ruth Claxton (top) © Laura White (above)
To answer Chris's question: When practices collide?
I met both these artists on Monday, I had an interview with Ruth in the morning and a lecture from Laura in the afternoon. They are both fabulous artists and although these two pieces don't show it, there are similarities that occur in their practice. And in the course of my interview with Ruth we touched on this subject. Ruth mentioned another artist used the same methods except in reverse - the other artist used porcelain figurines and covered everything other than the face, a sort of anti-Claxton piece. This didn't bother Ruth at all, just because someone amongst the 6 other billion people out there have the same idea the reasons behind that idea are always different and in someways interesting to find out about. So I think no, artist shouldn't change their practice if it becomes like that of another.
Ruth and Laura also share some common ground, In other works Laura has produced a series of sculptures entitled ‘small sculptures’ they feature cut outs from magazines pasted onto and obscuring the heads of toy animals. This physicality is the only real similarity, as artists their motives and ideas lie elsewhere but what I find interesting is the ‘image sifting’ (to use a phrase from my theory lecturer, John Roberts) of these two talented artists. In some ways they have become curators; selecting imagery, organising, adding to it and then showing it in a gallery space. This situation in someways is an indicative position we as artists find ourselves in, in this post-modern world. In finding new spaces to work within we will always find other artists there also. I think?

Here is my review:

In this months review I would like to look at two artists: Ruth Claxton and Laura White both of whom I met in the same day. In the morning I visited Ikon Eastside. Ruth is the first resident and has been working there since December. Eastside, a fairly battered factory building neighbouring the Custard Factory in Birmingham is an extension to the ever-growing Ikon empire. I was greeted by a host of Ruth’s works that filled the large space. Hundreds of steel rings in oscillating groups, intricately welded together and sprayed battleship grey. Some of the rings are filled with coloured mirrors reflecting the light and catching the frost melting drips that were sneaking into the industrial space. The third element to this work is the porcelain figurines. The figurines are the types that live on Great Britain’s mantelpiece. In some weird staged play where spotted kittens can inhabit the same scale and space as a dancing milk-maiden. They are bought from ebay and arrive at Ruth’s door to be ‘subjected’ to a type of bastardisation akin to Jake and Dino Chapman’s drawing on Goya’s prints. They are added to and in doing so they become Ruth’s works, they take on new meaning and live again in this hall of mirrors sculpture.

Ruth Claxton has exhibited widely and gained representation at Arquebuse Gallery, Geneva and has added her work to the collections of among others Frank Cohen. This show entitled Lands End will be opening at the Ikon on April and then travelling to Spike Island in 09 and her postcard works are at the Barber Institute from

After the interview I had to dash over the City and bridge the gap to Wolverhampton where I was late for a lecture by Laura White, Laura is also a sculptor, and her practice and methodologies in some respects mirrors (excuse the pun) Ruth’s and visa versa. Laura takes objects often as she finds them, arranges them and projects videos of nature onto them. The imagery can either be lifted from natural history documentary or primarily sourced this is not important. Having grown up in Worcester Laura’s roots are in the countryside, as extension of her growing up she is interested in the way nature is portrayed in the everyday, in urban living. Laura is fascinated by, dare I say it again, the bastardisation of nature by advertising, for example she points to the recent run on car adverts that morph into animals or are shown in some interaction with nature.
In other works Laura has produced a series of sculptures entitled ‘small sculptures’ they feature cut outs from magazines pasted onto and obscuring the heads of toy animals. Again this is a critique of how TV, magazines and the Society of the Spectacle interact and feed of nature. These pieces are also physically similar to Ruth Claxton’s Porcelain pieces.

This physicality is the only real similarity, as artists their motives and ideas lie elsewhere but what I find interesting is the ‘image sifting’ (to use a phrase from my theory lecturer, John Roberts) of these two talented artists. In some ways they have become curators by selecting imagery, organising, adding to it and then showing it in a gallery space. They are showing us new works using gathered imagery in a new DJ style of shopping on ebay and googling images – mixing objects and material in new configurations of postproduction.

Laura White teaches at Goldsmiths and the Manchester Met, she is currently working on a new book.