New Blood Art Blog » Catherine Jacobs

An informative talk at the Tate

Catherine Jacobs — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:26:06 +0000

Last week I went to the annual BP lecture at Tate Britain which this year was by Phyllida Barlow whose solo sculpture show at Hauser and Wirth was my favourite exhibition last year. She proved to be a very informative and generous speaker with a fascinating account of her lengthy career accompanied by many slides of her sculptures and installations. As my work is mostly process-led her comments about making work in that way helped me clarify elements of my own practice, for example she stated. ‘I wanted to work with just the sensation of touch and process and the image would then reveal itself’. The talk was videoed and should soon be available to watch at www.tate.org.uk.

Folkestone Triennial

Catherine Jacobs — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 18:36:22 +0000

I’ve recently visited the 2011 Folkestone Triennial titled A Million Miles From Home and really recommend it for a visit before it closes on 25th September. I liked the sense of adventure, map in hand, finding the art works and exploring the town. Cristina Iglesia’s Towards the Sound of Wilderness, a mirrored box like structure that allows viewing of one of Folkestone’s Martello Towers covered in Ivy was great to discover. Beautifully filmed, Promised Land, a three screen video by Danish film maker Nikolaj B S Larsen, which explores the plight of asylum seekers in and around Calais, was particularly moving.

AK Dolven’s tenor bell suspended on the beach was great and nearby you can visit the disused Harbour railway station where Paloma Varga Weisz has installed Rug People, a sculpture of a group of men, on the tracks – one visitor told me last time she was there it was to see the Orient Express.

I also really liked Everyone Means Something to Someone, initiated by local artists Strange Cargo, in which observations, narratives and facts about the town supplied by local people are displayed on 200 small plaques that you come across by chance.

There’s a lot to see in one day but maps and suggested routes are available from the train station and you follow the yellow stenciled seagulls on the pavement into town to the Triennial visitor centre. All information is on www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk and anyone from the London area can take advantage of the high speed train from St. Pancras that just takes 50 minutes.

Upcoming show

Catherine Jacobs — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:15:45 +0000

Rural Idyll 2, Ipswich

I’m please to invite you to the exhibition Rural Idyll 2 which is taking place on a working sheep farm near Ipswich over the four weekends in June 2011.

Rural Idyll 2 is an exhibition of site specific art responding to the environment of a small working sheep farm close to Constable Country in Suffolk. Curators Ruth Richmond and Jax Horswill state that ‘Through the work we hope to add to the debate about the relevance of contemporary art in rural life and offer a platform for rural life and its issues.’ For Rural Idyll 2 I’ll be showing video work alongside wall-mounted photographic works and a mixed media light box piece.

When: The private view is Saturday 4th June, 2011 5pm – 9pm and the show continues every weekend throughout June 11am – 5pm

Location: (By Car) Just off the A12 at Little Dodnash Farm, Bergholt Rd, Bentley, Suffolk IP9 2DQ. From the A12 take the road to Bentley then the first right as you enter the village then it’s about 500m past the riding school. (By train) nearest train station is Manningtree, from Liverpool Street.

Artists: Desmond Brett, Victoria Burton-Davey, Jax Horswill, Catherine Jacobs, Verity Mansfield, Mitch Maroney, Carla Nizzola, Dave Morgan-Davies, Ruth Richmond, Jane Southgate, Honour Surie, David Yu

More information: http://web.me.com/ruthrichmond/Rural_Idyll_2/Welcome.html 01473 310279 rural.idyll2@gmail.com

Fantastic book on the Art world

Catherine Jacobs — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:15:00 +0000

A friend gave me Sarah Thornton’s book Seven Days in the Art World and I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone interested in art and how the international art world functions. It covers her research and experiences with curators and collectors, the Venice Bienalle, art auctions, studio visits and much more. Well worth as read!

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Catherine Jacobs — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:14:23 +0000

Catherine Jacobs — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 23:27:52 +0000

I just had a look at this short film - Western Spaghetti Dir. PES, US, 2008 and it’s a fantastic piece of art – really recommend a look. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/19/short-films-documentary-animation-viral?INTCMP=SRCH. The information below is from the guardian article. “The internet is an intimate venue,” says Adam Pesapane, a 36-year-old New Jersey film-maker who makes short, smart, stop-motion animations under the name PES. “When I started putting work online, all films were 320 x 240 resolution and you had to really lean in to see them properly.” If you view Western Spaghetti from a distance, you might mistake it for a cookery video on how to make pasta with tomato sauce. Lean in a little closer and you’ll realise that nothing in PES’s world is quite as it seems.The origin of Western Spaghetti was, according to Pesapane, “the idea of using Post-it notes for butter. I had used food as substitutes for other objects before, but I’d never made a film where other objects are substituted for food. Then I had another idea. My mother used to say good pasta should be firm and never rubbery. This is interesting because rubber bands look exactly like cooked spaghetti. And if that’s spaghetti, what’s uncooked spaghetti? So I began to play this game with myself.”The game plays out across the whole recipe. The connections aren’t always obvious but they make peculiar sense in the film, even if you don’t get wise to PES’s arcane visual and verbal puns. “Garlic is played by Rubik’s Cube. Sea salt is played by googly eyes. Tin foil is used as oil…”

Most PES films are less than one minute long, but you could watch Western Spaghetti 20 times and still not absorb every detail. “I wanted to make films that were rewatchable. In many ways, they are designed for a space that is clickable, where you can stop and take a closer look.”

Catherine Jacobs — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 23:24:32 +0000

Following my maternity leave I was very pleased to have made a successful application for a studio space at the well regarded Chocolate Factory in Stoke Newington, London. http://www.chocolatefactoryn16.com. The Chocolate Factoryis a community of 27 studios occupied by artists and craftsmen and twice a year the invite the general public to join us at ‘open studios’. The studios is warm (centrally heated!!) and friendly, with glass fronts so it is easy to see who is in and working. Being 5 minutes from home is making a huge difference as I can drop by even if I only have a short amount of time and I’ve already started to produce a new series of mono-print canvases called Together, Apart.

I was also recently selected for ‘Rural Idyll 2, artists’ investigations into rural life’; an innovative project taking place in March 2011 on a Suffolk sheep farm which aims to be ‘a platform for viewers to experience cutting edge, site specific art in a agricultural environment’. My proposal is to look at the workings of the farm through an attachment perspective. The project will run concurrently with the Suffolk Open Studios, a widely respected and publicly sponsored initiative and in Spring 2011 Artist Newsletter will run an editorial feature on the selected artists. I’ve started my research watching programmes about lambing/the trials of being a sheep farmer in the 21st century. The Guardian recommended the short film Peter and Ben about a man and a sheep so that’s my next watch. “What you don’t expect an online hit to involve is a reclusive, grey-bearded man in the Welsh mountains and his friendship with a nonconformist sheep. “It’s a gentle, lyrical film,” says Pinny Grylls, the director of Peter and Ben, which has attracted more than 300,000 views since it was uploaded two years ago. “I don’t know who these viewers are.” Pinny Grylls, UK, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/19/short-films-documentary-animation-viral?INTCMP=SRCH

Catherine Jacobs New Blog

Catherine Jacobs — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:01:09 +0000

The New Blood Art blog is a great idea and I’m pleased to post my first contribution here. I’m currently balancing my fine art career with looking after my toddler and consultancy psychology work – this works for me by taking a fairly relaxed approach to what can be achieved. I‘ve still really enjoyed visiting exhibitions with other artists and our discussions form an essential part of my artistic practice. Tacita Dean’s latest video ‘Craneway Event‘ which showed at the Frith Street Gallery (www.frithstreetgallery.com) was beautifully filmed and edited. It allowed shots of three days of rehearsals for a dance event choreographed by the late Merce Cunningham to unfold in front of the viewer. The rehearsal space was a spectacular glass warehouse on San Francisco bay; with the film punctuated by large ships and cargo boats moving past, as the dancers were directed by Merce from his wheelchair. Would really recommend seeing this when it shows again and the monologue on her published by Phaidon is making fascinating reading.

I’ve just hung 12 of my Uncertainties and In Proximity series in the treatment rooms of Shine Holistic – a thriving hairdressers and therapy centre in East London. This was the first of their ongoing collaboration with local artists and hanging the show was fascinating experience as we aimed to match the feel of the photographs with the type of treatment offered in the room e.g. hanging work with more movement in the shaitsu room. These intimate rooms are proving a wonderful setting for the type of photographs I make – offering an intimate space where they can be contemplated over time.