Artists Statements

CHRIS PICKUP || ARTIST DESIGNER SCULPTOR

original artwork

Link to my Axis site

Portraiture

Urban Journeys

Artist’s Statement

Chris Pickup

As we walk the pavements, alleys and passageways of our cities, a constant complex conveyor belt of images scrolls beneath our feet. In order to maintain our focus, maybe even our sanity, this constant image-rich filmstrip has to remain ignored. My task within Urban Journeys was to snap-shot from that filmstrip and then focus on and analyse what I found there. Each time this process was repeated the findings differed. Sometimes a scattering of unrelated elements, each of which had their own story. Other times the site would show a tight correlation of finds and surfaces, even suggesting a narrative.

The process felt like being a satellite image analyst scanning the surface of a planet to find features of colour and tone which warranted attention. Other times I was an archaeologist of the present, collecting, conserving, interpreting and finally exhibiting my findings in a museum format, the studies of the surfaces providing a context, the finds the story. I was particularly interested in how the perception of objects can be manipulated.

Each find was quite literally rubbish. Yet once their providence was either established or speculated and the find presented within its display cabinet, its kudos seemed to be substantially elevated. I then sought to push this process further, through photography, seeking to promote the finds to an iconic status. This process is exactly the same as the one that converts loose change lost in the Iron Age to items of awe and wonder in the display cabinets of the British Museum.

This archaeological metaphor is quite pertinent as Hull is undergoing substantial development and certainly in the case of Study Site 1 this area is scheduled for redevelopment in the near future. In a matter of months the surface and finds on Osborne St. will descend into the most recent archaeological layer as it is covered by the new Hull.

My purpose as an artist within Urban Journeys was to look harder and longer at the trivial and unimportant to reveal the glories hidden within.

Chris Pickup

March 07

Artist Statement

Mike Bowdidge

For me this project was a self-imposed challenge. For a long time I have worked with found materials and I wanted to see what would happen if I restricted myself to only working with the materials found in a given area on a given day. There was also the question of whether these limitations might bring something of the flavour of the area into the objects. I am not sure that this has happened in any literal or obvious way, and yet something has happened.

Whilst I did not set out to make work that was about Hull in any particular way, as I try to avoid the didactic in my practice, something of the flavour of the place has crept into the work.

As part of this project I had also wanted to see what might happen if I allowed the photographic documentation of the objects to 'slip in to something more comfortable'. It was during this process that I first started to notice something of the local emerging, when photographs of the chairs and tables I had collected began to reference the river and the bridge that we saw every time we drove here.

Once I noticed this, another connection quickly became apparent. The Flying Cow possibly has its genesis in the tales that the owner of a café in the Old Fruit Market told us about animals wandering out of lorries, and although I think it would be a mistake to try to tie all of these works to their material point of origin, I suspect that there may be other connections which are still unmade.

Michael Bowdidge, March 2007

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