Hide and Seek - Exhibition Catalogue - Fringe Arts Bath Festival, 22 May- 7 June 2015

Hide and Seek Curated by Sophie Erin Cooper FaB 1, 36-37 Westgate Street, Bath Special Thanks to Scarlett Mosnier, Arran Hodgson, Sophie Oates and all of the FaB team and volunteers.

Logo and Poster Design (front cover): Lloyd Evans Designs www.lloydevansdesigns.co.uk Catalogue Design: Francesca Ricci

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Hide and Seek, installation shot 3

Hide and Seek, installation shot

Hide and Seek An exhibition of hidden works displayed in unexpected areas of the space and its furnishings. In a variety of mediums these innovative pieces will intrigue and surprise you. An exhibition to heighten your attention to detail, bring out your playful side and keep you curious.

From textiles to text, altered found objects, sculptural works and drawings.

Whilst some pieces interact with their surroundings others obscure the mundane into something intriguing. One piece might open up to tell you a story, another will leave you guessing.

Think what’s hiding in that drawer? What’s on the ceiling? What is in that box? Hide and Seek displays an eclectic mix of curious works that touch on collection, nostalgia and making sense of the world. From the beautiful to the the thought provoking.

These hidden works aim to tickle and surprise you, bring out your playful side and keep your curious. The exhibition aims to reawaken a childlike wonder to discover a variety of innovative works. Although some pieces will be concealed, others will hide in plain sight – inviting visitors to take a closer look. This is an exhibition to heighten your attention to detail and take in the depths of your surroundings.

How much do we miss in our daily lives? Do we pay attention to our surroundings? Hide and Seek engages with the viewer, inviting you to seek something others might miss. In a world so saturated with imagery, the internet feeding us art in a few clicks – I am interested in making our physical interaction with art an interesting one.

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Sophie Erin Cooper, Whilst you weren’t looking fine line pen on garlic skins, sticks and blu-tack, installation, 2015

Adam Garratt Adam Garratt creates suspended nylon drawings in unnoticed void spaces, hiding his installations in plain sight.

Adam is a multi-disciplined artist, often confined to creating small works in books or small framed collages. He is always interested in the opportunity to expand his work on a bigger scale, whether by traditional means or by using free advertising outdoor public space.

Adam’s works are tacked to surfaces, be it wall, floor or plinth, and span across a space to another surface. Adams work can be described as drawings in space, installations, sculptures perhaps even collage.

The pieces often begin as a traditional drawing or plan and are transposed into an environment, typically evolving into a geometric form. Red and black is very present within Adam’s work and he takes great influence from structural forms, squares and lines.

His site based works have included the central space in stair wells, above door frames and in corridor spaces. The use of unexpected areas of the space causes a change in flow of an audience, they may stop in awkward places or adjust their posture to see the work from a different perspective.

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Adam Garratt, Suspended line drawings, cotton, 2015 9

Adam Garratt, Suspended line drawings, cotton, 2015

Alexandra Davies Alexandra Davies’ work explores the relationship we have with our thoughts and memories and how this feeds into our everyday lives. She is primarily interested in how nature and our surroundings can effect our thought processes. Alexandra creates mixed media art works, such as illustrations, dyeing, stitching and up-cycling. She has recently focused on using these mediums to create artist books in order to convey her feelings about the world.

Alexandra works very intimately with small objects, largely nature based, often collecting and gathering the material herself. By working small she portrays the fragmented and often fleeting interactions we have with our memories. The fascination she has with creating artists book stems from the feeling that once the work is complete, it can be sheltered and protected, enclosed into something that can only be seen by those she wishes to share it with.

Alexandra’s work for Hide and Seek is titled Chaos. It consists of two small leather hand stitched artist books. The insides are adorned with fragments of a pine cone, individually stuck to the casing in four rows of thirteen.

The work demonstrates a physical deconstruction with her own curiosity regarding nature and the world we live in. The work is the result of her personal exploration into the enchanting structure of a pine cone. It is also used to metaphorically indicate the layers we need within our lives – to form a cohesive structure to our routine.

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Alexandra Davies, Chaos, recycled material and found objects, 2015 13

Alexandra Davies, Chaos, recycled material and found objects, 2015

Beth Morris Beth Morris has recently graduated in Fine Art from Fine Art at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Her work focuses on memory, loss and reinventing realities. She explores shape, space and colour within the confines of books or the miniature.

Beth is interested in the history of objects and giving forgotten items a new life. Her work uses objects that have a trace of old life, second hand pieces that are typically small trinket or pill boxes. Beth collects these from charity shops, the streets and her own home. She works inside these pieces with embroidery thread, creating a new purpose whilst keeping them as unassuming as possible. Inside the boxes she creates ‘string sculptures’, claiming ownership over them, giving them a new significance and making the objects obsolete for their original purpose.

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Beth Morris, Vessels, found objects and thread, 2014 17

Beth Morris, Vessels, found objects and thread, 2014

Clare Reddaway Clare Reddaway is a writer and performer, she writes short stories and scripts. She records and edits pieces, writes and records site specific stories, records for a local radio station and has produced an audio drama.

Clare is interested in innovative ways to use sound to tell stories and would like to move into creating more sound art. For Hide and Seek Clare explored this interest with a sound work hidden amongst items that hint to the character in her narrative.

Clare’s short stories have been broadcast on local radio stations and published in anthologies including Leaf Books, Bridge House, and Watermark. Online at East Of The Web, Ether Books, Smashwords, and WritersReadersDirect. She also has been published in magazines such as Vintage Magazine, Yellow Room Magazine, and My Weekly.

Clare is interested in writing site specific stories to a stimulus – the environment affecting the story. She is also interested in affecting the environment with her works through soundscapes. The creation of soundscapes, as if painting atmospheric pictures in sound.

Clare also set up and runs A Word in Your Ear, a Bath-based organisation which loves story telling and specialises in new writing. She set up A Word in Your Ear because of her long love-affair with stories and performance.

She enjoys listening to stories, in both the form of readings and drama.

For Clare it is the worlds that voices can create in the imagination and the intimacy of sound.

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Clare Reddaway, Head over Heels, sound work, suitcase and items, 2015

Clare Reddaway, Head over Heels, sound work, suitcase and items, 2015

Clare Winnan Born in Kent, Clare moved to Bath in 2004 to study a degree in Fine Art at Bath Spa University. She moved after graduating university to Cornwall and then Brighton but was drawn back to Bath where she now lives and works.

Clare Winnan uses sculpture, drawing, installation, and photography, to create seductive but disturbing works that draw on the tensions between often delicate objects and their more sinister underlying messages.

By using unlikely media to realise her ideas, Clare creates a world of contradiction where innocence is paired with violence; where death comes to life; and where the vibrancy of life is caged or bottled for antiquity.

A preoccupation with childhood and family memories often finds its way into the work, filtered through the passage of time and the experiences of life.

These themes are explored through photography, performance, and found objects which come ready-made with nostalgia and meaning.

Clare is interested in collecting thimbles, bottles and keys as well as lost dolls shoes she has found over the years. For Hide and Seek Clare invited visitors to seek out lost dolls shoes that she had hidden within the exhibition. This interactive work asked visitors to leave a message in a vial in exchange for their shoe, which they were welcome to take home.

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Clare Winnan, Lost Shoes, dolls shoes, cabinet, glass vials, 2015 25

Clare Winnan, Lost Shoes, dolls shoes, cabinet, glass vials, 2015

Elanor Arwen Callender Elanor Callender creates work which explores the fragile relationship between extremes, rich and poor, rough and soft. She places these contrasting materials together to soften and layer upon each other, creating balance and harmonious eclectic detail. Elanor is interested in transforming material into something precious by playing with colour and combining fabrics. She uses silks, muslin, cotton, chiffon, cheesecloth and net, embellishing and embroidering into them. She enjoys creating needle lace; trapping found objects into the piece – transforming the neglected and forgotten. Turning the mundane into something beautiful, fuses or eyelets become small treasures.

For Hide and Seek Elanor created an ethereal child’s headdress incorporating found objects that have been hidden and tarnished by time.

The work puts sentiment on this eclectic mix of found objects, presenting them as a collection symbolic of memories and old thoughts saved for a later date. Elanor is exploring her interest in the relationship between tones and textures with this work.

Using natural forms such as sticks and feathers with metal and fabrics.

Elanor’s piece is entitled Sitala, meaning good memory. The piece is a dedication and a celebration of the life of the baby she lost in her womb.

The piece uses found metal objects such as old fuses, buckles, buttons and zips which are caught in textiles – representing the caught memories trapped in time. The piece looks at memories and moments that can be etched in your mind and later unravelled – understood more than when they were first conceived. The piece began when Elanor was unknowingly with baby, intuitively deciding to create a child’s headdress. With the loss of her baby Elanor considers the piece a gift from the baby to keep her strong and give her purpose. The piece is symbolic of moments to treasure and represents something truly precious.

Elanor describes the work as ‘fragile and small but with a precious golden magic of a body gone but a spirit still very much alive’.

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Elanor Arwen Callender, Sitala, A Native American name meaning of good memory Mixed media woven textiles, wood, metal and feathers, 2015

Elanor Arwen Callender, Sitala, A Native American name meaning of good memory (detail) Mixed media woven textiles, wood, metal and feathers, 2015

Francesca Ricci Francesca Ricci was born in Florence, Italy and lives and works in London.

She graduated in Stage Design at the Fine Arts Academy in Florence.

Francesca comes from a classical and literary background, this combined with her stage design at the Arts Academy causes her work to often be project based. The work often relates to other fields of expression such as the written word, photography, the cinematic image and music, psychology and the esoteric.

Francesca is interested in the reciprocal contamination of disciplines, in the narrative potential of the image and the visual one of the word. Each body of work has a genesis and a concept of its own that develops organically as the work progresses. Francesca also often collaborates with writers and musicians to develop new work, developing concept-based and site specific projects. This means Francesca often works in a variety of media – this could be drawing, oil painting, mixed media work – integrating text, video and sound works or site specific pieces.

Francesca is interested in reworking familiar logos from the high street.

By transforming this everyday imagery, constantly and forcefully imposed to our perception, she creates individual poetic responses. It is a reflection about creating an inner, intimate lyrical space within our daily reality, amongst the jungle of aggressive slogans, corporate branding and fastpaced technology of contemporary life.

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Francesca Ricci, Pessoa High Street (detail), acrylic and chalk stencil, 2010-15 33

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Francesca Ricci, Pessoa High Street (detail), acrylic and chalk stencil, 2010-15 35

Hannah Battershell Hannah Battershell is a London based artist whose work is known for its small scale and its ‘playfully dark’ tone. Often reminiscent of old children’s book illustrations in their blend of humour, surreality and melancholy, her pieces range from miniature paintings on buttons to tiny paper collages framed in vintage tins.

Her work has been displayed in various exhibitions including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2011, 2013 and 2014 and at various solo shows with The Curwen Gallery in Bloomsbury. Her painting Crocodilian featured in Images 36 (Association of Illustrators’ Best of New British Illustration).

Hannah’s work invites the viewer to look a little closer, as if sharing a secret world with the curious. She has a great interest in including a hidden element within each of her pieces.

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Hannah Battershell, Homunculus, mixed media on vintage tin, glass, 2014 37

Hannah Battershell, Printers’ Tray (Lost Insect Buttons) Acrylic and ink on found buttons, vintage printers’ tray, Nepalese paper, 2012

Hannah Battershell, Hole, ink on found button, 2008

Leah Crews Leah is a Fine Art graduate from Bath Spa University and an active member of Bath Artist Printmakers. Her practice involves working with traditional print techniques in new ways, pushing the boundaries of an otherwise conventional medium. Through these means of visual realisation she explores a set of interests based on the everyday, locality and place attachment.

Leah’s work stems from a love of drawing, which she finds to be the most direct means of response and expression. She works with printmaking techniques to translate her initial observations, often incorporating experimental elements such as found materials and alternative techniques.

She is interested in taking her medium further than its tradition and conventions.

Leah’s work for Hide and Seek realises the children’s game through linoprint, looking at the amusing interaction between children and objects.

Leah is also working on an ongoing project ‘Postcards to Locals’.

This stems from an interest in the way people connect with different environments and each other.

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Leah Crews, Coming Ready or Not, linocuts (8 to find), 2015 41

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Leah Crews, Coming Ready or Not, linocuts (8 to find), 2015 43

Lora Azza | Dimitri Dimov Lora Azza and Dimitri Dimov are International Artists who live and work in Strasbourg, France. They are both multidisciplinary visual artists who collaborate to create conceptual artworks, installations and mixed media pieces.

Lora’s sensitive approach proposes a walk through symbols and meanings which serves to create an emotional connection with the viewer. Many of her artworks derive from ordinary domestic objects which attempt to integrate art and life in our hyper-consumer culture. Her motivation is to provide a peaceful integration between nature and man-made artefacts of society. She considers the best way to do so is by making a public statement – creating a piece of art which can visually express her message and interact with the public.

Dimitri employs a subtle minimalist approach, taking on a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way. Dimitri’s conceptual artworks appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language, he uses a visual vocabulary that addresses many different social and political issues. The work incorporates time as well as space – a fictional and experiential universe that only emerges bit by bit.

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Dimitri Dimov and Lora Azza, Zarchencence, found objects, 2015 45

Dimitri Dimov and Lora Azza, Rubik’s Truth installation, rubik cube, acrylic paint, 2015

Mark Fearbunce

Mark Fearbunce is interested in our tempting urge to compartmentalise our environments. We break up our time with the measurement of years and hours. We systemise our language into grammar and alphabet and we give physical space boundaries denoting ownership or use. We might do this as an attempt to take control or better our understanding, but seldom do we fully achieve complete control or understanding.

Mark’s work for Hide and Seek is Moby Dick – a school desk with its lid ajar. Peering into the gloom the work reveals repetitive, swirling shapes flowing around the belly of it’s interior. Are these the sea itself or hundreds of ships consumed by the leviathan, Moby Dick?

Moby Dick is inspired by the imaginative adventures of children whilst sat at their school desks. Classic tales like Melville’s Moby Dick, are of a past era, like the desk itself. This cultural nostalgia is coupled with a more tangible childhood phenomenon of the application of used chewing gum to the underside of school desks. The silicone inside Moby Dick is reminiscent of this.

The work also uses Mark’s personal memories of childhood to heighten the authenticity of the nostalgia. He has a distinct recollection of his grandmother teaching him to make paper boats from sweet wrappers to while away the hours of a long car journey. The work aims to use the combination of nostalgic, universal and personal connections to the desk as a catalyst for viewers to enter their own imaginative journey.

Mark Fearbunce curated Disordering Chaos for Fringe Arts Bath www.fringeartsbath.co.uk/disorderingchaos 48

Mark Fearbunce, Moby Dick, desk, sweet wrappers, silicone, 2012

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Mark Fearbunce, Moby Dick (detail), desk, sweet wrappers, silicone, 2012

Reiss McGuinness Reiss is a photographer and poet living in Bath. His photography practice involves dark and surreal images that portray estrangement and otherness.

His poetry often deals with the politic and nature of the world, his haiku with hesitation, nostalgia and mistakes.

Reiss has a particular fascination with haiku and is interested in spreading and sharing its values to all he can. Haiku interests him for its curious quality, never telling the reader what to think or feel. It’s brevity allows so much to be thought after it has been read. Haiku allows a reader to participate in the creation of its meaning.

Reiss is also interested in encouraging other poets to write in this little known, scarcely written form. To give haiku more coverage, and more importantly, correct coverage. Haiku’s true form is hidden, if someone even find that it exists in the first place.

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Reiss McGuinness, Hidden Haiku, haiku, 2015 53

Reiss McGuinness, Hidden Haiku, haiku, 2015

Reiss McGuinness, Hidden Haiku, haiku, 2015

Sophie Erin Cooper Born in the Brecon Beacons, Wales, and now living in Bath, England.

Sophie Erin Cooper graduated from Bath School of Art and Design in 2013, having studied Fine Art BA(Hons).

Sophie creates works that centre around an ethereal aesthetic, playing with natural forms, paint, graphite and fine pens. She is attracted to both expressive and intricate mark making, exploring these separately and combined. Sophie’s fascination with the fragile and dreamlike mostly involves the use of soft colours and distorting imagery into a new visual language. Her work is fluid and subtle, aiming to grasp a pleasant curiosity.

Interested in creative curating and displaying work in unconventional ways, Sophie explores this through wall drawings, window paintings and extending works beyond their frame. This also connects with her explorations into temporary artwork; site specific installations and ephemeral works – She is interested in art as an experience.

Creating artwork for Sophie is a form of play, resulting in many outcomes.

She is interested in composing self contained pieces, whilst others will peek out of corners or spill across walls and floors theatrically. She is intrigued by immersing the viewer as well as only giving them a glimpse.

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Sophie Erin Cooper, Flicker, fine line pen on garlic skins, light bulb, installation, 2015 57

Sophie Erin Cooper, Wash Away, watercolour on sink, 2015

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Sophie Walker Sophie Walker creates hand-carved wooden sculptures in original designs that are elegantly simplistic yet approachable and inviting.

Sophie is concerned with creating safe, protective spaces that one could metaphorically crawl into. In each piece she explores different of the need to conceal, whether that is making a soft, sheltering environment, or a space that explores growing confidence – where the insides are no longer protected by a door, but by ‘shadow sticks’.

Sophie draws inspiration from archaeological objects and tools; items that might once have been found in 18th century ‘Cabinets of Curiosity’.

The function of many such objects has now been lost to time, but they still manage to resonate in the mind as having had a purpose. They look familiar, but unfathomable. It’s these feelings that Sophie aims to emulate with her work – seeing something new and intriguing that is also comforting and reassuring. Feeling excited to wonder and discover what exactly this new thing does.

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Sophie Walker, Remember, lime wood and mixed media, 2015 61

Sophie Walker, Together, hazel wood and mixed media, 2015

Sophie Walker, Concealed, magnolia wood and mixed media, 2015

Sveta Antonova Sveta Antonova is interested in the subject of written language and its meaning. Her practice is often described as collapsing and whispering, despite the solid and strong materials, she aims for a paradoxical perception. Using perspex, resin, labels and metal she creates an alien state in her works, which is distanced from emotion or warmth. Each piece dissociates itself from the viewer, but the more one interacts with the words within the installations, sculptures and performances, the more personal they become.

Sveta exhibited a labeling work We Said and Wire Piece 23 for Hide and Seek. The wire piece hides its wording within its own form whilst the labels hide in plain sight.

We said began as a performance piece at the opening of Fringe Arts Bath, resulting in a tangible pattern of nearly non-visible labels on the wall. Sveta moved around the space with a portable labeling machine, as used in offices and archives – printing on the spot. She created labels from visitors conversations and commentary on their interactions with their surroundings. Collecting the subjective scraps of conversations around the room, these labels then became a piece to reflect the interconnections of what was said in the room. As invisible as the connections between many conversations and expressions can be, the labels themselves are printed to not be visible instantly.

Her Wire Piece series started in 2013 and is ongoing – based on appropriated writing on the topics of linguistics and social paradoxes. A ‘wire piece’ tricks the viewers perception in not remembering what was just read, as well as trying to depict a maze which translates writing into a sculptural form of drawing.

Sveta Antonova curated The Manifesto of the Wall for Fringe Arts Bath www.fringeartsbath.co.uk/thewall www.sveta-antonova.com 64

Sveta Antonova, We Said, performance, 2015 65

Sveta Antonova, Wire Piece 23, wire, varnish, 2015

Theo Wood Theo Wood creates works that follow the themes of repetition of form and cycles of time, taking inspiration from the natural world. This satisfies her obsession with counting, grids, placements and containment.

Theo is an Associate Member of the HATCH drawing group (part of the PLaCE International network based in UK at Dundee University) and affiliated to Spike Print Studio, Bristol.

‘The Museum of Space Exploration’ is an ongoing artist project as context for the development of Theo’s new works. The key influences for this are science fiction writing and films including Doris Lessing, Arthur C Clarke, Philip K Dick and JJ Abrams.

Theo is interested in the idea of future archaeology; ‘stuff’ existing or being created in the far future and then discovered. She is interested in the imagined history of these objects and their maker, and the elements of alternate worlds, culture and artefact that plays into this.

For Hide and Seek Theo exhibited ‘The Collection’ – a wooden chest of drawers containing retro spaceship parts made from porcelain. She also exhibited ‘Magnified Listening’ consisting of ceramic ears which were hidden around the space. This work looks into her interest in deep and focused listening and how whilst technology allows us to listen to many different types of sonic activity the same technology can listen to us. This work also asks how often do we listen with our whole selves to be truly aware of individual soundscapes.

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Theo Wood, Magnified Listening, ceramics, 2015

Theo Wood, The Collection, chest of drawers, ceramics, 2014

Tina Selby Tina Selby graduated from the University of the West of England in 2014 with a first class honours degree in Drawing and Applied Arts. During her studies she specialised in paper cutting through the use of a laser cutter. Predominantly she works with with paper and card but Tina is also interested in working with fabrics, plastics and wood. She is interested in transforming an ordinary material into an extraordinary object.

Specialising in the digital manipulation of line, her work engages with the geographical aesthetics of human life and nature, using technological and industrial applications to create innovative three dimensional compositions which encourage the viewer to take a closer look.

Tina’s practice is a process of design and experimentation, exploring her passion with pattern and texture. Collating aerial photographs and images taken from satellites in space, Tina catalogues a huge resource of intricate lines and patterns. She works from these to create twodimensional drawings which then transform into complex three-dimensional compositions, highlighting the complexity and intricacy of our beautiful planet.

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Tina Selby, From the Outside, In Part I, Lasercut mountboard, 2014

Tina Selby, TFrom the Outside, In Part III, lasercut mountboard, 2014

Fringe Arts Bath Festival 27 May - 7 June 2015 Fringe Arts Bath is a non profit-making artist led organisation run by volunteers. The FaB team organise a two-week festival of contemporary visual art exhibitions, events and workshops during Bath Fringe Festival in May/June each year. Free for all to attend, occupying empty shops, unusual spaces and making appearances around the streets of Bath.

FaB started as (and still is) Bath’s only annual visual arts festival, growing out of the Bath Fringe Festival’s visual arts strand to become it’s own organisation 8 years ago, and sees itself as a cheeky little sister to the Bath Fringe.

‘We aim to raise the profile of contemporary visual arts in Bath, provide opportunities for early-career and emerging artists, and put art in unusual places in unexpected ways for people to happen across and interact with.’

– FaB

www.fringeartsbath.co.uk Text and images in this catalogue: © of the artists and the curator.