Leslie Wilson-Rutterford

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+ The Beermat show goes on tour and other news (10/12/2009 - 11:14:53)

The Beermat show goes on tour and other news

I just received some good news. The Beermat Show is doing a tour the first half of 2010. My piece submitted for (sub)Missive (see previous blog), which was included in the Temporary Art Space's Beermat exhibition, will continue to show at 2 new venues. Please see my past/future page for details.

Last month I was fortunate to take part in the Handmade and Bound Affordable London Book-Art and Zine Fair at St. Aloysius Social Club. You can see lots of great photos on their link.

The first Handmade and Bound was realised in response to the demise of the LAB, (London Artists Book Fair) previously organised by Marcus Campbell. He has now joined forces with the Whitechapel gallery in a jury-run selection-process affair, which has automatically excluded many artists previously able to exhibit (including myself).

As some of you might know, I have recently expanded my repertoire under my banner of art/craft/design. All this selling and exhibiting at fairs activity has really given me a passion for trading, and so I have branched out into buying and selling of collectibles.

Starting out at Art Junky 3, I was given a great opportunity to display and sell my book art, multiples and trinkets alongside some funky accessories and bric-a-brac.

I loved it, and happily, sold equal amounts of the two types of items.

Since then, I have done another Art Junky and a new fair at Bentley Priory in Harrow, North London. At each I have sold equal amounts of art and collectibles. This has encouraged me to continue in this vein whenever possible.

Below is a slideshow of my table at the Bentley priory Winter Fair, the first of its kind, which will be repeated in the spring, in March 2010. It is possible I had too much variety on the stall, and my shop-like table/space didn't fit into a particular category. The organisers didn't know where to put me, having started out in the crafts area, I got moved to the antiques, as I had a lot of vintage stuff. It felt a bit odd squished in between antiquarian books and antique maps, but it was a great atmosphere and the other traders were lovely.

In the Bentley Priory slideshow above you may have noticed some other crafty pieces: a revamped 70's style stool that I re-covered with a vintage cloth napkin, and some funky cushion covers I made with vintage and new fabric remnants. I also made some recycled gift boxes using rubber stamps, and attached my button tags to complement.

When I went home to California last summer, I made some applique hoops during my traditional craft sessions with my mother. Gave me a warm glow all over returning to my youthful love for crafts: I used to embroider, macrame, crochet, applique, batik, beading, etc. As a seamstress for designers for 18 years I own an industrial sewing machine. But, it is in the utility room on the landing, hard to access and it doesn't do any fancy stitches. So, I got a new domestic machine and it is wonderful.

The new hoops appeared at the last fair at Bentley Priory. I will be listing these, and my other new craft works on my new etsy sight very soon!

My submission for the sub(Missive) exhibition, accompanying the 12th Leeds International Contemporary Artist Book Fair

Through the Facebook group Artists Books Collective, I joined a collaborative mail art book project, called sub(missive). Each contributor was sent instructions by the person below them on a list. Having been sent instructions by Alice Bradshaw, I was instructed told to make a new book work from, or inspired by 4 blank beer mats. It was no easy feat to create a work that had some meaning, but was accessible too.

Starting at the Leeds book fair, there's a possibility of the work going on to exhibit at Temporary Art Space Beer Mat show in May 2009.

I hope the sub(Missive) exhibition in Leeds goes really well (a little birdy told me members of the Tate will be visiting!) and with a lot of luck and determination, I might even be able to turn up myself!

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM

A presentation, a setting, a reading.

4 beer mats and a facsimile pub table present a setting to glimpse at women's progress with alcohol, through the 20th C, from 'protesting liquor prude' to 'shameless imprudent drinking hussy'. Whether tea-total or drunk, women are more harshly judged than men by society.

The 20th C was marked by women's attempt to escape oppression, subjugation and belittlement by men. At the turn of the century a few women tried to control men and their vile habits by trying to outlaw liquor. Unfortunately, this backlashed, and made them look like bad sports, and rather unattractive to men.

Later, with new found freedom, and a realisation that drinking was kinda nice after all they demanded the right to drink alongside men in bars and pubs. But, still on men's terms, a woman could only enter the pub with a man, or with a group of women. If she went on her own, she was seen as a lush.

Later still, a new dawn of women's lib hit both sides of the Atlantic, and women took to drinking with confidence. It still wasn't that cool to go out drinking on your own, unless you knew the barman by name, were middle-aged and a bit scarred emotionally.

Now, women everywhere have finally caught up with the opposite sex, and are drinking with complete abandon: clubbing all night, throwing up in the toilet, and collapsing in the gutter. Although a woman might end up alone on one of these binges, she probably started out with a man or a bunch of females, as society still has hypocritical views on women and drinking. On the surface women have equal rights to drink themselves to death, but society, and health authorities, still judges them more harshly for it.

4 beer mats provide a brief reading of 4 stages of women and drink: promoting them on the surface; elaborating in a facetious way on the reverse side, and covering up the insidious stain on women's lives, ingrained in reality.

Beer mats, grey board, book cloth, inkjet printed paper, craft spray, acid free binder's paste, and pva glues and linen thread.

Leslie Wilson-Rutterford

London 2009

Brixton Summer Arts Fair June 29 2008

A day selling my artists books and other objects at the Electric Avenue Market in Brixton, South London, hosted by Blank Canvas-Art Core Initiatives.

Summer Art Fair, on Electric Avenue, Brixton, June 29 2008

Come along and see some of my artists books alongside other artists and makers at the Summer Community Arts Event, hosted by Core Initiatives, building stronger communities through the arts.

'TIME & SPACE' artists book exhibition at launch of new gallery in Leeds

My work including: Received, With Thanks (a modern-day receipt book) and Retread, a luggage tag book will be showing alongside other artists in the maiden exhibition for a new gallery, The Bowery, in Leeds, UK.

Time: June 12, 2008 at 7pm
Location: Headingley, Leeds
Street: 54 Otley Rd
City/Town: Headingley, Leeds LS6 2AL
Website or Map: http://www.thebowery.org/
Contact Info: 0113 2242284
Event Type: Artists, book, exhibtion, private, view
Organized By: Louise Atkinson from The Artists Book Collective
Exhibition funs from: 2 June - 1 August 2008

Set within the confines of a domestic living space, Time and Space examines new book works created in response to nostalgic associations of place and memory, alluding to the obsolete, discarded and lost.

The show includes work by national and international artists, across the breadth of book art practice, exploring the book as a time-based medium in various forms, including sculpture, found objects, audio, tactile and conceptual.

Contextualised within a living room environment, the work also functions to question how we curate our own private spaces, how we present ourselves and what we choose to reveal to, and conceal from the outside world.

This environment also affords the audience the opportunity to fully appreciate and experience contemporary book works, while allowing them time and space to reflect on their own associations and memories. See more here: Bowery Gallery

If you're in the area pop in to the private View and say 'hello', or drop by and check it out! Leslie x

One Night Stands #1 An Exhibition at the Gallery, Wimbledon School of Art

Interesting exhibition at Wimbledon School of Art last Monday evening. A good turn-out of people came to see the first 'One Night Stand', one of a series of 'three teams of curators, three provocations and one space'.'The three curatorial groups are taking turns to deliver a provocation to one another and respond to a given stimulus'. Monday night's response was by 'MA curating students of Sheffield Hallam University exploring the theme of 'defamiliarization' in response to Victor Shklovsky's text 'Russian Formalist Criticism'. The provocation given to them was to take into account the nature of time-specificity'. http://1nightstands.blogspot.com/

I came across a call out from one of the participants, Diana Ali via the Arts Council newsletter. She was asking for a response to the word 'defamiliarisation'. I looked it up in the dictionary, and was none the wiser about what it meant. so, I made up a new definition: the act of obliterating all witches animals. I made an image to accompany it.

I took my little boy with me and we did the 1 and 1/2 hour journey via tube, to Wimbledon from Kentish Town. The students were friendly, and the exhibition was very good. As an artist who works with text alot, I was interested to see how words would be used in the gallery space. I also wanted to see how my contribution would be incorporated. I found out who Diana was, introduced myself and had a nice conversation with her. We agreed how dynamic it was to invite via the internet, and then integrate various contributors from around the world to make one work. A kind of global creation, which relied alot on openness and trust. I was really glad I made the effort to get there, meeting new people - artists- seeing what they're doing and sharing ideas.

Conception and making of Received, With Thanks

Making a luggage tag book

An extra piece constructed for the RE: experimental book exhibition curated by www.weloveyourbooks.com at University of Northampton. A collaborative project, artists were asked to make a luggage tag. I continued with the theme of RE: (as in my Received, With thanks (a modern-day Receipt book), creating a stream of consciousness sequence of 'road' phrases, expressions and song titles. A progression develops, creating a new prose, which culminates in words quoted from Dante: 'Il cammin di nostra vita.* (The road of our life.)