Trowbridge's Drawing Projects UK hosts some great content - exhibitions, poetry meetings, classes, talks, and the cafe (Miranda's coffee shop) looks damn fine too - much of which I'm in no position to access for one reason or another, but when exhibitions are open on a thursday and I'm in the area, I go like a shot. 

That meant that a couple of weeks ago I could visit the 2018 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize show.  It feels like a gift to have it available quite so locally, in a relatively small town, but Anita Taylor is helping to put Trowbridge on the artistic map and that's pretty amazing.

The exhibition is scattered through the ground floor of the building and, as always, helps to extend my definition of the idea of drawing. I find it difficult to take good photos there - huge works aren't easy in the space available, and glass reflects everything in such a light venue (some were impossible) - but I do my best, and only resorted to the catalogue in order to include the first prize winner.  Here's a selection (click on photo, or hover over for info).

The first and second prize-winning pieces were both very large, amazing in different ways. I was stunned when I noticed that Moonlit Delphi had been made using biro, felt pen and poster paints - they seem (they are!) such everyday items - while Eden inevitably comes freighted with an unknown story. Boko Haram Kidnapping is all story, with the whole image formed from words - a passionate piece. While the Wind Drawing was one of many I have seen fairly recently (something of a fashion at the moment?), it's hard not to be fascinated by the delicate lines and their cumulative effect. My personal favourite (this keeps happening - I must stop thinking I haven't got time for them) was a video - someone slowly sweeping white shards into a line, from a blue bowl to the viewer. It was calm and mesmerising and I think I could have watched it all day on a loop.

BABE - the Bristol Artists Book Event, and a tag bound to gather a few unbookish follows - only comes round once every two years and is highly popular.  Once the word goes out for booking, you either get on with it straight away or run the risk that within a couple of hours (max) every last table has been snaffled. Two years ago I just managed to book the very last one, so I didn't hang around this time. It only seems to become more sought-after as an event to exhibit at.

It takes place at Arnolfini, on the waterfront - a fantastic spot, especially if the weather plays nice - over two floors, plus talks and presentations on the top floor, and seems to be able to guarantee a steady stream of visitors over both days, even when the sunday is Mothering Sunday. Being on my own, I didn't get an opportunity to see much of the rest of the first floor, nor any of the ground floor, but as I managed to buy a couple of beautiful books within a few tables of mine, that's probably (sadly) all for the best. Met a few instagram connections, sat behind their own tables or standing in front of mine, so that was rather nice.  Missed some stands I meant to visit that were well within reach, so absolutely no excuse.  Enjoyed - as does just about everyone! - the coffee and cake trolley that visits the exhibitors twice a day (the cakes are very very good). Talked about books and folds, life and its various twists good and bad, printmaking and words, to many people till my lips hurt (not sure what that's about). I'd forgotten how much I enjoy these events - I should maybe try for a few more.

I lost my instagram account earlier this month - pinched by a russian bot, I assume, since the linked email address suddenly became  dot ru instead of mine. I accidentally (please don't ask, it makes me feel silly) set up another one the same day, and that was stolen next morning.  I wasn't happy without one, so I gave it a few days before going for a third one, and that has survived so far, though you lose faith in the system.  I disconnected it from here because I've long since forgotten how the code works and couldn't face finding out again in order to update it - I only mention the whole saga at all for the headline :-).

The Flourish part is, of course, the open exhibition at West Yorkshire Print Workshop.  Yesterday was - again, of course - the last day, so off I drove, across the rather miserable Pennines. Flourish always presents an enormously varied offering, both in technique and style, this year ranging from Kate Desforges' gorgeously textural lithograph and Sara Lee's delicate and muted japanese woodcuts, through many other pieces of work, to Theresa Taylor's large copper sulphate etchings. Even in one discipline the different outcomes are fascinating - Maxine Foster combined her screenprints with other techniques (including bandsaw!), Hazel Roberts - who won first prize - produced colourful graphic screenprints, and Nicole Polonsky's work concerning her brother's suicide was enormously poignant. 

Many of the pictures above are details from the original works. This was in most cases because where there was a lack of glass the detail and texture could really be appreciated, and I really did appreciate them - it's a shame that glass, useful and even necessary though it might be as a rule, must provide a barrier to the immediacy of the work.

One last arty thing to mention.  I was waiting for a friend outside Leeds Art Gallery, so went in to see what I could find not far from the entrance.  What I found was Mark Wallinger's 'Threshold to the Kingdom' (2000) - a slow motion video of travellers coming through automatic double doors at International Arrivals, to the strains of Allegri's glorious 'Miserere mei, Deus'.  "The music adds an aura of spiritual mystery to the work and makes the unfolding action appear to be perfectly choreographed" the accompanying board tells you, and says everything that needs to be said.  It was amazing. 

There have been exhibition opportunities too - I had a piece in the Atkinson Gallery's summer exhibition, which I'm pleased to say sold on the opening night (I'm always pleased if something sells - on the opening night is definitely the cherry on the cake), and a piece in Chapel Gallery's open exhibition, and that sold too, again on the opening night, so what's a step up from pleased? Let's go with excited. I had three pieces in the Hebden Bridge exhibition set up to go with the fair, and two of those sold as well, so I reckon I can call that delighted. Seriously, it's all been a bit of a boost and rather good, and it goes without saying that I won't be mentioning the many other exhibitions I failed to get into, because the cherries would taste a little less sweet if I did that. I expect it's partly a case of try try try again (instead of bearing any kind of pointless and ridiculous grudge and feeling all petulant) but mostly learning my level with a degree of humility and realism. It might take me a while. It's not that I have an inflated idea of my abilities (well, I don't think I do), just that I'm not fond of rejection. Who is?      

I've been to the usual scattering of exhibitions too. I was very pleased that Drawing Projects, Trowbridge, was open on a Thursday, so that I was able to catch the last ever Jerwood Drawing Prize (the next one being Trinity Buoy Wharf instead). It was, naturally, full of all sorts of goodies - here's a small selection.   

I went to the exhibitions I had work in (although as usual I didn't make the private views - one day, I like to believe, things will be different). There are so many excellent artists out there and sometimes that can make you wonder what the point is, but of course art really doesn't have to be - really shouldn't be - about being as good as other people. I make prints because my brain spends all its time playing about with arty notions, and printing them helps to shift them on, get them out of my head. I have a love/hate relationship with the whole thing, and presumably after all this time I always will, but in spite of frequently playing with the idea of giving up for good on the whole damn thing, I'm not sure what I'd do without printmaking as an outlet. Hmm, seem to have allowed myself to stray from the subject of exhibitions.

Town Hall Arts in Trowbridge (what is it with Trowbridge at the moment??) currently has the Derwent Art Prize on show - perhaps not as show stopping as last year (I think - memory, eh, what's it good for?) but still good.  Another selection. 

I have the usual long, long list of exhibitions I want to see soon (ie before they finish), and almost certainly I shan't get around to at least half of them, but every visit is better than a miss, and that will have to do.

I'm delighted that I am going to have a table at Hebden Bridge Print Fair in September.  Also a tad apprehensive - what have I let myself in for?  Actually, I can answer that one - quite a lot of printmaking! Also quite a lot of cutting board, and wrapping prints, and thinking about available space, and wondering how to arrange things, and deciding what's in and what's out (or is that a bit optimistic?), and making lists of what I need, and, and, and.

Yes, could be a bit busy for a while.   

So keen am I not to miss everything going that I have been to three events this week (the first two of them on the same day and in opposite directions, which was a bit over the top), all of which coincidentally touched on or totally embraced anxieties about the environment.  The third was a brief talk by Susie Turner about her work with solar plates and the second was Richard Dawson and Jacqui Symons' Oldham exhibition Natural: History (a fable of progress, or 'Oh no, we've killed the last unicorn' which was amazing but I want to come back to it after I've made a second, longer visit.  So for now I'll talk about the first.  

I've realised that I need to sign up for emails to keep up with what's happening to a greater extent - if I read them, of course, which is partly why I previously haven't bothered very much.  I get impatient and delete them in droves, unopened, though I'm trying to train myself not to do that.  With increased connection in my mind I resubscribed to Warrington Museum and Art Gallery's one and the first thing that came up was a talk by Tracy Hill, connected to her exhibition there, Haecceity (the word described on google as being "that property or quality of a thing by virtue of which it is unique or describable as ‘this (one)’" - its thisness).  As I drove west on the first sunny and warm day of the year - and I mean wall to wall sunshine and positively summery - I knew I should really be mowing (suddenly the grass is loooong!) or starting on the destruction of the rotting shed, but I am so glad I didn't give in to garden duties.  I went because the pictures of work at the exhibition were like her prints that I had seen at WYPW at the end of last year, and I was keen to see more - and know more.  The talk the artist gave rooted the work in her practice and gave it so much more depth than I could possibly have culled from the noticeboard. Her work could loosely be described as landscape art, but that on its own would tell you nothing about it - it derives from landscape (in this case Mosses, of the local geographical kind) and depicts landscape, but to recognise it immediately as landscape would take considerably more imagination than I have.

Gathering information from the board at the exhibition, her talk and her website I discovered that, more specifically, her practice is concerned with the historical legacy of post-industrial landscapes and ideas around place.  She uses digital mapping technology to scan her chosen area of landscape, then manipulates the visual results.  For Haecceity the results of this process were projected on to the black-painted walls and she produced her drawings (in limestone) starting from those projections.  She is passionate about the Mosses, their slow destruction by drainage and their lack of consideration because they are - on initial glance - unattractive edgelands with little to recommend them.  The works produced from this process - and her commitment to the landscapes behind them - are beautifully textural and airy, and inevitably I see them completely differently now that I know the back story.  My only contact with this type of landscape has been a couple of brief visits to Red Moss near Bolton, as part of a son's geography project, and as we felt like borderline trespassers both times I didn't pay much attention except to a great flock of fieldfares and redwings making their way across the land, but now I'd like to find out more about this kind of terrain.

The artist has other works on show too - black on white instead of white on black, screenprinted, similar in style but made using conductive or capacitive ink.  This means - in this case - that the viewer can press on the black areas of the print and trigger a recording from the Mosses.  Four prints, four recordings, capable of being played individually or together if you wander round pressing them all in turn.  I was a little sceptical at first - a gimmicky thing, I assumed - but it added a real sense of place, grounded the whole thing, and I was a total convert.  I was particularly hooked by the noise of a plane passing overhead, which more than anything else put me right in the middle of this flat, bleak, soggy place and... just left me there.  Fascinating talk, great exhibition, worth a couple of hours of anybody's time.  Brilliant.

Two exhibitions in a week - something of a record in recent times.  The annual Bath Society of Artists open exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery was a must, what with having a piece in the show (tucked very cosily in the furthest corner, but hey, not everyone can be centre stage), and was as enjoyable as ever.  I need another visit with more time on my hands, but I thought I'd better make sure I went when I could in case, oh I don't know, cars or something.  A favourite piece has to be Patrick McGrath's Hare on a Chair - an absolute delight, and 3D - but there are plenty more up there with it.  Many favourite artists are in the exhibition year after year and begin to feel like (unknown) old friends.  Anyway, here's a selection, with the artists named in the captions.

The second but last picture there is by Katherine Jones, who has had a year-long residency at Rabley Drawing Centre - not that far from Marlborough but nevertheless out in the wilds of Wiltshire, where the modern group of buildings snuggles down among the fields and is just about as peaceful a spot as you could ask for.  I knew an exhibition of her work was due to finish before I could visit again, so I hared (and crawled) out there giving myself a whole 10 minutes before closing time (I managed to put myself behind some of the slowest people on the roads that day, I swear!).  Um.  Except that I hadn't checked whether the centre was open.  And it wasn't.  Not that I knew - in I waltzed and started looking round before I was alerted to the fact by a very generous lady who nevertheless gave me ample time to immerse myself in the work.  At first I thought the work felt new and different, something of a dislocation from previous prints (of course I concentrated on the prints) but after a while I couldn't quite work out why I'd ever thought that, and the longer I was there the more it got under my skin.  I wish I could go again, but don't I always?  I'm just glad that I went and that I wasn't turned away. 

It trickles away, my time, so that the to-do list just gets longer and longer until things just fall off the end of it.  Mind you, I'm sure everyone is the same to a greater or lesser extent, so why do I go on about it?  Because it's so irritating and I know that a lot of it is down to indolence.  Pull yourself together, I think.  But by and large I don't.

Enough of this.  To exhibitions instead.  Actually they are a perfect example of things that fall off the list all the time, completely forgotten as often as not unless I am reminded of them once they've finished. But not all of them!  I was very pleased with myself that I made it to the actual opening of Sandra Porter's show at the Museum in the Park in Stroud. Her work derives from bothans but you don't really need to know that - it's quite abstracted and I love it.  While there were paintings and drawings too, I of course went for the prints - her are some lovely textural details below.  Actually, getting to the opening was a mixed blessing in that space was, of course, pretty limited, but I'm sure I wouldn't have managed to get there at all otherwise so I'm happy enough.

I was disappointed to miss two other events, but so it goes.  I got as far as the venue for the Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition, The Edge at Bath Uni, but was stymied by lack of parking.  Not an insurmountable problem if you have enough time, but I didn't - however, I've since discovered that it (or possibly part of it) will be showing at Trowbridge's Drawing Projects UK later on, so perhaps I'll manage to see it there.  And the rescheduled Hepworth print fair fell victim to a lengthy (three weeks!) saga of two cars (please, don't ask).  The print fair will have to wait until next year. 

I know it's rather showy offy, but look at this collection of my collagraphs at the house of friends of ours.  Am I embarrassed, and determined to brush the whole thing off as rather ridiculous?  Obviously!  Of course I am.  Nevertheless, it's sort of exciting too, a little bit of a thrill.  Inevitably I look at them and think, hmm, that isn't so good, that bit there, and really those colours, I'm not at all sure.  And so on and so forth to the end of time.  I'm not wrong either, but how often have I ever been completely pleased with my work?  Put it this way, a second hand will definitely not be needed for counting on fingers. What I know I should do in this case is shut up and be pleased that out there, in the world, is a wall of my prints.