Muddy

Tree house (with milk)

Photo/drawing
This is a new piece I made for my lovely friend Lucy's film and art event Purple Wednesday
Come down to the Bay Horse (Thomas Street, Manchestie) on Wednesday 17th, from 8 to watch some films, eat some cake, drink some tasty foriegn beer and BUY SOME ART!!! There will be lots of work on sale from upcoming Manchester artists.

She's raising money for Raleigh Intenational (check out their good deeds here:
http://www.raleighinternational.org/about-raleigh/charitable-objectives) so please come along this Wednesday, dig deep and buy some art.

Discerning Eye Prize, 11th November 2010

How to behave at a swish private view: drink as much of the free wine as possible (NEVER refuse top ups), talk loudly about how rubbish other people's work is, take pictures of yourself pointing at your own work with a goofy smile on your face, giggle like children during the boring speeches, etc etc...

Oh so much fun was had at Thursday's preview. Didn't win any prizes (I quite fancied that £5000 purchase prize, but ya know) but felt insanely proud to be showing in this exhibition amongst established artists and newer artists alike. I was really impressed by the standard of the selection, which made me feel all the more giddy to be there.

Have a little looky here at the online catalogue (maybe even buy, eh?):
http://www.discerningeye.org/exhibition/gallery/gallery.php

Binge analysis

Does 4 count as a binge? 5 definitely does.

A new thing with an old thing in it

One of my photo/paintings has been accepted into the ING Discerning Eye Prize and will be part of the Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London, opening Thrsday 11th Novemebr and running until the 21st.

This is rather exciting isn't it? Ok, so there are about 200 other artists showing in this exhibition, but I'm super chuffed to be one of 'em. This will be the first time I've shown in London, and in a proper gallery with a gift shop and everything.

If you find yourself in that London do come and have a look.


Exhibition details here:
http://www.discerningeye.org/exhibition/intro/intro.php

Now this is pretty old

And should definitely be filed under 'Things that happened a little while ago'. But I like it.

I made this animation about 2 years ago, and last year it won the Oxfam short film competition at The Deaf Institute, Manchester.

In The Beginning Was

A short animation about a man acquiring his first word, narrated by a former word addict.

Film by Kelly Parish.
Story and Narration by Elinor Taylor


You can watch here:

Queer Kraak

Queer Kraak Exhibition
25th - 31st August, Kraak gallery, Manchester.

Group show of Queer manchester Artists to coincide with Pride weekend.
Initially I thought this was a dreadful premise for an exhibition. Actually, I still do. My sexuality is not relevant to the work I make, and generally I don't really care for work that is too focused on the artist's personal life, prefering work that has a universality about it and allows for a broader interpretation, without the viewer having to be aware of any background information to be able to appreciate it. But, I thought I might as well do it anyway.

The work I made for this show reflected my discomfort with the theme of the show. I never make explictly personal work, and although I'm fantastically comfortable with my sexuality; its mine, and not up for interpretation or debate as I put forward my art to be. So the work I showed incorporated a very personal element; I used old family photos, the first time I'd done this. But the way I edited them negated that personal element. I painted objects and images from my memories of my family into the photographs, but these were so personal that there would be no possibility of any viewer being able to gain any insight into the story behind the image. The work was deliberately ambigious to the point of being meaningless.

Images from the private view are available here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44087667@N06/4992358135/in/photostream/