Georgia Russell’s books, and birds.

I was researching an artist who slashes up books yesterday, who will remain anonymous as she (oops) led me on to Georgia Russell’s work which is way more exciting! She tears up books, maps, music scores, photographs and newspapers for these vitrines of organic, birdlike creations.

…this piece in particular reminds me of a horrifying experience I had with small stuffed crested crane (have a look, it’s disgusting) we had in our art classroom at school – I tripped over its stand, it fell over and its head snapped off! Not. A. Nice. Day.

Georgia Russell is exhibiting at the moment as part of the Courtauld Institute of Art’s East Wing X which I think is in Somerset House so have a lookie if you liked this lot

Peter Callesen’s Perplexing Papercuts!

Just came across these and I liked them. I wish I had Peter’s patience…

This tower of Babel is one of Callesen’s smaller ones and its still 182cm high…impressive…

Walls of Unwritten Words

I’m thinking of casting feathers in porcelain as part my next piece for uni, possibly why these fallen feathers drew me to Callesen in the first place. Glad I found him. Enjoy

Tomorrow I will be scouring my local park for goose feathers, looking like a tramp and possibly contracting Salmonella – oh how I love Sundays!

Explorers. An exhibition in a box.

I’ve been lucky enough to be involved two of Vibe Creative’s recent shows, it’s such a good feeling actually having work up where people will see it! Uttsav Patel runs Vibe with Gemma Marsh, two Visual Arts students at Bournville campus of our humble Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. Wordy, bleugh, sorry.

Bournville is worth having a look at, especially at this time of year – there’s the Cadbury’s factory shop for cheap chocs, beautiful old shopping streets, the oldest house in Birmingham and an adorable little green with a Christmas crafts shop (cheap and really well made gifts, mother Hodge is definitely getting some sparkly things from there this year!) This little village is a teeny tiny gem just outside of Selly Oak, Birmingham.

Anyway Utts is a neighbour and dear old friend of mine, and he popped over to pick and choose some work for future shows and found these five prints which I’d done a month or so ago, wasn’t too proud of so hadn’t left my room yet and liked them. Nice!

They’re stills from the film below, just snapped, photoshopped and printed. Then I used some rather hazardous screen cleaner called Actisol to rub them onto textured paper. Actisol’s pretty nasty stuff – we picked it up from a dodgy industrial site a couple of years ago for at home printing – you have to breathe out of the window, close your eyes and rub the images together with a spoon. Dodgy much…? Then you have to make sure not to be near any of the work until it dries, so I put mine in the hallway. My poor poor housemates.

Here’s the film, 1961 New Zealand. My little mother herself.

And here’s Vibe’s fantastic little construction – each exhibition features this ‘box’ which is made of several different flats and can be transformed into all sorts of shapes and sizes, and which will eventually be  travelling exhibition space when it’s waterproofed!

“Explorers” is an audio-visual experience featuring work by myself Chloe Hodge, Gemma Marsh and Claire Pollard which was produced by exploring different areas, stories and histories.

Take a torch, step into the darkness and explore.

Sneaky peek inside the box…

If you like my little film piece, prints or any of the work in the show, a little “like” is always encouraging. Just sayin’…