The exhibition preview - last Wednesday went well with a healthy turnout. It was good to see and we (the artists) are all pleased at how well the work of four people came together in one space. The plan is to create an online version of the exhibition so I will post details of this when it's up and running. I will also put up some images of my work, but not today as have to dash! 

The exhibition is now up and  running - the private view was on 11th April, though the exhibition started on the 4th.

I'm feeling quite up beat about my work on AA2A at the moment - this week I will be making photo-etchings using a couple of the photograms from my last session in the darkroom. I'm quite excited about this and it will also mean I will have more direct contact with the students. It will be intersting to see whether the images lend themselves to the process.

I have agreed, along with Michelle Trip who is also doing AA2A at Teessside, to be an AA2A group representative for Teesside and get together material about the experience of other artists in the group, in order to write a blog. I'm in the process of contacting the other AA2A artists at Teesside as I rarely see them on campus as we are all doing different things at different times!

It's been a while since I've written on this blog. Before the Christmas break I had a nasty bout of tonsilitis and was also needed to take my daughter to a couple of uni interviews. The Turner Prize exhibition is now over so things are quieter at work which should give me some space to get on with my AA2A project. I enjoyed making my presentation to students better than I had expected and it was good to meet up with the other AA2A artists, though there was not much opportunity to discuss our various plans and experiences of AA2A. I had already met a group of the students and a couple of staff at the Baltic when they came to see the Turner exhibition so some of them recognized me from that.

I have been working steadily away. Most of my time on campus has been spent in the darkroom working on photograms and enlargements which means I haven't seen a lot of the Fine Art students. Away from uni I have been taking more photographs. Now is a time for taking stock and deciding whether I do actually want to use some of the images in etchings or stay with photographic prints and collage.

Good news arrived just before Christmas - I have secured some funding which will enable me to realise my moving image project in the summer. The body of work I produce on the AA2A is a part of this project, being an exploration of the visual imagery used to convey the concepts behind the work. Going back to darkroom basics and experimenting with photgrams was a fruitful exercise.

More darkroom tomorrow!

A couple of weeks have passed since my last blog. Very busy weeks with the Turner Prize dominating at work - tours to give, long hours standing, but also some very stimulating conversations with visitors.

On the art-making front, one of the storyboards is coming along - I will post a photo later, need to pick up my son from school soon. I have been out in the field taking black and white photographs at one of the locations and had a darkroom induction at Teesside Uni where I worked on some photograms.  I am feeling fortunate to have such an opportunity when many art schools are getting rid of photographic darkrooms.

So far - I have had my induction in the Print studio and acquainted myself with the library. Today I have been thinking about the way I work and how the AA2A fits with that. It is an opportunity to experiment - with print, with photography and in any other ways that occur along the way. It is a step in the process towards achieving my project, but it has the potential to be much more than that. The unexpected is always more interesting than the predictable...