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29/02/2012

93 balfour street - soul

#3 in a series of text drawings based on 93 Balfour Street



#4 in a series of text drawings based on 93 Balfour Street

27/02/2012

93 balfour street - soul only

#1 in a series of text drawings based on 93 Balfour Street



#2 in a series of text drawings based on 93 Balfour Street






21/02/2012

re-living room | build

re-living room - the build
(best viewed in hd on vimeo)



accompanied by sufjan stevens - i walked

19/02/2012

re-living room | day fourteen

in-habit-ation




It struck me during the course of re-living room, that like the lives we all inhabit, this two week process has been built around an ever-entrenched routine. I've developed a habit borne out of the necessity to complete the project. Each morning I have woken thinking of how I will inhabit the re-living room space that day. Each day i've travelled to the gallery, buying a copy of the local paper on the way. Once at the gallery, I've assembled that day's new additions and photographed them for documentation purposes, before carefully placing them in their rightful place in the room. Each day I've carefully photographed the installation from the same spot outside the window, in order to build a verifiable progressive body of documentation. Each day I've uploaded the images and blogged the results, in the same way. This routine has sustained me. It's given me a framework within which I've been able to successfully make each successive intervention and reach the end of the process without missing a day. The routine has instilled a disciplined approach. The routine instilled a purpose.

Today, whilst sitting in the place I've installed over the fortnight and reading Geoff Dyer's essay "Inhabiting", in Restless Cities, I realised that I'd formed a habit. I'd become comfortable with the routine which was now in effect controlling the structure of my day. This it seems to me is how we tend to cope with our days. We have a need to fill our lives with familiar structures, events and things in order to create a sense of purpose, comfort, security, sureness, confidence and safety.

                                        --------------------------------------------------------------------

Halfway through re-living room,  a comment from a friend regarding the placement of a particular artefact helped me realise that in order to fully resolve the space I was building, I had to properly consider the particular inhabitant of it. Up until this point, I'd considered that it might be anyone who might live in this room. I'd placed a used fast-food carton at the foot of the chair, which I'd thought would suggest occupation of the space. But my friend insisted that the man who lived there was too tidy to have left a discarded fast food carton laying around in his living room. He would, she said, have consumed his fast food meal from a plate. He simply wasn't the type to eat direct from the carton. He had too much class, or manners or more importantly, pride in himself, his room and his life for that.



And she was right. In order to fully realise this space, it had to be filled by the idea of a real inhabitant, with a character, and a set of values. Someone who looked after himself and his belongings, his room and his house.  Someone who was a bit bewildered that the surrounding houses were being pulled down and demolished around him.

I started the project exploring the idea that place=space+inhabitation. But simple inhabitation doesn't seem to be enough. it has to be a particular inhabitation, an inhabitation with a purpose.

18/02/2012

re-living room | day thirteen

day thirteen




objects, materials and costs

  • electric fire - found object
  • box brownie camera - pre-owned
  • case for box brownie camera  - pre-owned
  • downloaded segment of episode of "Grand Designs"
  • weekend sentinel - £0.60












re-living room | native plants of Stoke-on-Trent - crepis capillaris (L)

8 plants, native to Stoke-on-Trent, and lovingly rendered by Leslie Greenwood.




number eight - crepis capillaris (L)

re-living room | day twelve

day twelve




objects, materials and costs

  • umbrella - found object
  • check hat - pre-owned
  • coat hooks x 4 - found objects
  • the sentinel - £0.40








re-living room | native plants of Stoke-on-Trent - ranunculus ficaria L.

8 plants, native to Stoke-on-Trent, and lovingly rendered by Leslie Greenwood



number seven - ranunculus ficaria L.

16/02/2012

re-living room | native plants of Stoke-on-Trent - heracleum sphondylium L.

8 plants, native to Stoke-on-Trent, and lovingly rendered by Leslie Greenwood.




number six - heracleum sphondylium L.

re-living room | day eleven

day eleven




objects, materials and costs

  • ashtray - £0.60
  • packet of 20 woodbine - £7.42
  • lighter - pre-owned
  • downloaded episode of "Changing Rooms - Trust Me I'm a Designer"
  • the sentinel - £0.40










woodbine 6'18"





re-living room | native plants of Stoke-on-Trent - bromus hordeaceus L.

8 plants, native to Stoke-on-Trent, and lovingly rendered by Leslie Greenwood.



number five - bromus hordeaceus L.

15/02/2012

re-living room - day ten

day ten




objects, materials and costs

  • polystyrene take-away carton and blue fork - found objects
  • "the Good, the Bad & the Ugly" by Rod Hackney - borrowed book
  • "Converting Old Buildings Into New Homes" by Barrie Davies - borrowed book
  • "Grand Designs Handbook" by Kevin McCloud - borrowed book
  • "Restoration" by Philip Wilkinson - borrowed book
  • "The Shock of the Old - a guide to British buildings" by Philip Wilkinson - borrowed book
  • "How to Read Buildings" by Carol Davidson Cragoe - borrowed book
  • "Brickwork 1" by W.G. Nash - borrowed book
  • "Build Your Own House" - Haynes Manual - borrowed book
  • "Le Corbusier - Architect of a New Age" - borrowed book
  • The Sentinel - £0.40







14/02/2012

re-living room - day nine

day nine



Objects, materials and costs

  • shelf - pre-owned
  • miller's antiques price guide, 1985 - found object
  • repair your own home electrical appliance - found object
  • the sentinel - £0.40