Bedworth

I was told about a plot of land in bedworth where there are two abandoned buildings, which are perfect for my current project. Naturally I went there straightaway to have a look. What I found was literally amazing. The houses were on quite a large bit of land next to a main road- and were in total disrepair. There was ivy and other plant life growing all over them (in some cases through the roof) and they looked as though they could fall apart at any second: total desolation. It was PERFECT.

I wanted to continue my focus on abandoned buildings/ areas, and this was the best starting point. Here are some photos of the discovery: 

 

I then went back to the house in the snow for some more photos, I thought snow on top of the already ruined house would be very interesting.

The houses have been a brilliant source of inspiration, and I am currently working on pieces based on what I have found there. 

Detroit.

A brilliant article in The Observer acquainted me with the downfall of Detroit, MI, after the thriving cities motorcar industry fell apart. Whole areas of the city have been left, abandoned, as if a sudden disaster had hit and there was no time for organisation. Parisian photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have documented the amazing sights in a series of photographs, gathered together in a book 'The ruins of Detroit'.
The buildings photographed include; schools, offices, theatres, swimming pools and hotels, all once grand and lively- full of bustling activity, now left to crumble and rot away. It is a ghost town, and as Sean O'Hagan says in the article, '... a book of testimony, which not only illustrates the dramatic decline of a major American city, but of the American dream itself... Cumulatively, the photographs are a powerful and disturbing testament to the glory and the destructive cost of American capitalism: the centre of a once thriving metropolis in the most powerful nation on earth has become a ghost town of decaying buildings and streets.'
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/


It was truly amazing to me that this whole area of desolation is relatively unknown and in such a famous place. Some of the photographs are amazing, and simultaneously, shocking.

Peter Callesen: Paper art.

I've been looking into using paper and negative space to create a space such as a house or building which is clearly empty, and turning the idea around so that the space is clearly being lived in or used, by lighting it up. 
There are a lot of artists who I can relate to this idea, however I have found one who uses paper- not in a similar way to what i want to do but in an extremely interesting way. 


Peter Callesen uses plain pieces of white paper (A4 etc) and cuts out imagery- while still leaving it attached to the paper.

To create the 3-D study sections Callesen uses only the paper that he has cut out. I love the detail created and the fact that he only uses white paper in a lot of cases.  I also like that the negative space is still part of the study. Sometimes the negative space relates to the 3-D image more than other times, which I am particularly attracted to

"A large part of my work is made from A4 sheets of paper.It is probably the most common and consumed media used for carrying information today. This is why we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper. By taking away all the information and starting from scratch using the blank white A4 paper sheet for my creations, I feel I have found a material that we are all able to relate to and at the same time the A4 paper sheet is neutral and open to fill with different meanings." - Peter Callesen http://www.petercallesen.com/index/index2.html 

What a cool guy. Check him out:

http://www.petercallesen.com/index.html 

 is neutral and open to fill with different meaning.