Oak Gall Wasp collaboration with Tara Rutledge at Classroom Open Studio.

Extra images and video from open studios at Holyhead Studios, Coventry at the end of Tara Rutledge's residency as referenced in my latest blog on ArtSpace Coventry website - which I've tagged on to the end of this blog, and is available here: Coventry ArtSpace 

I will post in the usual places where and when we are showing the next version as there is one planned for later this month - details to be confirmed. We plan to move the work on and there were a number of works and events we didn't get to show at the open studios that will be very exciting to share - not least the coffee now we've got hold of it! So do please come and see.

These are from the first time we played about with the projectors.

Some footage of the Turkey Oak on Spencer Road in Coventry. We used the audio from this to make the sound piece. I love this footage. I have this idea of the tiny Knopper Gall Wasp larvae enjoying movement high up in the summer canopy that I couldn't withstand. The rain is falling so hard that it rolls down my car window pane in sheets and the tree is gyrating all over the place looking like it's having way more fun.

Gall fluid and iPhone footage shot through a gall. We tried to make ink by adding ferrus sulphate but neither solution had had long enough to steep to work. We will have another go at that and have pens and paper to try it out with. 

We pretty much had to fly in and out and put it all up in and hour and a half due to all the other things we had to get done that day, and I was a bit disappointed that we didn't have time to play with the version of the twinned heart-shaped through the gall footage to make it work in the space. There is something really uncanny about the repetition of images that I really wanted to happen - as if the two views are two creatures speaking to each other. This is something to try again next time. I guess it's good to have more to want to do, and all told, this has been a great experience trialling stuff and I'm so grateful to Tara for wanting to share her time at Classroom with me.

ArtSpace blog: Coventry ArtSpace 
Tara's ArtSpace profile: Tara Rutledge

I've had subsequent thoughts about this piece.

When I made it I didn't know where it would be projected, but when the beam hit this spot we both knew this would be the place. Affectively it now creates a reversal. I'm pretending to show the back of the wasp's retina (my initial plan) but what it actually does is map the space in front of it as an oak tree. Consequently this makes the audience also the body of the oak - as the other things tall and straightish occupying the space.

Quite nice, I think to be portrayed as an oak, but inaccurate. Organism-wise I can't take that place and also be charged with fucking the planet up. We have major differences. However, we have some similarities, the oak and me, so there is hope.