Duration & Dialogue II Performance Art Festival 2017 - Part 1

I was so pleased to learn that my proposal for the Performance Art Festival in Toronto had been accepted!
View my piece on the festival website here:
http://www.durationanddialogue.com/ddii-1/#/patrick-s-ford/
 
The Festival will take place from 27th to 29th of January 2017 at Katzman Contemporary in Toronto, Canada.
http://www.katzmancontemporary.com

 

My performance, entitled 'No holiday' will be realised in Hong Kong and live-streamed to Katzman Contemporary in Toronto. The 13-hour time difference means that I will be walking for the 2 hour period in the early morning and the gallery audience in Canada will be viewing my performance in the evening.
The preparation for the performance is currently underway:

Patrick S. Ford, No Holiday, performance development photograph, Hong Kong, November 2016

Press Release

Patrick S. Ford is delighted to announce his third performance piece, and first to be shown outside of Hong Kong, as part of the Duration & Dialogue II, a performance art festival and symposium held at the Katzman Contemporary art gallery in Toronto, Canada.

In No Holiday, Ford continues his practice of deconstructing everyday life for paradigms that can be isolated and examined within a durational event that retraces an action or an activity observed in life, exploring and reconfiguring observed movements he calls “found actions.” For many working people the highlight of the year is the annual holiday (summer holiday, Chinese new year holiday etc.). During this short, intense period people remove themselves from their habitual surroundings and immerse themselves enthusiastically into what is often unfamiliar geographical and/or cultural territory.

No Holiday deals with the journey to and from this holiday adventure, reversing the usual paradigm by focusing on the journey rather than the destination and eliminating the relief felt upon arrival at the intended holiday location. Ford will take his suitcase, map and selfie stick as he explores the choreography of the holiday experience in unfamiliar surroundings.
Patrick S. Ford, born in the UK, but living and working in Hong Kong since 1993, gained his initial training at Leeds College of Art (UK), BA (Hons) Fine Art at Northumbria University (UK). He then earned his MFA at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. He currently works as lecturer at the Hong Kong Design Institute. He has lectured on many subjects, conducted workshops on printmaking and drawing in Hong Kong and Japan (Kyoto Saga University of Arts), and held artist-in-residence positions in Hong Kong and China (Guanlan Original Printmaking Base).
Ford, who has worked in a variety of media including: sculpture, printmaking (previous Chairman of the Hong Kong Graphics Society), drawing, and, more recently, performance art, has participated in over 100 visual art exhibitions in: Europe, Asia, North America, and Australasia, and his work is included in many public and private collections.

Chinese translation:

褔伯爵高興地展示第三個個人的行為藝術作品《没有假期 No Holiday》，這是褔第一次香港以外的行為藝術展示。《没有假期 No Holiday》將於二零一七年於加拿大多倫多的 Katzman Contemporary  藝術美術館首演，是次表演藝術由Duration & Dialogue II 藝術節舉辦。

《没有假期No Holiday》中，褔伯爵一直繼續在實踐、解構人類每天當下生活的範例，這些可以是被孤立的行動或活動、可以是持續事件中被細查的行動或活動。褔透過生活中觀察、追溯、探索、及重新裝置這些行動或活動的變動，褔把這個稱為「現成行動（英語：Found Actions）。」

對於需要工作的人群，向來注視每年的假期（春節、夏天假期）。在這個又短暫又緊張的假期間，人群們從習慣性的環境中抽離自己，熱情地將自己沉浸於另一個陌生文化的領域中。

這個《没有假期 No Holiday》行為藝術，反轉一般的假期範例，不著眼假期的目的地及到達目的地時那種解脫的心情，而相反地重點展示出，從旅程出發及回程的歷程中所探索其行動或活動的變動。褔會攜帶旅行箱、地圖、自拍桿，於陌生文化領域中去探索這個像舞蹈藝術排練的假期。

褔伯爵（Patrick Shaun Ford） 出生於英國，是一個英國裔的藝術家、藝術教育學家，於一九九三年在香港工作並居住。褔畢業於英國利茲藝術學院，於英國諾桑比亞大學修習純美術學士學位，在墨爾本皇家理工大學獲得了藝術創作碩士。褔執教於香港知專設計學院，教授視覺藝術與文化、藝術文學士等課程。其間於香港與日本教授版畫及繪畫工作坊（京都嵯峨藝術大學），及獲中國觀瀾版畫原創產業基地邀請成為入駐藝術家。

褔致力藝術工作，並創作了許多以繪畫、雕塑、版畫（前香港版畫協會主席）與表演藝術作品。褔作品展覽於藝術節中超過百次：包括於歐洲、亞洲、北美洲、澳大拉西亞等多處公開及私人的藝術作品集。

Dada Centennial Exhibition - International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction, Santa Fe, USA

After reading online about the upcoming 100 year anniversary of Dada I discovered that the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction in Santa Fe - USA, was hosting an exhibition and inviting artists to create work along this theme. As I have always loved the work of Kurt Schwitters I decided to create an homage to the master and thereby participate in this Dada Centennial Exhibition.

I chose one work (not easy, he made so many wonderful pieces) and attempted to create my own interpretation of it. I used his piece 'Merzbild 5A Spielkartenharmonika' 1919 and using this as a guide I proceeded to make a collage in response to it.

I first made a rough under-drawing to work out the structure and then blocked in tones and colours. On top of this I pulled the colours together, intensified them and then began adding layers of other materials. I didn't try to employ exactly the same materials of course, and once underway I needed to pay attention to what was happening within my work even if that meant straying a little from Schwitters' original work. Consequently my final work is not a copy of his work but is close enough to be a response, a tribute. The colour palette I employed is different, wider and more vibrant, saturated, while Schwitters chose a more restrained, sombre feel. Often, the natural effects of aging act to pull colours closer together.
Recently I have been working on collaborative drawings, part of a drawing dialogue project and this short exercise I set myself also felt a little like a dialogue with Schwitters and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Kurt Schwitters: Merzbild 5A Spielkartenharmonika, 1919

Initial under-drawing

Tones and initial colour blocking completed

Colour sharpening and first layers added

Final condition, 2016 (photograph courtesy of the 

International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction)

My homage to Kurt Schwitters side-by-side with the master's work!

Photographic Project in Progress - Nam Tam Wan

In an earlier post I introduced a short 2 minute video I made that was screened online and in the exhibition gallery as part of the 3rd Istanbul Biennial. The theme of the biennial was 'Are We Human? ' and I composed the video using images I had collected while working on another photographic project. I would now like to talk about that project.

In the Autumn of 2015 I went for a stroll along the east coast of Cheung Chau, a small island in the territory of Hong Kong where I had already been living for 3 years. I discovered a pleasant trail that lead down to the water's edge in a small bay that featured a Tin Hau Temple and this had become my regular Saturday and Sunday afternoon walk.

Around 50 meters past the temple there is a concrete walkway raised above the beach, which extended the trail up a short ramp and onto the adjacent headland. One day, as I stopped on this concrete walkway to take a photograph of the bay, I noticed a silver arrow that had been spray painted onto the seaward side of the walkway, pointing down toward the beach. The sand had almost covered the arrow head but there was just enough left to recognise that is was an arrow, rather than a silver line.
One or two weeks later I returned to the same spot and realised that the arrow indicated a drain that had been cut through the walkway almost at beach level. This drain allowed the water that seeped down from higher ground to pass through the walkway and drain back into the sea. The arrow had obviously been painted so that the location of the drain could be found whenever the sand built up and covered the drain.

On subsequent walks I began to notice that the terrain around the drain changed dramatically depending on the amount of water draining from higher ground, the intensity of the rainfall, the amount of debris washed ashore by tide and winds etc. I took a photograph with my camera phone so that I could compare it with how the drain may appear when I returned on my next walk. Without really planning it, I started to take a photograph at that same spot each time I visited the bay. As the images accumulated I realised that something had been triggered and a project had begun by itself without me being aware of it. I value these kinds of phenomena and decided to let it run to see where it may lead.
I purposefully did not pre-plan my visits to the bay to take photographs, I went there only when I had time for a walk and so the frequency of the visits varied. This added a touch of serendipity in that I couldn't predict the condition of the beach around the drain and each visit was a surprise.

I currently have around 50 images and as I had been reviewing them as a series my first action was to create a book of the images so that they could be reviewed sequentially and therefore the changes to the beach could be seen easily as the pages are turned. I  created two hand-made versions and then had a third version made at a local commercial photo lab.
A fourth version is currently underway and will hopefully be published soon as a commercially available book.

2015-11-29

17.17.03

2015-12-21

16.49.09

2016-01-31

16.11.47

International Drawing Dialogue 2016

Drawing Dialogue - Exhibition and Conference

DalgaArt, Craiova, Romania 24th - 27th July 2016

18 artists contributed to this interesting project initiated and organised by Gabriela Boiangiu, creating 9 pairs of artists who responded to each others work. The participating artists included Garry Barker and Martyn Hill.

I was paired with Martyn Hill from the UK and while he worked on a series of images, I worked on my own set. We then exchanged the drawings and attempted to respond visually to what the other artists had done.

The unexpected nature of the project and the challenge presented by the project deadlines combined to make this a truly enjoyable project.

​

Some of the participating artists managed to make the trip to Craiova in Romania for the related conference but unfortunately I was not able to travel due to my teaching commitments. However, I did managed to join in some of the conference discussions via Skype. I really hope that the planned second stage of the project will become a reality.

The resulting images are displayed below with our names displayed according to the working order. For the first group of drawings I initiated the images and Martyn responded to what I had done:

For the second group of drawings, Martyn initiated a set of images and I responded to what he had done:

'Are We Human?' - 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial

Are We Human?: The Design of the Species: 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 years, 200,000 years is the official title of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, which will run from October 22 - November 20, 2016 at the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV).
I created a 2-minute video that will be screened along with others in the Foundation at Sishane, Istanbul, Turkey and also online here!

Scroll down the page to find the link associated with my name.

Biennial Website

 

Turkish Language Flyer

The video developed out of a long-term project I had been undertaking as it seemed a good fit with the Biennial theme. I had been observing the changing state of a small beach on the island of Cheung Chau and I noticed how the weather and the tides added and subtracted elements within a small area I had been observing. nature sometimes carved out channels in the sand while at other times it obliterated all details and left a smooth almost featureless plain of sand. 

Quite often there appeared detritus, flotsam and jetsam, refuse, evidence of human garbage polluting the lovely little beach. Nature eventually cleared it away, even when it had been particularly bad and piled high on the beach. This to me was quite telling, the only evidence of human existence was the refuse we had discarded but even this was carried away by nature leaving no trace. As the months passed I saw this cycle played out: the beach filled up and was then cleared, the sand was carved away and then replenished...
The photographic project is still ongoing and in progress.

If you have trouble finding the link via the Biennial website, you can find a direct link here!