LAST CHANCE

Dear Friends, colleagues and art lovers of Wirral
Last chance to view de-junk, re-junk exhibition in Birkenhead Park tomorrow (Friday) 9 til 4.30pm.

Many thanks to Wirral Council for their support and thanks to the Birkenhead Park Rangers and volunteers and our own volunteers and to you our audience who have boosted our view that this is a fabulous enterprise and worth building.






Alison

PS We are already planning "de-junk, re-junk 2013"

http://de-junkre-junk.blogspot.co.uk/

Birkenhead Park Visitors Centre, Birkenhead Park, Park Drive, Birkenhead, Merseyside CH41 4HY

On Twitter use #dejunk

On Facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/328498400566273/

On Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/abscraft/sets/72157630069013686/

Nice review from Nerve

Nerve Magazine's review

Cygnus by Lorraine Hughes

Our de-junk table

If you come to visit the exhibition, this table above which has all my tools of the trade for hanging the show has been transformed into a de-junk table for you to find junk to create your own re-junk creation. Please email us any photos of your art, craft or model to info@abscraft.com and we will post it here.

Judith RAILTON exhibits with de-junk with her ephemeral assemblages

Judith Railton  - statement for de-junk re-junk 2012

Stimulated by a recycling junk into art workshop, I use cardboard boxes with bits picked up from streets and found in charity shops. 

   

‘Tower’ –a fantasy environment that I’d like to live in.

– recycled cardboard whisky box, found objects, abandoned papers and paint                     

£50

‘Flower’ – mechanics allied to  nature.

- recycled cardboard box and papers, found objects, paint and sand 

£50 

‘Taxman’ – my fascination with travelling fairs and musicians.                                                                                        

 – recycled cardboard box and found objects, paint              

£40

Linda Mary Evans _ Treescape

 

Linda Mary Evans
BA(Hons) Fine
Wirral based Contemporary Landscape artist.

Trees have always fascinated me, they are very much part of the landscape but they are incredibly complicated. So I have tried to simplify them, to allow for greater interpretation and imagination.

Tree-scape
This work was inspired by a piece of beech wood given to me by Liverpool wood turner Mike Rule.
I was intrigued by the natural images within the wood and wanted to evoke an impression of the landscape from which it came.

Tree-scape
Acrylic on re-used canvas
£150
 

Damon Revans-Turner's desk

in the construction from floorboards

floorboards found in a skip on Wellington Road

“I’m what some call a joiner, others a chippy or carpenter, I prefer Cabinet Maker, not because it sounds posh but because that’s what I do,  I make furniture.When I say “make furniture” it doesn’t quite do it justice, what I should say is “I love to make things out of wood” and if that wood has been thrown out, and is free, even better!

I didn’t set out to be a furniture maker, just kind of walked into it naturally, and I’m so glad I did.

Didn’t achieve much at school, owing to being a hopeless dyslexic with a creative imagination that wasn’t nurchard or channelled correctly, but always loved art and drawing and design.

So one morning in my late teens I was asked to help move some old furniture by a friend, from an old barn in Cheshire, and that was the beginning of my walk with wood.”

The end results!

I am a desk, made with love, for those to sit at and write above, on leather seen now colored green while you look at your silver screen.

I'm made of wood were once there stood so many feet above the street, from childhood fears and lovers tears , Ive held them all through out these years.

And songs I’ve heard from choirs too , from hyme's and prayers with windows blue and red all seen, please write on green, a lovers note that is unseen.

You see, I'm made from bits of wood, with stories to tell, and if you would, consider a while, as you watch me smile, please sit and rest, for now



"I'm a Desk" 
£1200

The day of the opening

Nicola

Rachael

Today, we open our de-junk, re-junk! show to the public at 10am, with a grand opening at 11am for supporters from the council. Mr Mayor, Gerry Ellis opening us officially at 11.30am, and Sean Styles from BBC Radio Merseyside will be coming to interview me at 12.30.

I have arranged for 2 friends to model my television wire corsets. Rachel modelled for a photoshoot with photographer Mathew Kelly and make-up artist Persis Peters. The images were later used in an article in Cheshire Life about my work. Nicola modelled during a fashion show at the Williamson Art Gallery in 2011.

The show would not have been made possible without the late Jim Smith. He was put in contact with me after I met Steve Maddox, chief executive of Wirral Council at the Oxton Art Fair in 2009. Jim and Daniel Molyneux arranged to meet me in some coffee shop or other and a few meetings later they had pulled together a community art show featuring recycling with my involvement being to rope in some artists working with "rubbish". So along with my work, Wendy Williams' carrier bag rug art pieces, Vanessa Ryall's mosaics, Julie Dodd's paper pieces made from old books and a few other people, we had an exhibition in the park. The following year, we had two outings of what had by this point become "de-junk, re-junk!". The first showing was to tie in with an environmental conference run by the council at Pacific Road Arts Centre and then into Birkenhead Park Visitors Centre. This time almost 30 artists were involved and were given parts of my old kitchen and other rubbish from my house, supplemented with their own "garbage". The show was a huge success and here we are today with many of those artists back involved and a few added to it, including one jeweller from Lancashire , so we are 34 in number!

I am indebted to Jim Smith for many cups of tea and laughs as well as being occasionally infuriating. I miss him and I hope we make him proud today.

Brenda Sharp - My brain is a sieve

Brenda is our artist of the day for today's blog entry for one very good reason. She came to a meeting many moons ago in St James Centre in the North End that I arranged for Wirral Council staff (including the late and much missed Jim Smith) to give us information about the Empty Shop Fund, I merely hosted the opportnuity, not wanting to go for the money myself. Brenda seized the chance, finding one venue then another and finally plumping for her final location in Liscard. Today is the grand opening for PAPER SCISSORS STONE and we are all so proud of her. Representing local artists and craftspeople, Brenda Sharp's enterprise has been helped by a grant from Wirral Council through the Empty Shop Fund. She will be running workshops and exhibitions as well as selling wonderful art, craft and design from artists of Wirral, Merseyside and surroundiing area. Offering something for everyone's budget and taste.

Anyway, back to the de-junk, re-junk show and my usual format for blog posts!

 

Brenda Sharp is a photographer and multi media artist. In  "My Brain is a Sieve", she has explored  how her mind might look if translated using the discipline of multimedia art.

Brenda graduated from The University of Chester as a mature student in 2009, gaining a first in Fine Art and Photography BA (Hons). She then resumed self employment as a workshop leader and designer -maker before making the leap into opening a shop and gallery in Wallasey "Paper Scissors Stone".

Lorraine Hughes makes a dramatic entrance!

Lorraine Hughes is a Fine Art based self trained Artist with more than thirty years experience, Specialising in Art Direction, Set and Exhibition Design for TV, Film and Theatre.

Lorraine's clients include The BBC (working alongside Directors including Stephen Polliakoff and actors including Charles Dance, Miranda Richardson and Clive Owen), Pinewood studios (music videos including artworks made with recycled materials for Ruby Turner and Fashion Designer Vivienne Westwood's muse Sara Stockbridge), The Walker Art Gallery, St Georges Hall, Liverpool Town Hall, the Everyman theatre (working alongside actors Cathy Tyson and Michael Starke and 'Cranford' screenwriter Heidi Thomas), Walk The Plank, The Bluecoat Chambers Liverpool and the National Wildflower Centre in Merseyside. Creating works with an eco conscience using images sources from gritty urban decay to decadent Civic splendour.

During the past ten years Lorraine has worked mainly with young children, exploring the natural world using re-cycled materials in Grove Street primary, School New Ferry, the Eden Project Cornwall and the National Wildflower Centre in Court Hey Park Liverpool (alongside Artist Ticky Lowe).

 This work 'Cygnus'- (A floral tribute to Sir Joseph Paxton) ( A combined homage to the painting - Swans on the lake in Birkenhead Park - British school of painting/ Williamson Art Gallery ) and the garden designer and architect of Birkenhead Park Sir 'Joseph Paxton' who to his credit had decided to create "something handsome and good out of bad materials" he meant to create a beautiful landscape man made out of a derelict and marshy wasteland, a direct historical guidance from Joseph Paxton in 1843 to the aims of the de-junk - re-junk artists exhibiting in Birkenhead Park in 2012.

 Lorraine hopes that 'Cygnus' evokes an elegant, gentle contemplation of the history and beauty of the park and the need to tale 'time out' to relax and protect our natural, rich and diverse Merseyside heritage.

Diary extracts - the making of a re-cycled Art work for the De-junk Re-junk 2012 Exhibition:

    ingredients for creating 'Cygnus' :

    * 3 small plastic bottles

    * 3 large plastic bottles

    * scraps of plastic material

    * artificial polystyrene / Rafia onions

    * broken artificial foliage

    * brown paper

    * gift wrap

    * faux leather

    * discarded resin planter

    * gold leaf

    * photocopies

    * brown cardboard

    * 1 sack of shredded office waste

    * broken decorations

    * faux jewellery

    * left over masonry paint and assorted drops of fabric paint

•     In June during an intense two week period I began thinking about my contribution to the
•     De-junk, Re-junk 2012 exhibition.
•  
•     during the first week I had acquired a large amount of diverse but beautiful objects
•     (please see ingredients list ) that at first appear to easily link together by colour and texture and form.
•  
•     During the second week I spent a day walking through the beautiful Port Sunlight village and spent time looking at classical and mythological works.
•  
•     Later that week I visited the Williamson Art Gallery and walked to the boat house in Birkenhead Park and simply pondered on the tranquility and beauty of the scene and wondered about the history of
•     it's design and creation.
•  
•     I returned home and researched all that I had enjoyed and seen and realised that the garden designer and architect Joseph Paxton had provided me with the answer to 'create something handsome out of bad materials' a statement that he had made in 1843 directly created a connection to myself using re-cycled materials in 2012.
•  
•     I remembered a painting entitled Swans on the lake in Birkenhead Park - British school of painting (The Williamson Art Gallery - Birkenhead ), the sensuous 'Leda and the Swan' 1898 by Maurice Ferrary at (The Lady Lever Art Gallery - Port Sunlight),
•  
•     A painting of Anna Pavlova by Irish painter John Lavery 1911 'The Dying Swan' exhibited in 2011 at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool.
•  
•     I had also been reminded of the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Anderson 'The Ugly Duckling' 1843 whose so called ugly duckling saw his true beauty as a swan in the lake, it seemed to me an amazing to find a link between this iconic symbol of transition to the year the park and its own Swan lake began it's transformation also 1843, a journey from derelict poor land to outstanding, inspiring
•     World class beauty.
•  
•     I looked at the raw found materials that I had collected at all the places that I had visited during this two weeks and saw that the gift wrapping paper I had kept for its foliage images also contained images
•     of swans.
•  
•     I looked up the Latin for swan and it was 'Cygnus', I thought about the grandeur of the scale and work of Joseph Paxton and immediately knew how the piece would finally look.
•  
•     The process of decay happens very quickly in life if we allow it. I have been working with found materials since the late 1970's (often guided by Artist/ Poet and friend Adrian Henri, studying the work of
•     Kurt Schwitters ), it has always seemed to me to be the ideal medium to directly consider the beauty, function and protection of our environment.
•  
•     It felt appropriate that I was making something new that was once broken as part of an exhibition in the new Birkenhead visitors centre, It felt like an appropriate tribute and acknowledgment of an amazing park and a visionary man.

Theresia Cadwallader back for a second year

Theresia Cadwallader

Theresia is a jewellery designer, maker and art projects organiser. She studied Jewellery Design at Wirral Metropolitan College and gained BTec with Distinction in 2009.

Theresia’s hand made jewellery pieces are made from various materials, new, recycled and found objects. She uses metals including gold, silver, titanium, copper, aluminium, precious and semi precious stones, fabric, paper, wood, found objects and recycled materials.  Most of her copper pieces are made from recycled water tanks, wires stripped from cables, aluminium from drink cans or obtained from scrap yards, paper from magazines, tetra pack, milk bottles, metal tubes, plastic tubes, leather from off cuts, food packaging, and other materials found in most households.
 
This is the second year Theresia has taken part in ‘de-junk re-junk’ exhibition.

Theresia has been showing and selling her work at various exhibitions including Oxton art Fair, The Six Rooms Gallery for Independents Liverpool Biennial, Williamson Art Gallery, Oakmere Studio Cheshire, Liverpool, Cambridge, London and around the country.

Her future exhibitions include “Canvas for Youth “ a charity event at Mid Cheshire College, Hartford from 18 - 21 July 2012 and Oxton Art Fair at Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead in December 2012.

Theresia accepts commissions.
www.theresiacadwallader.com

Artist’s Statement:

Swifts...

When I returned home having been away for a while and having been through a very difficult year, I noticed the birds in the garden, the Swifts flying around as if they were greeting me. In the Spring and Summer we see the Swifts returning from far away countries, but how some will never returned....and we say good bye to them....

The Swifts, like my family, scattered in different part of the world, we get together from time to time but this time not all of us are there...

Theresia Cadwallader

Judith Brown uses vintage haberdashery in her work

Judith Brown Jewellery

Artist’s Statement

Having studied embroidery at Manchester I have taken a simple stitching technique and pushed it beyond the boundaries of textiles to create original jewellery. I began working with wire in 2004 in order to develop a way of working that would highlight the stitch itself. I use fine wire and treat it as thread, stitching without fabric to make intricate forms which hold their form over time, yet are still seemingly delicate.

Much of my work incorporates found objects. My Vintage Collections use recycled and upcycled haberdashery. In our throw away society I want to highlight the simple beauty of such everyday objects, once so precious as to have been hoarded away by our grandmothers in the times of “make do and mend”. 

I exhibit and sell my jewellery around the UK and my jewellery is currently stocked by the V&A, the British Museum and Kensington Palace.

Today's new images

Linda Mary Evans

Michael Walker

Beverly Glover

Beverly Glover

Roy Lewis returns with his Mech'art

 

ROY LEWIS MECH’ART

Roy has been making functional decorative items for over 20 years, and is in the process of making the transition from the creation of his candlesticks and sundials being a purely hobby to a business . Roy recycles old worn out car, motorcycle or any machine type parts. No one piece is the same as another, he can either make something similar or bespoke to your own personal taste.

He specialises in candle holders but has made a few sundials and flowers made of stainless steel cutlery that can be placed outside without the fear of corrosion.

Roy has also given technical assistance to other artists with his fabrication and welding experience.

Bernie explores addictions in his piece for de-junk

Bernie Howden

Artist statement

I achieved my Fine Art Degree in 2009 at Wirral Metropolitan College. My work involves the surreal side of art in this particular instance using the recycling theme to convey the message of addictions that we all experience in one form or another, we can be achieve a high standard by using materials that have been discarded and can reach the inner echelons of the mind to inspire people to act and react to the use of the  recycling theme to help our planets future continue for the children of future generations as it is their  heritage.

B J Howden

Addictions

£ 50

Barry Canning Eaton show at de-junk for the first time

Barry Canning-Eaton

A sculptor, potter, jewellery designer and maker.

Barry was born in Liverpool, brought up and live in Wirral. He started sculpting in his school days using clay.  He then became a potter for several years  making original pieces for mass production, and carrying out high quality restoration work on ceramic pieces for antique dealers.

Mostly self taught, over the years Barry has expanded his knowledge and skills in making 3D pieces using various media including steel, copper, gold, silver, other metals, concrete, and found objects.
Many of Barry’s works are created using recycled materials.

Barry was introduced to metal work when he could not find the right wedding ring for his wife. He wanted a gold ring of interlinked seahorses. So he sculpted one and cast it in gold himself.

Inspired by the experience, Barry then studied Jewellery Design for 3 years at Wirral Metropolitan College where he gained a Distinction in 2009 and won a First Prize in the "Inspired By..." in 2009, an arts and crafts competition sponsored by Liverpool Museum and V&A, with a bracelet and necklace set in the form of a spine made of ceramics and silver, inspired by Dinosaurs bones.

Barry has shown his work at ‘Transformations’ at Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead in 2009 and The Six Rooms Gallery as part of Independents Liverpool Biennial in 2010.

His future exhibitions include:
Canvas for Youth Exhibition at Mid Cheshire College, Chester Road, Hartford CW8 1LJ from 18th - 21st July 2012 where Barry will show his Spiral Staircase waterfall.

Barry accepts commissions in sculpture, ceramics and jewellery.

Julie Dodd returns for the recycling show for the 3rd year

 

Julie Dodd

Artist’s Statement

I am an installation artist and I mainly work with paper, but I also recycle other discarded materials to form installations, bringing a new life and meaning to them.

I focus a lot of my attention on environmental issues and use my art practice as a platform to reflect my concerns of our consumption and environmental responsibility.

My artwork is based on repetition and is inspired by pattern and shape found in nature.

I work in multiples, which I use to mimic life, growth and regeneration. The processes involved in making my work are as important if not more important sometimes than the finished product. I work methodically and laboriously with mundane processes in order to produce a satisfying result.

 

Invasive Ivy

English Ivy (Hedera helix) is a species of native ivy which is a versatile plant, being able to cover significant ground and able to climb as well. It grows well in the shade and is ideal for covering barren areas under trees, it crowds out weeds, helps with ground erosion, climbs and cascades walls.  And with its evergreen foliage it’s a great ornamental plant which provides rich nectar for insects and fruit for birds.
But it is considered an invasive weed in parts of Australia and the United States. Due to human introduction as an ornamental plant it has widely spread, invading forests, salt marshes, woodlands and fields. Growing at ground level as well as reaching up into the forest canopy, it suppresses native vegetation engulfing everything and preventing light reaching the other plant life.

Works coming in for de-junk - featuring Jacqui Chapman

Jacqui Chapman

B.A. (Hons) Fine Art

My work explores the relationship in us between identity and territory and demonstrates that they are integral to what we are. As an immigrant from South Africa I am interested in the idea of homeland, living in exile and national identity as influenced by landscapes and as told in close up histories, in literature, philosophy and art, while investigating my own foundations where contradictions of transience and permanence exist.

In this work, Requiem, I remember my friend. She was only 42 when she died. Our daughters were best friends age 7. It is about our last walk up Moel Famau for a windy picnic before she became ill.

Reclaimed floorboards from a demolished girl’s school in Wallasey, having had their own history, form the implacable box, in contrast with the fragile book I made from a drawing /painting  I worked on during the year she was in hospital.  

Printed: Ink -jet on Lokta paper 1/1

Having had a successful career in advertising for 13 years as a senior Art director, I retrained in England and qualified in 2006 with a first class B.A. (Hons) Fine Art Degree from Wirral Metropolitan College, (validated by Liverpool JMU) followed by a Fellowship in 2007. My work is exhibited widely in the North West of England, nationally and internationally, most recently in the Florence Biennial 2011.

For more information please visit my website or contact me should you be interested in a commission or to view other collections of my work.

website: www.jacquichapman.com

email:  jacqui@jacquichapman.com

Rubbish exhibition in the park

Helen Smith's workshop with plastic bag flowers

 

A “rubbish” show in Birkenhead Park Visitors Centre doesn’t sound very appealing but with over 30 Merseyside based artists and craftspeople using junk it is definitely an exhibition worth viewing. The exhibitors have taken rubbish, litter and un-used items to recreate into artwork and craftwork showing how with a bit of creativity and skill - things that would inevitably end up in landfill can be transformed and be saved. The exhibition “de-junk, re-junk!” will be open daily from 9 til 4.30pm daily.

Following her involvement with the organisation of recycling art shows in 2010 and 2011, curator Alison Bailey Smith has had support from Wirral Council again in mounting the exhibition, she said of the forthcoming exhibition:

  "Last year, the exhibition took a different approach to the previous community show in 2010 with professional artists and craftspeople re-using my old kitchen and producing paintings, mosaics and sculptures. This year, we have used social media to ask for items such as milk bottles and plastic to transform as well as exchanging our own unwanted hoarded, redundant “gems”. We visited Bidston recycling plant to see the recycling process first hand. After which many of the artists reconsidered the items they were using to shift to items not currently being recycled through local recycling facilities.  One of the pieces to be featured in the exhibition will be our new sign made of scrabble parts and broken plates produced at a mosaic workshop during our de-junk, re-junk workshops funded by MRWA earlier this year and a piece of furniture made using reclaimed wooden floorboards by mastercraftsman, Damon Revans-Turner. Next year, in 2013 we will be looking for sponsors to be able to run the exhibition”

There will be "junk" available for people to take away and create their own de-junk, re-junk creation, photos can be emailed to Alison Bailey Smith info@abscraft.com and their recreations will be posted on the blog during the show http://de-junkre-junk.blogspot.co.uk/

Birkenhead Park Visitors Centre, Birkenhead Park, Park Drive, Birkenhead, Merseyside CH41 4HY

de-junk, re-junk! prepares for 2012 outing in July