Project News: A Message to... Marfa

Marfa, Texas, located at 30°18′43″N 104°1′29″W

TBC members Laura Davidson, Charley Peters and Beverley Bennett are currently working together on a collaborative project, A Message To... Marfa. Marfa is a town in the desert of West Texas, founded in the early 1880s as a railroad water stop. Marfa Army Airfield was located east of the town during World War II and trained several thousand pilots before closing in 1945, the abandoned site still being visible 16km east of the town. In 1956 the film Giant was filmed in Marfa, famously the last film featuring James Dean, who died before filming was completed. The city is now best known for housing Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, occupying more than 10 buildings and permanently exhibiting work by artists including Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Richard Long and Roni Horn. 

A Message To... Marfa involves Peters and Bennett, in London, providing Davidson with a list of instructions for actions that she must undertake in Marfa. These actions will generate material that Davidson will send back to Peters and Bennett, which they will curate and interpret to generate a remote 'drawing' of Marfa. The project will be realised over the next two months, and published online shortly afterwards.

TBC Artists' Collective: A Message To... Houston

Charley Peters, A Message To... Paul Neal 'Red' Adair (2011), Folded Paper on Wall

TBC's latest project, A Message To... Houston has now been completed and images of the installation of the works by myself, Laura Davidson and Beverley Bennett are now available at 12-pages.com.

My collaboration with Davidson was inspired by research into the firefighter 'Red' Adair. Davidson interpreted a set of instructions supplied by me relating to a series of drawings made from folded paper for the project (above), which are installed in my studio in London. On the 25th of August Davidson recreated the works in Houston, Texas, and scattered their subsequently burned remnants along the park in the middle of Heights Boulevard, which divides the lanes of traffic travelling across town (below). The work is the latest in TBC's ongoing exploration of drawing as performative, interventionist or documentary medium, moving the act of solitary mark making out of the studio and into a collaborative, interactive environment. For more information about the project click here.

Laura Davidson and Charley Peters, A Message to Paul Neal 'Red' Adair' (2011)

A Message To... Houston

As part of TBC Artists' Collective, I will be taking part in the A Message To... Houston project during August. My piece of work is inspired by the legendary firefighter 'Red' Adair, who, during his career extinguished and capped oil well blowouts, both on land and offshore. The project will involve a collaboration between myself and TBC's Laura Davidson, based on Laura's interpretation of a set of instructions I supplied her with relating to a series of my drawings made for the project. The instructions and my drawings - made from folded paper, reminiscent of flame forms - are below. The second part of the project will be documented on the TBC Online Project Space, 12-Pages, at the end of August.

--

A Message to... Paul Neal 'Red' Adair

I have made six drawings out of folded paper.

The drawings are now on the wall of my studio in London.

On sheets of white paper I have recorded each fold as a line, thereby producing six new line drawings.

I have given these line drawings to you and they are to be taken to Houston, Texas.

In Houston the lines should be turned into folds and the original drawings recreated.

The six recreated drawings should be burned and their ashes scattered in Houston Heights, the area where Red Adair spent his childhood, to commemorate his career extinguishing hazardous oil well fires until his retirement at the age of 77.

Charley Peters, A Message to Red Adair (2011), Folded paper on wall

Project News: A Message To... Houston

During August TBC Artists' Collective will be taking part in a project in Houston, Texas. A Message To... Houston will involve TBC members - Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez and intern James Tuitt - researching notable residents of Houston and creating a new piece of interventionist work inspired by their findings. The final works will be installed in locations around the city. The works and their placement in sites in Houston will be recorded and can be seen on the TBC Online Project Space at the end of August.

Project News: A Message To...

A Message To... Ann Oakley (2011)

A Message To...

On 22 January 2011 members of TBC Artists' Collective - Beverley Bennett, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez, James Tuitt and myself - travelled to Oxford to complete the first part of a long-term project, 'A Message To...' 

Each artist made a piece of interventionist work inspired by someone who has contributed to the cultural life of Oxford. My work, a drawing in dirt for sociologist Ann Oakley, who has written extensively about women's experiences as housewives and mothers, was installed in a display cabinet in the Pitt Rivers Museum. 

The cabinet, on the first floor of the museum, is directly underneath a vitrine containing ethnographic objects relating to marriage. Oakley graduated from Somerville College, Oxford in 1965, where she is now a Fellow.

 

The site of the dirt drawing intervention in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Project News: A Message To...

A Message To... Ann Oakley (2011)

TBC Artists' Collective are working on a new long-term project called 'A Message To...' The project will take members of TBC to various UK and international locations to make ephemeral interventionist works based on the cities they travel to. This week the group will travel to Oxford and install postcard-sized art works we have made specifically as a message to a person linked to Oxford who has contributed to national cultural, creative or academic history. 

My work pays homage to Ann Oakley, a writer and a sociologist who graduated from Somerville College, Oxford. She has written extensively and influentially around issues of sex and gender, housework, childbirth and feminist social science. Her 1974 book 'Housewife' inspired my 'A Message To' work, in which she wrote, 'Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualisation'. My drawing is made from dirt samples collected in my studio.

A Message To... Ann Oakley (detail)