7 Stories

A Commission for work for the meeting room of The Autism and Criminal Justice System Salford

The Brief

The brief was to create a piece of work in any medium, measuring up to 6 mtrs long by 2.5 mtrs deep. The challenge came when I visited the site and began to understand the diversity of the users of the meeting room: lawyers, students, police, social workers and clients – people in the criminal justice system who are on the autism spectrum. Uncovering a subject that would interest  and not offend, provide a talking point and not be too distracting. I visited Venture Arts and began to research and develop an understanding of autism with the aim of find a common thread to expand on.

The Narrative

A common theme that occurred in the research, especially when I spoke to artists at Venture Arts, was story telling and the reliance on this to relate to individuals, time and society in general. According to writers there are only 7 basic stories in books and films etc.

Using different types of Perspex and card, both drawn and lasercut, I explored images in the form of symbols that represented each story with a view to layering them and overlapping between stories and events. This is to consider the effect of one story on another as we move through our lives into and out of different phases.

 The symbols were: rags to riches –  roses around the door, tragedy – a broken mirror, rebirth – a burnt feather, overcoming the monster –  a black hole, quest – a maze, journey  – a mountain path and comedy –  an award. 

Asking for input from other artists regarding the symbology and testing out the shapes together the work developed into combinations which I subsequently took to the print room to explore further. Print has always given me the opportunity to explore and test ideas without the restrictions of weight and space normally attached to a 3 dimensional work.

I printed on the heavy weight blotting paper that is used in the print room and had been kept for its beautiful marks left behind forming stories from artists making prints such as cyanotype. The paper was difficult to handle when wet and I had to wet it to print the etching plates. Some were able to go through dry as the Takach press is very powerful, it is also large enough to take the almost A1 size paper. I also used the negative spaces formed by architects when creating models to print blocks of area in which I could recreate the combinations of stories in a 3 dimensional format. I worked with the existing marks on the paper and over-laid 8 prints, working on one while the others dried over a period of two weeks.

Deciding when to stop was difficult as I was tempted to include each story in each piece. Finally the decision about when to stop was made when three of the prints seemed to work well together forming a tryptic. At this stage the prints were quite abstract and viewers saw their own stories in each which is more than I could have hoped for!