Kirsty Hall  |  Artist & purveyor of mad obsessive projects

A couple of weeks ago, I booked myself onto a day-long spindle spinning workshop at Get Knitted, my favourite Bristol yarn store. I’ve wanted to learn to spin for several years, ever since a friend gave me her slightly broken spinning wheel but I didn’t want to spend money getting it fixed until I knew for sure that spinning was something I wanted to pursue. I have to be careful to balance my need to enthusiastically throw myself into new things with keeping a focus on my existing art: I am very easily distracted! However, number 55 on my 101 Things list is Learn to Spin, so when I saw the workshop advertised, I jumped at the chance to do it.

I’ve been feeling very unenthusiastic about my art for months now but this workshop really released my creative juices: I came home this evening ready to get right back into the studio and start making again. There were 9 of us on the course and our teacher was Jen from the hand-dyed yarn company, Fyberspates. Jen got us all spinning with a simple wooden and plastic spindle in an amazingly short time. Spindles are an ancient technology, possibly one of the oldest in the world – apparently in the Middle Ages they sometimes used a stick and a potato if they didn’t have a nice carved wooden spindle to hand! We got to play with wool, alpaca, silk, mohair, linen and even a little bit of cashmere. Just sinking my fingers into all the different types of fibre was an education and it was interesting to see how we all differed in which ones we found easiest to spin.

Kirsty Hall: Mixed Fibres For Spinning

My tiny lumpy balls of yarn don’t look like anything special but to me they’re quite magical because hey, I made yarn! Actual yarn, from fibre – how cool is that? OK, so it’s not very good yarn – a 5 year old medieval child with a potato could probably have made better. It’s extremely uneven, going from thick to thin and back again and some places aren’t twisted enough but I don’t care, it’s a beginning. This is the incredible thing about learning something new; the joy of looking at something that you’ve made with little technical skill but with utter concentration and passion and knowing that you’re back in that humble place of Beginner’s Mind. Every artist should keep feeling their way back to that place; it kicks you out of your complacency and gives you that little skip in your creative spirit that charges you up.

Kirsty Hall: Homespun Yarn & Spindle

A Boring Bit
There’s been a bit of downtime on the site this week because we needed to upgrade WordPress after a possible spambot incursion – so if anyone’s had trouble getting the site to load, that would be why. A couple of things are still a bit funky: the gallery pages aren’t quite right and the blog archives have done a bunk but hopefully we’ll get everything back to normal soon. If you’re very observant, you may also have noticed that we’ve switched on a confirmation box for comments. I’m sorry about this, I know they’re a nuisance but I was getting upwards of 400 spam on the blog every single day and it was driving me absolutely nuts.

A couple of weeks ago, I booked myself onto a day-long spindle spinning workshop at Get Knitted, my favourite Bristol yarn store. I've wanted to learn to spin for several years, ever since a friend gave me her slightly broken spinning wheel but I didn't want to spend money getting it fixed until I ...

Sorry, didn’t mean to disappear like that, I was hit by a virus and today is the first day I’ve felt like myself in more than a week.

So, what’s been happening? Well, I bought a new camera with the last of my holiday money and I’m absolutely loving it. It’s a Sony Cybershot DSC-H3 and it’s so much better than my little Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01. When I was in Australia I completely hit the limitations of the Panasonic and was finding it frustrating that I often couldn’t get the shots I wanted because I didn’t have enough zoom.

I’ve also realised that I take a lot of indoor shots and close-ups and while the Panasonic is OK on macro, it sucks in poor light. That’s not to say that the Panasonic is a bad camera: if you want to photograph groups of people outdoors then it’s a great choice. It’s light and small enough to easily carry in a pocket and has a proper wide angle lens, which is unusual in a compact digital of that size and you can even use it underwater if you have a special case for it. I think it’s a nifty little compact; it’s just not a good fit for the kind of photography that I do.

The Sony has 10x zoom compared to the 3.6x of the Panasonic and a noticeably better macro setting. The lens feels like a higher quality to me and I can see the difference in the photos I’m taking. It’s larger and heavier than the Panasonic but still light enough to carry around with me, which is hugely important. I looked at a couple of larger cameras with even better zooms but realised that I would end up leaving them at home half the time. There’s an old photography saying that ‘the best camera is the one you have with you’ and it’s so true.

I don’t have a card for the new camera yet so I’m relying on the internal memory and it can only take 14 images before it’s full. Usually I take as many photos as I want and then decide which ones I like once they’re on my computer screen. I generally only junk images directly from the camera if they’re obviously blurry or bad. But when I went out for a walk today I had to delete quite a few decent photos so that I could take better ones. In a way it was quite freeing because I was having to look at each image and make a conscious positive decision to keep it. When you can only take 14 images, each image has to really work to earn its keep! I can see how this could be an interestingly disciplined way to take photos but I’m still looking forward to my memory card arriving.

OK, that’s enough yakking about the new camera, let’s see what it can actually do…

Kirsty Hall: Sunlit Puddle, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: A Watery Window, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: Manhole cover, Bristol, April 2008

Sorry, didn't mean to disappear like that, I was hit by a virus and today is the first day I've felt like myself in more than a week. So, what's been happening? Well, I bought a new camera with the last of my holiday money and I'm absolutely loving it. It's a Sony Cybershot DSC-H3 ...

Sorry for the week of radio silence: I got back last Friday but have been busy picking up the reins of my life and getting over jetlag and a cold.

Although Australia was fantastic and I had an amazing time, I’m glad to be home. I missed my family and while I loved the sunshine and sea, I do quite like this damp little island that I call home.

Kirsty Hall: Happy Face Graffiti, Bristol, Feb 2008

Getting off the plane I was struck both by the cold (it was snowing when I got back) and the gorgeous softness of the light we have here. Australia was so bright that I needed my sunglasses most of the time and the glaring light created strong shadows that gave everything a stark quality.

Kirsty Hall: Australian Bush, The Blue Mountains, March 2008

I found myself very aware of the relentless fierceness of the heat: there’s no doubt that Australia is a harsh environment and many of the objects that I saw were weathered and bleached by the sun.

Kirsty Hall: Worn fence posts, Australia, March 2008

The light in Britain can occasionally be that strong but usually there’s a subtle quality to the light and colour here that I very much enjoy. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t enjoy a bit more warmth and sunshine but I like our rain-washed colour spectrum. I find that living with grey skies and muted colours so much of the year gives me a heightened appreciation of splashes of bright colour when I finally do see them.

Kirsty Hall: Purple Sunset, Bristol, Jan 2008

Kirsty Hall: New Leaves Unfurling, Bristol, Feb 2008

Sorry for the week of radio silence: I got back last Friday but have been busy picking up the reins of my life and getting over jetlag and a cold. Although Australia was fantastic and I had an amazing time, I'm glad to be home. I missed my family and while I loved the sunshine ...

Yesterday’s colour was green. Not only was it St Patrick’s Day – apparently celebrated with great joie de vivre in Sydney – but I spent a delightful afternoon exploring the Royal Botanic Gardens with local artist, Wendy Shortland. Wendy kindly showed me around this beautiful green space and we had a grand old time admiring the plants and wildlife.

There was much to see and I took plenty of reference photos of natural forms. Yet the thing that struck me most was the strangeness of the living bamboo covered with graffiti. I don’t always like graffiti; often it can seem intrusive and destructive and I’m particularly ambivalent about graffiti on trees and rocks. Up in the Blue Mountains, seeing graffiti on trees in the rainforest threw me into a rage at the stupidity of people. However, in this case, it had resulted in powerful totemic sculptures that reminded me of the Aboriginal funeral poles I’d seen a couple of days earlier in the Museum of Contemporary Art. The harsh scratched writing had been softened, stretched and transformed by the living plants to form a beautiful monument to the basic human urge towards mark-making. I am still ambivalent about this need to mark other living things as our territory, yet it was impossible to deny the compelling accidental beauty of the end result.

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

I’ve always been captivated by this sort of communal art form where aesthetics are not always the driving force. In the early 90’s, I spent a lot of time looking at African sacred objects that had been worn smooth by thousands of respectful hands or covered with nails to the point of bristling. I also studied Western traditions of sacred objects – medieval relics, votary offerings, rosary beads, museum displays and the like. I longed to make something with that same sort of presence but realised that it wasn’t possible for me to simply copy an existing form or process and ‘fake’ a sacred object. Years later, it’s something I’m still struggling with and much of my work using repetitive processes hinges on that concept of how to imbue an object with power and meaning.

Back in the gardens, I was also very enamoured with the enormous fruit bats that hung from the trees like giant cocoons.

Kirsty Hall: Fruit Bats, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

En masse, they are incredibly noisy – a plane overhead will set of a cacophony of squawking. Indeed, Australian wildlife as a whole seems quite loud to me, many of the birds can raise a real racket – the evening roosting of the parrots has to be heard to be believed. Perhaps they need to state their presence so loudly to combat the daunting distances of this vast land.

Today, I too am feeling daunted – only two and a half days left and still so much to see. Part of me wants to rush over to Sydney again and spend another afternoon looking around, while a greater part of me is arguing for a day spent on the beach in Manly! There has been so much rushing around lately and I feel overfull of textures, shapes, sounds and experiences; I know it will take me months to digest what I’ve seen here.

Yesterday’s colour was green. Not only was it St Patrick’s Day – apparently celebrated with great joie de vivre in Sydney – but I spent a delightful afternoon exploring the Royal Botanic Gardens with local artist, Wendy Shortland. Wendy kindly showed me around this beautiful green space and we had a grand old time ...

I’m delighted to announce that several of my drawings are now available for sale at The Shiny Squirrel.

The drawings were inspired by The Diary Project drawings but they’re done on nice paper instead of envelopes! They come mounted but not framed to keep postage costs down and so that you can choose your own frame. The drawing with the blue ovals is particularly beautiful in real life – it’s my personal favourite from this set. You can’t see it clearly from the photograph but the blue background of the ovals are covered in tiny circles of white ink.

OK, enough sales talk, I need to put some clothes on, dry my hair and then get on the Manley ferry to go and visit the Art Gallery Of New South Wales and the botanical gardens, which are conveniently located next door to each other.

I'm delighted to announce that several of my drawings are now available for sale at The Shiny Squirrel. The drawings were inspired by The Diary Project drawings but they're done on nice paper instead of envelopes! They come mounted but not framed to keep postage costs down and so that you can choose your ...

Up in the Blue Mountains doing the tourist thing for a couple of days, so here’s a post that I prepared earlier…

Rust Belt is a collaborative project between jewellers, Anna Bario and Page Neal. Their aim is to explore ways in which jewellery can be made from “re-purposed materials using low-impact, environmentally conscious practices.”

I first came across their work on the Daily Poetics blog, where I was very taken with their wonderful and innovative use of glass bottles to package their jewellery. I’ve never seen jewellery shown this way before and I think it’s totally inspired. It’s both practical and beautiful – the jewellery is protected in transit and then you have a stunning way to display it when you’re not wearing it.

Rust Belt Alluvial Collection: Packaging

However, once I visited their site, I was even more impressed by the environmental commitment at the heart of their work and the depth of their research. As someone who dabbles in silversmithing, the pollution caused by mining metals is a concern for me, so it’s absolutely fantastic to see other artists tackling these issues head on. If you’re a contemporary metalworker, then their blog is a must-read but I’m sure it would be interesting to non-metalworkers too.

Oh, and did I mention that their jewellery is utterly lovely…

I particularly love their sparse graphical pieces made with vintage chains.

Rust Belt Alluvial Collection: Red Angled Knottedrush

They also seem to be melting down and reusing metals, as in this gorgeous organic bracelet:

Rust Belt Alluvial Collection: Gale

It’s particularly great to see artists working with recycled materials who also have a very contemporary style – a lot of objects made with recycled or re-purposed materials can be a bit ‘worthy’ and ‘clunky’ for my taste but while reusing existing metal is absolutely central to this work, I like that it doesn’t completely dominate the aesthetic.

So, a useful resource for metalworkers and environmentalists and they make beautiful work – what’s not to like?

Up in the Blue Mountains doing the tourist thing for a couple of days, so here's a post that I prepared earlier... Rust Belt is a collaborative project between jewellers, Anna Bario and Page Neal. Their aim is to explore ways in which jewellery can be made from "re-purposed materials using low-impact, environmentally conscious practices." I ...

Despite the heat, I managed to get over to Sydney to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art today. There are currently two exhibitions on: Force Field, a retrospective by Australian artist, Fiona Hall and an exhibition of Aboriginal Bark Paintings.

This was the first time that I’d seen Fiona Hall’s work and I had mixed feelings about it. The pieces I liked the most were the ones where her technique and obvious skill worked in conjunction with her ideas rather than being overwhelmed by them.

I found the pieces made from tupperware consistently witty and engaging. My favourite installation in the show was Cell Culture, a vitrine containing abstract animal forms made from tupperware and thousands of beads. Being able to recognise many specifically Australian birds and animals added an extra dimension to the work for me and I’m sure I enjoyed it more than I would have before I visited Australia.

Fiona Hall: Cell Culture

This image was too wide and I’m working on an unfamiliar laptop and don’t fancy hunting for editing software, so just click on it for the bigger version.

Fiona Hall: Cell Culture, detail

I also enjoyed an installation that featured a wall of tupperware containing lights that blinked on and off in sequence – simple, yet strangely hypnotic.

Paradisus Terestris, her large series of sardine tins containing metal reliefs of human body parts that blossom out into intricately cut metal plants was also enticing.

Fiona Hall: Paradisus Terestris

This work reminded me of The Song of Songs in the Bible – using plants to describe the human figure or vice versa is an ancient story but one that Hall manages to make refreshing here through sheer audacity of technique; you can hardly believe the detail and the fineness of cutting involved in the plants, while the parts of human figures are breathtaking in their minimalist assurance.

Two large installations containing multiples cast in yellow soap also caught my attention, as did the nests made from shredded bank notes and some very beautiful goache paintings of trade plants on bank notes. For me, Hall is at her best when making sculpture, although I also enjoyed her etchings, drawings and some of the photograph and video pieces.

Unfortunately, her work didn’t always quite hit the mark and although there was much that engaged and amused me, there was nothing that absolutely knocked me dead. Her work was often just a little bit too obvious for my tastes; I felt that she often spoilt the work by over-egging the pudding. For example, a set of figurative sculptures made from knitted video tape seemed fairly effective until I noticed that the images related far too directly to the film they’d been made from – i.e. a foot coming out of the box for the film, They Died With Their Boots On. I prefer work to be a little more mysterious and I don’t mind having to work at understanding art – generally, I’m far more tolerant of ambiguity than I am of being preached at and I felt that Hall’s work fell into the didactic far too often. She is clearly an artist who is strongly engaged with her subject matter – colonialism; sexuality and the interaction between people and the environment – but I personally believe that it’s a mistake to let your politics overwhelm your art.

There are a couple of interesting articles about the artist here and here. This quote made me laugh:

“I’m just relieved that I live in an era where, particularly for women, it’s easy to have a life as an artist. Otherwise I don’t know what I would be good for,” Hall says.

Boy can I relate to that!

The exhibition runs until 1st June 2008 and despite my reservations, I do think it’s well worth a visit if you’re in the Sydney area. This post is already quite long and it’s late here, so I’ll save the review of the other exhibition for another day.

Despite the heat, I managed to get over to Sydney to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art today. There are currently two exhibitions on: Force Field, a retrospective by Australian artist, Fiona Hall and an exhibition of Aboriginal Bark Paintings. This was the first time that I'd seen Fiona Hall's work and I had ...

Well, I’ve just got back from a fantastic and very luxurious wedding weekend at Peppers Manor House in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Being an artist, I’m not used to 4 1/2 star hotels but damn, I could get used to that style of living very easily…

The wedding went well and I’m thrilled to have a delightful new sister-in-law. The two of us get on really well and my brother is clearly head over heels in love with her, which is very sweet to see. I have a fund of stories from the wedding but most of them aren’t repeatable on this blog. Suffice it to say that the combination of Australians and Scots at a wedding is quite a party – there probably aren’t many weddings where Waltzing Matilda gets played on the bagpipes!

………..

Mardi Gras

Despite my sunburn, I managed to make it to Mardi Gras on the Saturday before last. I don’t have any good pictures because my camera isn’t good at night but there are plenty here. It was great fun but a little odd because I was at the start of the parade and mostly surrounded by apparently straight people who didn’t seem to quite ‘get it’. Fortunately I met a lovely man called Andrew and his group of friends, who took me under their wing and made the experience much more enjoyable for me. We were whooping, clapping and cheering while most of the people around us just stood silently and watched while taking photos. Personally, I think that if someone has gone to a huge effort to design and make costumes, put on elaborate make-up, learn complicated dance routines and generally put a lot of work into something, the least you can do is give them a clap and a wave.

………..

Kiama

Kirsty Hall: Kiama Sunrise

The week in Kiama was also a blast – although I could have done without the flea and cockroach infested house that I was staying in! The other three houses our group had booked were gorgeous, while the one I was in quickly earned the titles The Roach Motel and The Flea Pit. I was bitten all over by the end of the 5 days, which did not make me happy. My dad left a very pointed note, I left the flea spray I’d bought in a prominent position and strong words will be had with the letting agent when my brother and sister-in-law return from honeymoon – I hope they get some money back because honestly, the house was far too dilapidated to be let out.

But apart from that, it was fab – lots of barbies, swimming in the sea and great company. There were between 20 – 25 of us at various points in the week, so it was quite a party atmosphere and I enjoyed meeting my sister-in-law’s family for the first time.

………..

Minnamurra Rainforest

During the week at Kiama, a bunch of us visited the stunning Rainforest Centre at Minnamurra. It was a gorgeous place that I’m sure will inspire many drawings, I just loved the way the forest grew around and through itself – all the vines and ferns were very seductive to me.

Kirsty Hall: The Rainforest at Minnamurra

Kirsty Hall: Fern at Minnamurra Rainforest

Kirsty Hall: Vines at Minnamurra Rainforest

Although we could hear loads of them, it was hard to spot birds in the dense forest canopy. However, we did see lyrebirds, parrots and a huge water dragon sunning himself on the rocks by the river.

Unfortunately I didn’t quite make it up to the waterfall because it was very steep in places and I strained my dodgy hip trying. I should have known better than to attempt it but I can be too stubborn for my own good at times. Other than that though, I’ve been doing well at pacing and resting and I’m not struggling too much. I was exhausted yesterday though, so today I’m having a quiet day of recovery back in Manly at my brother and his wife’s house. They left for honeymoon this morning and the rest of my remaining group also headed off this morning, so now I’m all by myself for the rest of my holiday. Fortunately, I enjoy my own company and although I’ve enjoyed being part of a big and vibrant group, I’m looking forward to having some quiet introspective time where I can get more drawing and thinking done.

I’m about to go off and do some internet research to decide what to do next – there’s so much to do here that I feel a little overwhelmed with possibilities but I’ll see what feels right. If I can find a cheap flight, I may jet off to somewhere else in Australia for a couple of days but I won’t be sad if I end up staying here, because Sydney is just amazing and apart from my evening at the Mardi Gras, I haven’t had a chance to explore it yet. Basically, I’m just going with the flow.

Well, I've just got back from a fantastic and very luxurious wedding weekend at Peppers Manor House in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Being an artist, I'm not used to 4 1/2 star hotels but damn, I could get used to that style of living very easily... The wedding went well and I'm ...

My goodness, Kiama is stunning. We’ve got scorching weather so I’ve bought a ridiculously large hat to try and stop from burning any more than I already have. My nose is peeling now – always a great look for anyone! I’m hoping it will have improved by the wedding.

I’m enjoyed soaking up all the new flora and fauna, I’m sure it will inspire a lot of new drawings when I get home. We went swimming in the ocean rock pool down by Kiama harbour yesterday – watching the sun on the gently rippling water, I couldn’t help thinking of David Hockney’s Californian paintings of swimming pools.

Kiama also has a wonderful natural blowhole that sends whooshes of water up into the air and makes momentary rainbows as the sun refracts through the spray. It made me think about Tacita Dean’s recent work where she went chasing the green ray in the sunset.

Apparently, you can take an artist on holiday but you can’t stop them thinking about art…

My goodness, Kiama is stunning. We've got scorching weather so I've bought a ridiculously large hat to try and stop from burning any more than I already have. My nose is peeling now - always a great look for anyone! I'm hoping it will have improved by the wedding. I'm enjoyed soaking up all the ...

Well, here I am in Australia and wow, what a stunning place!

I arrived on Thursday evening and after eating dinner, I promptly fell over – it was a very long flight, although not as gruelling as I anticipated.

Yesterday I ate breakfast outside, looking at the Pacific Ocean – it was slightly surreal to be able to text home and tell them this and promptly get a text back. Ah, the wonders of modern technology. Strange to think that many of the first convicts and settlers out here probably never saw or heard from their families again.

After breakfast, I went for a walk around Manley, where I’m staying with my brother and his girlfriend. I saw lizards, parrots and all sorts of birds that I couldn’t identify. Also, spiders as big as my palm – eek! Apparently they’re totally harmless but it was still unnerving to walk beneath them as they hung completely motionless in rows above me.

I’ve been taking photos but working out Flickr is a bit beyond me right now, so you’ll have to wait on those. I’m also doing a travel journal, which is great fun. I haven’t done any drawing yet but I’ve been writing and sticking in receipts and bits of memorabilia. I’ll do some scans when I get home.

I also went paddling in the sea – in the rain! This struck me as deeply ironic, since it was beautiful spring weather when I left Bristol. It is a lot warmer here though, although all the Ozzies are complaining about it being ‘cold’. It cleared up later on though and I managed to catch the sun and get a little red, that’s the disadvantage of being ‘a pale blue Scottish person’, it doesn’t take much sun for my skin to be very surprised at the concept! Fortunately I’m not sunburnt and I’ll be more careful today. Apparently even overcast rainy days need sun cream here.

I’m hoping to go over to Sydney later today to see the gay Mardi Gras. That is, if my killer jetlag allows – I’ll be fine for a few hours and then I’ll suddenly start swaying and staggering as though I’m drunk and have to lie down and pass out.

Well, I’d better go, my parents and some family friends are just about to arrive, my brother is picking them up from the airport. It’s really a little odd to be having a family reunion at the other side of the world.

Well, here I am in Australia and wow, what a stunning place! I arrived on Thursday evening and after eating dinner, I promptly fell over - it was a very long flight, although not as gruelling as I anticipated. Yesterday I ate breakfast outside, looking at the Pacific Ocean - it was slightly surreal ...