Access and Security

Access to a lot of the old mill sites is difficult, health and safety is an issue.

Picnic in The Park Invite...

This is an invite to the event I am doing on Sat 7th May. I am going to be doing a craft table making decorative things to wear rag corsages and pom-poms and party hats! I wanted to stick to a textiles theme as it ties in with our project and also ties in with Dennison Hall which overlooks the square. This was famously built in 100 days with money inherited from the woolen Industry.

All are welcome to this diverse, fun community event...

Amazing social intervention collaboration...

WochenKlausur are a Swiss arts collaborative that was set up in 1992. I really like their ethos and intentions click on the link to see what they are about. The project that i really loved i read about in conversation pieces. They worked with drug addicted women many who had turned to prostitution and put them in a boat with politicians and journalists to have a conversation. Floating on lake Zurich out of the way of an official environment and cameras they were able to have a more open discussion about some of the issues these women face. Click on this link to read about the project. WochenKlausur, Intervention to Aid Drug Addicted Women. I think Art can have a massive role in bringing social and political issues to light and tackling them in a creative and productive way, these guys have got it right!

Cloud Scapes

Bruce Nauman's work often includes words, I thought this might be relevant to our ideas that we were discussing yesterday, in regard to putting text onto bricks. He also uses artificial light in his sculptures, which ties in with my ideas of projection and casting shadows.

Drummonds Mill

It was fascinating to look around a mill that had closed down recently and left behind lot's of ephemera associated with the manufacturing that had taken place there.

Temple works

I'm intrigued by the view of the clouds and sky through the factory skylights, these were originally intended to let more light into the factory to enable improvements in the quality of the work produced.

There is a performance/happening taking place at Temple works on the 19th May if anyones available.

Factory poster from Drummonds mill...

Forgot to put this on the other day it's really funny!

Bricks...

I've been experimenting using bricks from the old Mills we have been visiting... I found this artist called Julie Miles. Click on her name to view her work with bricks, interesting and relevant!

Also love this quote i found at the Tate Online.

Bricks are not works of art. Bricks are Bricks. You can build walls with them or chuck them through jeweller's windows, but you cannot stack them two deep and call it sculpture.

Keith Waterhouse, Daily Mirror, 19 Feb 1976

The Mill City Of Dreams

The Mill City Of Dreams is a site specific performance that is set in Drummonds Mill in Bradford. It is a Freedom Studios production. It connects the past stories of the Mill with the current times. We really wanted to see this performance when we went on a trip over the holidays. Unfortunatley it had sold out. I phoned the venue and kindly the Artistic director Madani Younis offered to show us around the same day. This actually gave us a greater insight into the thinking behind the piece, the team involved and the use of the space. As you walk onto the site you see a big banner advertising new flats that will be available soon, we actually thought this was real so it worked well. This sets the scene for the modern day function of most old Mills. Luxury apartments all aimed at an elite market that are worlds away from the working men and women that the Mills housed in their working lives. He went on to show us around the set which makes perfect use of the space. The audience are walked through various spaces and rooms where different stories are told. Most of the props were found in the Mill Itself which adds a real Authenticity to the piece. Even the sound was made from old pattern cards they found. Janek Schaefer wrote a score was created from the patterns used in the weaving machines, which was then turned in to a music box. Click on the link to listen. It was amazing to get a private guided tour of this beautiful production. It made me think about the Interdisciplinary nature of the performance too. There are many artistic discipline's involved in putting the piece together, it's a big collaboration on many levels. Madani said that the performance would be recorded and will be available to view on line soon i can't wait to see it.

Here are some pictures from the visit...

Modern Times Charlie Chaplin

Been looking at this video thought it relates well to our project... Charlie Chaplin Modern Times..

Very Funny!

Temple Works and Marshall's Mill

Temple works and Marshall's Mill were both owned by John Marshall. Political opponents of Marshall complained that in 1832, "In Mr Marshall's mill a boy of 9 years of age was stripped to the skin, bound to an iron pillar, and mercilessly beaten with straps, until he fainted."

E.P. Thompson, `The Making of the English Working Class.' (1991) Penquin

Industrial heritage

None of the old mills are now operating, some have been transformed into art-spaces or museums, others have been turned into blocks of student flats or left to fall into ruin.

Engels

Link to Engels and the Industrial Revolution in the north of England http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels

Collaborators

Armley Mills

Temple Works

Marshall's Mill

Thwaites Mill

Salt's Mill

Drummond Mill

Which other mills did we look at?

Cloud spotting in Manchester

4 days spent in Manchester normally guarantees lot's of clouds and rain. What's going on? though I did get the sound track recorded.

Cloud Spotting Again

I'm just waiting for my cloud.

Cloud Spotting

Looking for the right kind of clouds but the sun keeps shining.

Terence Davies - 'Of Time and the City'

This is a documentary film by Terence Davies called 'Of Time and the City'. This artist was mentioned in the tutorial a few weeks ago, to look at because he has documented the passage of time and the history of a place (city). This is something that we as a group have looked at with regards to the history and the passage of time of the industrial mills in our local area.

In this film, what works well is that the film documents everyday life in the past, such as, children playing and hard labour done by men and women. Each section of the film connects with each other because it describes a certain part of Liverpool's social history. Some people who are alive now could have memories and can reminisce about this time because they grew up in it or have other memories from family members who have told them stories about this time in history.      

The classical and opera music that plays alongside the film does work well because it suits the pace of the piece and is quite sombre as if something has been lost from Liverpool's social history and can never come back.

By Charlotte Rowley

Some Links to relevant stuff!

I thought i'd post some links for websites i have been looking at recently...

I was thinking about Mill life and working conditions and stumbled on some of the people who helped fight for the workers rights. Some familiar and some unfamiliar, Tom Maguire was a working class lad from Leeds, a socialist and a poet. He was instrumental in setting up the Leeds socialist party and helped set up the Gas workers strikes in Leeds. He had links to William Morris and Fredrick Engles. I'm really liking the political activism of the time, lot's of great thinkers and academics and artists of that period were reacting against the social conditions and encouraging the working people to fight for their rights.... Lots of food for thought...

These are two films i found on YouTube. They show the promotional video and Jack the steam train from Armley Mills. I'm hoping to capture films like this this weekend at Thwaite Mills and at one of the steam train days over the Easter weekend. My intention is to capture the industrial past through filming the cogs, machinery, sounds, engines and motions at the mills.

Posted by Charlotte Rowley  

Right up our Street

I found this article in The Guardian and thought it might be of interest.

  Deer Shelter - 2006

By Charlotte Rowley

James Turrel - deer shelter in YSP

By Charlotte Rowley

I found this installation in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park after it was suggested in a meeting i had with the rest of the group.

It came from the discussion about how in the Industrial Revolution factory workers may have daydreamed out of the door or window of the factory, to escape the 'horrible place' that they were working in. They would have seen the sky, which is something that we want to project onto a piece of paper on the floor. This would show the feelings of the factory workers of the time. We hope to combine this with bricks that we all have found at mill sites to represent a fragment of the history of the mills that are present today in Leeds.

James Turrel - Deer Shelter 2006 - What was said at the installation -
                
                    'the sky is no longer out there, but is right on the edge of the space you are in'  

          

Looking up through a skylight at Temple Works, an old flax mill which was built in 1836. The mill was based on the temple of Horus at Edfu, Egypt.