The project is centred on a site specific location which involves a local art centre (Cornerstone Didcot Oxfordshire), an abandoned railway track (now a public thoroughfare) and internet resources specifically GPS locative applications on handheld devices.<\/p>\n
I aim to draw together my multidisciplinary activities in one specific outcome. This will be an exhibition tied in with locative media that will involve public engagement in producing new artworks through GPS drawing.<\/p>\n
Users will use handheld internet connected devices to both read and create interaction during the event.<\/p>\n
Delineation of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTheory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122: An artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s statement<\/p>\n
I was recently asked to pen an Artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Statement and the following draws on that article.<\/p>\n
Shaun Belcher November 2009<\/p>\n
I am a somewhat unusual case to be writing about my \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfine art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 practice. I began life \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpost-Hornsey College of Art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in 1981 having successfully gained a place on the Royal College M.A. in Painting but sadly was not so successful in terms of funding. I continued as a painter and printmaker until a move to Edinburgh in 1993. There I became a published poet. A return to Oxford in 1996 then saw a period of fine art mixed with song-writing.<\/p>\n
In conventional terms this kind of genre-hopping is frowned upon as not being quite serious enough. Thankfully I have enough USA based models to not worry too much about that e.g. Musician and Architect and Fine Artist Terry Allen to name but one influence. However whatever my \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpractice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 entailed throughout this period one thing remained constant. My commitment and seriousness about what I was depicting in whatever medium.<\/p>\n
Throughout my \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcart-working\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 life some things have remained stubbornly, one might even say obsessively\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, constant. Be it in digital images as recently or in drawing or poetry and song I have remained constant in delineating a clearly \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmap-able\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 terrain. This terrain extends about 5 to 20 miles in radius of my hometown of Didcot in Oxfordshire, England. Always the poor relation of the illustrious centre of learning that resides but a stones throw away.<\/p>\n
There runs a hard core of intention throughout which draws on politics, ecological thinking and that obsessive returning to notions of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcplace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclandscape\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. I regard my work as being a mapping of constant themes which recur sometimes years later. The River Thames is one theme the Berkshire Downs another. Local folk tales and oral literature mined from local libraries another. A recent song \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHanging Puppet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 drew on one such \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctale. In fact one could describe it as artistic \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAnglocana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to differentiate it from Americana. I have written well over 2000 songs over the years..Mostly these are recorded in lo-fi versions and only really coming to life when in the hands of other more talented musicians (see the Moon Over the Downs CD 2003). Poetry has appeared in various magazines and in the Scottish anthology The Ice Horses (1996). I currently have at least 4 unpublished complete books of poetry on the shelf. One could describe my work as multi-disciplinary with a strong streak of green politics colouring the waters beneath.<\/p>\n
I have drawn on some clear influences in writing and art. Seamus Heaney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concept of a personal \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHedge School\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 going back to John Clare is one thread. My forebear\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal involvement in Agricultural Unions is another (see Skeleton at the Plough poems). I also am influenced by a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcworking class\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sense of writing picked up from Carver and Gallagher and other dirty realists. In song almost any Americana act would suffice. I am not American but I have strong American influences going back to Thoreau and Walden lake. To try and build an alternative \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcEnglish\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 approach I have increasingly been drawn back to the English Civil War when the notions of science and arts were more fluid and interchangeable. I have recently purchased a reproduction of Robert Plot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Oxford a marvellous Natural History of Oxfordshire from 1677. In it one finds specimens such as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcStones that look like Horses\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6wonderful\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n
It is this kind of merging of scientific natural history and folk-lore terminology that I now most interested in. Both in poetry (see Downland Ballads) and artworks (see TRACK..2009)<\/p>\n
So how does theory inform my practice? Well I see no distinction between the various arts. I am widely read in poetry and song and that informs my practice whatever I do. At times I have also used cartooning as an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcart criticism\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 vehicle as well as penning many art review pieces. I regard both theory and practice as being essential parts of art education and indeed my own life-long learning. One would not exist without the other.<\/p>\n
One needs time to absorb and think not just create. I return again and again to my greatest teachers. People I did not know but who showed by example. Sorley Maclean and Norman McCaig both fine Scottish poets and the female war artist Ray Howard Jones whom I had pleasure of meeting\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6a friend of the artist David Jones. Wonderful inspirational people\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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