Tom Burtonwood

untitled (for now)

Dave begins install of his piece

new laser cut piece

also untitled for now

Dave’s students visit the space

I posted a bunch of photos of my studio to flickr a few days ago, with some of the work in progress due for the show at Fountain Studios. Right now i’m trying to finish up the drawing components to pair with the sculptures. Will update soon. Keep this frequency clear!

Montage of various geometric sculptures / installations 1996 – 1999.

Studio, Carbondale, 2000

In keeping with the diagonal slant of the previous post i present this snap shot of my studio, circa 2000, at the Glove Factory, Carbondale. One of my abiding interests are systems and the information they require to exist andthe data the produce. Part of this fascination includes being overwhelmed by information, whether undertaking research for a specific art work and not knowing where to draw the line, or attempting to define a complex system, or some other instance of massive overload, in any case there is way more data out there than we can hope to understand or parse together or see the linkages and discern the differences. One response to this phenomena for me has always been to drop the filters and just present it, warts and all, un-mediated as much as possible. i think on one level i enjoy the aesthetic of overload, of sensory over stimulation  and on the other hand in the presence of so much random material i try and still develop relationships and linkages. The image above is taken from my studio in Carbondale toward the end of my 2nd yerar there. having re-newed my attraction to all things reflective i started pasting up on the studio walls pretty uch any thing and everything that seemed half way interesting without much thought as to how it would look or what it might be later on.

Anglesey, 1995

Despite trying to post in sequence and show development of the print making work from my 2nd year at loughborough, i find myself at a bit of a loss in terms of documentation and therefore i need to digging deeper into portfolios and perhaps even shoot some new photos of old work.

In the meantime this is a photo taken on the bleak northern coast of Anglesey. I think it was my third time to Anglesey, having been there twice while at Shelly High School. LCAD took 40 or so brave souls up there for a week of drawing from the landscape and literally being blown off the cliff faces. i think it was meant to be a sculpture trip, Paul Gent and i tagged along for the ride with a few other painters. i forget exactly when we were there but i know it was fairly nice that week in L’boro and suitably shitty on Anglesey. It’s a barren, windswept place, that the RAF seems to like using for low level practice flights. I always enjoyed trips the island and we had a whale of a time up there making drawings, hiking to kwik save for cheap wine and other such hijinks.

Studio view, 1995

My first year at LCAD i shared a room in the halls of residence with Andrew Poulter. Andy went on to do his MA at Chelsea College of Art in London then disappear off the face of the earth. His paintings were clemente-esqe and u can see one of them to the left nestled between the larger blue canvas on the right nad the tree of the left. i was utterly lost at this point in my art practice and was borrowing from Andy a bit in terms of figurative stuff, hence the blue canvas on the wall. i guess the arm is “reaching” for something… a figure that seems to be backing away. maybe i knew this figurative stuff wasn’t for me at the time and this painting tells truth. who knows… but i loved the fact we painted in there 24 hours a day all the time to the banging sounds of the KLF, 808 State and any acid house tape Andy could lay his hands on. I think for a while we had every tape, LP and bootleg CD of the KLF in all it’s various guises and would belt them out much to the chargrin of our neighbors i think. the lights we always low and the curtains drawn. Andy painted in these super bright colors but when u took his canvases outside to transport them to school for crits they were like sun beams, painfully bright….. the tree was dragged in one night, i think i wanted to draw from nature so instead of leave the studio we brought nature inside, albeit a dead tree. i think we kept it till pretty much the end of the year. when we moved out we filled the holes in the walls with cotton wool and covered them with paper and corn flakes to simulate the wall paper…. Andy if u r out there and u find this post email me: tom@tomburtonwood.com