Ursula Kelly

Some photo’s from the residency in Construction Gallery…

Computers do not work at the same pace as I do and have a tendency to be uncooperative in times of need. Luckily Niamh and Paul, the technical experts arrived. The audio is now edited and pretty much ready but the visuals are another story. I started adding some found images to the video I shot of the bridge so it needs a lot more work. The images are taken from flikr, some of which I used in the past, reworking them and turned into screen prints. I’m still not sure if they will remain in the piece. I need to experiment more with it. The randsom note is done and I’m happy with it. That took longer than I had anticipated too! It was interesting searching through newspapers for particular words and letters or combination’s of letters. The letter j is not very common. I couldn’t find the full word “protect” so used “protest” and covered the s with a c! The reason for the randsom note is that the woman I interviewed “fell” pregnant out of “wedlock” and so was sent to a convent where she gave birth to her daughter. It was 1960′s Ireland when the Catholic Church tried to rule everyone and everything. I have decided the piece will be called “A stone from home” – a line taken from the audio.

Tooting has a wonderful pop up gallery Construction Gallery until the end of March.
I am showing “Pitch 78 East Street Market” – (a slide projection with sound) in the sound room until Sunday. This is a piece completed during my MA at Camberwell in 2007/08, which is part of a larger series of work that documents a market trader from East Street Market near Elephant and Castle. During the recorded conversation the trader can be heard exchanging banter with customers and passers-by, while also discussing more personal family issues, specifically his recent reconnection with his adolescent daughter. “Pitch 78 East Street Market” is an attempt at simultaneously portraying the trader’s public/social and private/personal identity.
I am doing a one-day residency this Sunday during which, I intend to test a new mixed media work that is based on a woman I interviewed in Killaloe, Co.Clare in 2009. The piece is a short video of the bridge in Killaloe that connects two counties but disconnects one mother and daughter. I will be editing a sound recording to accompany this video as well as making a ransom note using the words of a family prayer that was hanging in the Catholic Church in Killaloe.

On Sunday 26th February I will be running a workshop where people are invited to write their memories onto a tablecloth. This written word workshop will coincide with the Tooting Tales literary festival hosted by the Brick Box. The plan is to install the “Tooting Tablecloth” in the window of the cafe.

A selection of screenprints that I printed recently for a show with Ray in Sprout, Tooting…plan to add colour to some …

I recently found a film that I had used in my Holga camera about three years ago. I have no recollection of taking some of the photos!

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Time for an update…

Just before Christmas I worked with Cinzia Cremona on a market stall swapping memories and stories with passersby during the Colchester Christmas Market. Our intention was to invite everyone who came to the stall to come to firstsite and spend an evening embroidering the tablecloth, which we did on Saturday March 12th. Cinzia contacted everyone who had come to the market and we had a sign outside firstsite on the day inviting people to join us. The project now has a title “Memories and Marking”. The purpose was never to produce a perfect piece of embroidery, thankfully as both Cinzia and I are complete novices at it!! Luckily for us though fellow firstsite artist Jenny Swindells is an embroidery queen. The purpose of the session was simply to bring people together, drink tea and use the tablecloth and the embroidering as a means of opening dialogue. Cinzia still has a collection of tagged objects from the market stall so we laid them out in the space. There is a bright orange couch in the project space at firstsite so we thought that it would create a more relaxed informal atmosphere if we used this and beanbags around a low table. Relaxed and informal it was, comfortable it wasn’t! We started at 2pm and soon other people arrived. I expected people to come, stay for a short while and leave but the people who came all stayed for the duration of the session, which was fantastic. It ended at 5pm. We were so absorbed in what we were doing (embracing the large uncontrollable knots of thread!) that we did not notice the time. The people who came said that they really enjoyed it and would be interested in coming on a more regular basis, so firstsite have agreed to hold another session on March 26th. This time we will sit on real chairs and a higher table! Ideally we would love to create a whole series of tablecloths with a various groups and then hold a dinner. In the mean time I need to practice my stitching!

I am working on a mural project for Morden Mount Primary School in Lewisham. The mural is to cover three walls of the assembly/dining hall. Having decided on specific themes for each wall, I sent preliminary sketches to the school for their approval. I had a meeting last week with the headteacher Mrs Jackson and the school council who gave me their feedback on the designs. I will run a series of workshops with the children next week. At the end of the week a group of children will edit all the work and decide on the final design. The design will then be painted onto the walls in May.

Another workshop I did recently was part of “Making Colliers Wood Happy”, which is being run by Keith Spears who is doing marvelous work bring the different communities in Colliers Wood together. One event he runs is a monthly international festival which is a day of events and activities in Colliers Wood Community Centre. The theme changes each month. I was asked by ACAVA to run a workshop for all age groups during the music event. I did a polyblock printing session and asked all the participants to print at least once onto a roll of wallpaper lining. They also printed onto paper which they could take away with them after the session. The intention was to create a banner out of the wallpaper and print the words “Making Colliers Wood Happy”. This can then be hung in the centre. So many people came on the day that we didn’t get to finish the wallpaper but I am planning to get this finished asap.

I have started volunteering with a group called Action Space on their Tuesday sessions in Studio Voltaire, Clapham. There are seven adults in the group who have various learning difficulties. It is certainly challenging but rewarding when you see some of the work they produce.

With all the various projects and baking it is leaving me with little time to actually make work, but all in good time!

It’s been a while…

The show in the View Tube went up under the guidance of our “fearless leader” Ben Barbour supported by the wonderful Rosie and Alex from the View Tube. It was a great success, got some very positive feedback about my work and made a couple of sales!! I was so engrossed in making the work that I had given little thought to how the public would receive it.

I have been on a couple of training days with Artsplan and had a few very exciting days in Colchester with firstsite. All the Associate and Emerging Associate Artists got together for a day of talks and discussions, including a session with Sarah Cole She is such an inspirational woman and artist. (Seems to be some problems with her site so I put a link to one of her best known projects “Nest”).

Cinzia Cremona, firstsite AA asked me to work with her on a market stall for the Colchester Christmas Market, which was held in the grounds of Colchester Castle one cold December night!
Cinzia’s idea: “In an antidote to the winter shopfest, I would like to invite you to bring along objects of no intrinsic commercial value, which are imbued with memories, meaning or love! Your ‘object’ needn’t be something you can hold in your hand; you can also share memories or stories. We will exchange objects, stories and memories and make them into something special of our own imagining. I would like to invite you to be part of this project where we will be writing and sketching new traces of our memories on a cotton tablecloth that evening.”
Cinzia and I gathered numerous objects that represented a particular memory or story. We attached tags to each item with a word or short description of the memory. These were then laid out on the white tablecloth for people to browse through. The response was fantastic, so many people were so generous in sharing their memories and stories. Some responded to the object while others responded to the tag. It was definitely worth freezing our toes off for!! It was also great to have so many people willing to draw and write on the tablecloth. As a means of extending the project and the experience we will invite all the participants back to firstsite early next year to embroider the drawings and texts onto the cloth, making it more permanent.
I had my first taste of roasted chestnuts!

We at Collective Studio’s in Wandsworth have been on the move. We moved out of Broomhill Road and now call Wandsworth Plain our home. The building is part of the Ram Brewery which has a micro brewery on-site. We are there to stay!!!! It used to be apartments so it has a very different feel to the old building which had been an office block. There is a more communal, positive vibe about the new place. Think I am going to be much more productive over the coming months. Looking forward to getting down to work, well after xmas and the weather gets a couple of degrees warmer!!
In the mean time I am concentrating on the news and weather forecast, hoping I will get home to Ireland
in time for my Christmas dinner!