Get fu*king bold

Cut up produced in the ‘Make Your Mark’ workshop 

Yesterday I went to a workshop run by print artist, The Fandangoe Kid (Annie Nicholson) as part of Barnsley’s Hear My Voice project.
It wasn’t a poetry workshop, so I was well outside my comfort zone. However, The Fandangoe Kid’s work is centred around text, as you can see from the picture below, so I felt there was enough of a link with my own work to justify going along. As it turned out, everyone was very friendly and supportive, and it seemed like we all shared the same anxieties around our artistic practice too, so it was great to be able to be part of that conversation. I was really taken with the boldness of the work, and if you get chance to visit the exhibition (on until 30th March) you’ll find there’s a tender narrative of love, loss, rediscovery, and self-discovery, running through the work. Presented as a series of brightly coloured posters, each one informs the other, and there’s a lightness of touch, particularly on the PAUSE poster, which really does force you to stop and take stock.
Annie was an inspirational tutor and hats off to Hear My Voice for making it a free event (they have a few more workshops coming up before the end of the month, so it’s worth having a look at their Facebook page). This workshop really made me think hard about what I want to do in my work, and how I want to present it. In my cut-up (above) I tried to say something about not turning back, not trying to redeem past ideas/ styles/ relationships/ selves, but to concentrate on moving forward. That movement is necessarily slow going I think, but every small gesture counts towards something bigger, a positive shift, an ascention.
If all that sounds a bit too pretentious, just bask in the glow of the fluorescent pink background, courtesy of The Fandangoe Kid!

The Fandangoe Kid – at Barnsley Civic until 30th March