Collaborating ideas – Abigail Box & Nicola Anthony

Posted by on Nov 13, 2011 in 'Imprint' Project September-December 2011, Art, Comment, Projects | 4 Comments

NICOLA ANTHONY

So far I’ve made two date-stamp drawings responding to the Imprint theme, but it felt like something else should come from the theme too. Fellow Fabelist Abigail Box noted that we both have similar but unusual ways of organising our chaotic lives – a schedule or diary which becomes an imprint of our future plan or future hopes, an imprint of how we might hope to organize our ideas, inspirations, events and meetings, and then in hindsight an imprint of the path of our week, month, year – coupled with the knowledge of whether it strayed from that path or followed it to the letter.

We have decided to take this as a starting point for a collaborative piece, which is most likely to result in picking out the dialogue both between us and on this Fabelist blog as a documentation of the creative process, (we both love that about Fabelist), and artworks from both artists that respond to this initial take on Imprint.

We both work in very different ways so we think the difference between our responses will be very interesting!

And how do we Imprint our lives? Mine is planned in a paper diary (moleskin), however I have had to resort to cutting up post-its into little squares, and writing individual tasks/meetings/projects on each one. Result – very chaotic looking collaged pages full of scribbles!

Abi – I’ll let you explain yours…

ABIGAIL BOX:

I have a template grid that I print out on to two A4 sheets of paper to which I add the dates. It’s intended to be an easy way to look at around two months at a time and for it to get messy, it’s easy to reprint and make into some kind of sense again. It involves a lot of highlighter pen and mark making codes for different kinds of events or commitments

…and my first thoughts about our Imprint starting point… Apart from being entertained by both the ways we have come to organise out lives, thoughts, art practice – to anyone else they could only look like a way to exaggerate the chaos – is that my whole reason for keeping such an insanely detailed calendar which is on me virtually all the time is that I have this want for time to slow down.

In our chat today we spoke about time escaping. The way a meeting or event can creep up on you, and the way it’s winter time before you know it. The way that I keep my calendar and my lists are my way of acknowledging time go by and being prepared for date in the diary.

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4 Comments

  1. House Fabelist
    November 14, 2011

    This sounds like fun and I like the idea of out of chaos comes order? For some reason Paul Maccarthy 'BlockHead & Daddies Bighead' came to mind while reading your ideas ? I have a Calendar at the bottom of my stairs so I should check it every morning but only look at it when I write the event etc… on the dam thing. How will you turn it into to a collaboration ? Josh Raffell

  2. Nicola Anthony
    November 15, 2011

    Hi Josh, we're not sure yet – but we're creating an interesting dialogue about it which is maybe more interesting as it's turning into a rather abstract ramble about time. Collaborating, I think here it is more re the concept/interpretation of IMPRINT than on coming up with a joint piece of work, although given more time it would be great to produce a body of work responding to it – that way it becomes further connected in terms of a dialogue between the two artists work as well

  3. Cassandra Batterby
    November 17, 2011

    Abigail, Nicola, this sounds great and I can't wait to see the results. It'll be interesting to see how very differently or similarly you both capture events and priorities in your lives. I'll look forward to the upcoming posts.

  4. Nicola Anthony
    November 22, 2011

    Thanks Cassandra – Mine is certainly focusing the order coming our of chaos and vica versa. The many small parts that make up the whole. More updates soon.

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