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HANDSHAKE 4

 

 

Vivien Atkinson

I have degrees in both Fine and Applied Arts and my practice moves between these fields.  I enjoy the freedom that working on individual projects gives me rather than having a linear methodology based on a single idea or material.  There are some basic interests that underpin much of my work, though the way I interpret and resolve them can differ quite markedly for each project.  Performance, installation and video are techniques I use – they sometimes have jewellery integrated, but not always.

Darning in different languages

So far I’ve been using a very basic darning stitch – I have the mantra ‘over under’ constantly running through my mind as I work.  But thanks to reading Tom van Deijnen’s (tomofholland) blog I’ve become aware of other darning methods, Finnish, Scottish and Swiss – all...

Summing up

Blog 27, January 20th, 2019   This iteration of the HandShake project has finished and it time to think back over the past two years and what my involvement has meant. Personally the project has stimulated an added impetus to make, a renewed energy and long hours...

Polarity

Blog 26  August 4th 2018 When did “home” become embedded in human consciousness? Is our sense of home instinctive? Are we denning animals or nest builders, or are we, at root, nomadic? For much of the earliest history of our species, home may have been nothing more...

Back to the grindstone…

Blog 25  June 25th, 2018 Some of the unresolved experiments and ideas Literally - I’m really needing to use the space between the end of the last HandShake show and the next to get on with some work long delayed by the frenetic activity of the first half of the year. ...

The Language of Things

  Blog 24 April 20th Arrived back from Sydney and got stuck into some gold-leafing for a show some members of Occupation: Artist are putting on for No Filter.  The group decided to support the Dowse who are putting on a fantastic Symposium on April 12-13th.  We...

A busman’s holiday…Sydney

Blog 23 April 12th The trip to Sydnay marked the culmination of a work that has been in progress since December 1st 2017.  The R Matrix was made in response to the theme of the current Sydney Biennale, Superposition, a complex theory drawn from quantum mechanics. The...

Artists as Collectors

Great to have Liesbeth den Besten in New Zealand again and to hear her talk about Artists as Collectors.  I was especially interested in the work of one of the artists she spoke about – Hanne Darboven, a German conceptual artist who accumulated a vast collection of...

And another thing….

Blog 21 15th March Last week was busy with the installation of the show at Toi Poneke in Wellington. Gabby O’Connor played a large part in directing the alterations or perhaps interventions made to the gallery.  We each ended up with a large painters dropsheet hung on...

Is that light I can see at the end of the tunnel?

Blog 20 1st March There is a tantalising thought that there is a day not so far off when I might have a day off to sleep in or just be lazy all day, but not yet – I’m thinking maybe June?  Before then there are extra long days to be put in to get everything sorted for...

Multi-tasking?

Blog 19 February 15th Pile of MDF dust Is it better to claim to be multi-tasking than to admit out loud that I’ve (again) taken on too much?  I did think that the move to working with the MDF would be a quick and easy project but it has not turned out that way at...