Monday 30 June 2008

InQbate – Brighton… My Experience by Chris Ankin

Do you know what I love about art? it’s the fact that you can give any number of artists a task, and they will all interpret and come up with something unique and individual.

And so it was with the InQbate workshop in Brighton. I think many of us felt a degree of trepidation when we all gathered that morning, none of us knowing what design problem we were to be set, none of us really knowing what was expected of us, and I for one feeling that little element of self-doubt that I often get when faced with something new.

Part of that ‘concern’ probably came from the fact that we were to be paired with another artist, whilst I consider myself very easy going and easy to get along with, when it comes ‘our precious art’ some of us can rightly be a little non-compromising at times.

Any concerns I may have had sooner melted away however, when I was introduced to Tony Heaton – an equally easy going and easy to get along with sculptor.

We spent a good initial amount of time simply chatting to each other about our art, and comparing our thoughts – we could easily have done this for a good deal longer, there was however a design problem to address.

A Place Where Two People Meet

The InQbate space is a wonderfully large and very customisable space in which to work. It can be divided into several smaller spaces as it was on this day, or be used as one very large venue.

This flexibility extends beyond mere adjustable space size; there are many variations in lighting, sound, vision and surface space, which all combines to allow maximum variations.

After being allowed ‘introductory’ time, we were given the design task for the day, which was ‘A space where two people meet’. We set about tackling this by engaging in a joint brainstorming session.

As it turned out, we happened to have the largest area of the sub-divided InQbate space to work with. This presented us with the first decision – do we do something minimalistic and allow the extra space to add power to the work we produce, or do we utilise the area by filling it with lots of material?

Tony had a great idea of having two interlocking squares, the majority of the square being representative of the individuals entities, and the ‘mini square’ created by the interlock is the place ‘where two people meet’.

Chris Ankin

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