Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge Parade - section drawings

Next Parade is approaching quickly. This time it's to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge. It promises to be a fantastic night with a fabulous finale courtesy of Emergency Exit Arts, London who are organising the whole thing. I'm working as one of 5 artists to create the costumes and some of the structures. These are my initial serving suggestions for my groups - workshops start very soon!



these drummers have more than a touch of 'Elvis - the Vegas years' going on...

Basketball youth club mural, Batley

'Youth club' mural in a park on the edge of central estate in Batley (minimal intervention by actual youths) tho' apparently its sick, which is apparently acceptable - its on a basketball court so its got a basketball bloke on it. It's in Batley so it's got bats on it. Truly the Pan's people of murials! Distinguished mainly by the miracle of it's being finished in spite of persistent rain and frequent visits from mad growling, weeing dogs.

Conspicuous Consumption: eat the rich - embroidered head

Today was handover day for the Yorkshire Art loop project. I had to hand on my piece to Gillian Holt, a ceramicist who makes beautifully delicate narrative works (you can see her work here). We met in a pub car park for the handover. Quite peculiar going to meet someone I've never met in a car park to hand over a gaudy clown head, bit like the mafia with red noses - anyway I'm wondering what Gillian will be inspired to make... I'm convinced that whatever it is it will be more tasteful than my offering. I felt vaguely embarrassed handing mine over - I'm wishing I'd shaken myself out of uber-bling carnival mode before I'd started.

Now though I need to think about my next projects...something for the 'Made in Bradford" showcase in a couple of weeks time, we're supposed to be putting in one of our (Burnett + Catt) costumes but I'm thinking it would be great to make something new for it.

I'm also thinking about new work for an exhibition "birds: elementals", a project conceived by the very talented Rockpool Candy which promises to be very exciting, and well travelled, as it will be showing in Northern Ireland, USA and New Zealand. Those birds' wings are going to be knackered.

Conspicuous consumption. New work in progress.

I've been working on a new head..you can certainly tell I'm between carnivals...it's a symphony of bad taste. This one is for an exhibition in Yorkshire in which artists have been asked to respond to another artists work and then pass it on - a kind of visual chain letter.

I received a copper pipe sculpture a couple of weeks ago with some small metal balls inside it. It's reminiscent of those old puzzles where you have to release the balls from a maze. Anyway I had no idea where I would go with it... it's a long way from anything I would do. I was rooting through some fabrics and found an old scarf with a kind of pipework design on it. That started me off ... I added embroidered gold balls...the creature was becoming a joker or trickster of some sort.

Then the riots happened + the news was all about disaffected youth + looting. The disparities between rich + poor are grimmer than they've ever been, we're funding massive bank bailouts to fill the pockets of a tiny percentage of rich people, MPs are looting the public purse to furnish their homes and getting away with it. Meanwhile a kid writing something 'inflammatory' on a social networking site or stealing a bottle of water receives a long custodial sentence. The billionaire 'rich list' is full of the people who own the telecoms companies, the electronics giants, the clothing chains ...the people pushing consumer goods down our throats at every opportunity. I sat looking at my work and the phrase 'down the tubes' kept coming to mind. The head became a 'fool' - 'Eat the rich before they eat us' is tongue in cheek (obviously I'm not inciting cannibalism...). I imagine the rich would taste leathery from sun + botox anyway.

It's not finished. It needs more, more text and frills...

SIRF: Stockton Carnival 2011

Blanche + Martin, Prism
Soph + Adam, Prism
Norton Primary, peculiar flying things


Dance Fuzion on Stage in the finale
my clown shoes....
my backpack...
dance fuzion - before the parade in the rain


Norton Primary - the grown ups got involved too!
The carnival queen wore one of our (burnett + catt's) creations

SIRF carnival Rosebrook Primary as animal crackers

Rosebrook Primary in silly animal heads and patterned boiler suits. They carried my pink frilly 'giraffobird" throught the rains of Stockton and looked fab. I especially loved their special 'line dance'!

robot costumes - SIRF carnival, Stockton

one of my groups in this years SIRF carnival parade - footsteps nursery became flowery wallpaper robots...