Monthly Challenge

We decided to restart our in group monthly challenge, this time we've decided not to restrict ourselves to photography and have any media, but on a theme and there is no obligation for members to take part as we obviously have busy lives and other commitments, but sometimes we also as artists find it useful to have a prompt as a basis to start from.

February 2023 Boxed In 

Jenny Fairweather 

"I had kept the beautifully made and proportioned box and its lid for years. It was the box that a very small speaker was packed and marketed in. Finally with the Boxed In project I had an opportunity to re-use it. 

First I chose coloured paper to cover the box in an alternate pattern. The paper was from a Sunday magazine from the Observer newspaper. Then I continued with the making process. I would say that I got into the 'flow' of making, and instinctively started to tear and roll chosen pages from the same magazine. I chose colours, whether to roll with text showing or not, and kept the sizes roughly the same but not identical. Each roll seemed to just go into the box until it was nearly full, then I decided to stop. 

The making process was fairly similar to how I work normally when making a collage, but much quicker, with minor amounts of planning. In general, it takes several weeks or months for my ideas to evolve. Also, I rarely make 3D works, so in that way it was also different."  

Joan Hobson, took up our monthly challenge for February as an opportunity to give some small doors in her house a Mondrian style makeover, and she even made a couple of  sculptural pieces from every piece of tape that went into the process! 

Artists often use thier houses as a 'canvas' or carefully curate them!

Veronica Tonge chose to revist a peice started but never never progressed - a tiny bedroom in a dark box and this is the result.

 My starting point was a humble, slightly battered but precisely made early 20^th Century wooden box, brown stained and varnished. Perhaps it had a former life containing important household papers, or maybe ‘emergency’ cash or notes. Now it suggested itself as a miniature room, a secret isolated space, but there seemed something sad about it.

 I added some vintage wooden doll’s house furniture, which took over the space. Somehow a dog crept into this hostel-like room, which became its temporary refuge. But there was no door in or out.

 Dogs see the world differently. Their vision takes in only blues, yellows and greys whilst reds, orange and greens are invisible to them. This dog is literally ‘boxed in’ and unable to get out, deprived of comfort, companionship and visual familiarity with the environment.

 Dogs are social animals, like people. They always need to be involved with others and have a defined role in a family group or pack. Sometimes our life is forced into restriction, we can glimpse the freedom, light and air we crave, but are unable to access it.

Our Guest member Rebecca Aldridge, initially boxed together cereal boxes on a Box hedge - in a playful way.

she then went on to paint some cereal and food boxes into houses, exploring housebuilding and the effects on small rural communities.

Then reflected on psychological interpretations of 'boxed-in'. I focused first on abuse. People who have experienced abuse can sometimes internalise abuse, carrying the words of their abuser throughout their life as if wearing the abuser on their shoulders like a sack of potatoes. I wrote some text and integrated this with papier-mâché boxing gloves.

These oppressive black and white drawings are of the room of a person who suffers from hoarding disorder, the symptoms of which can make other family members feel 'boxed-in'.

Everything is just tentatively explored at this stage. I would have loved more time to develop this theme!