The Brain Unravelled – Work In Progress

Well, as you can see, I’m still working on my cardboard sculpture for The Brain Unravelled. It would have been great to have an extra week or so to work on the piece, and make it even larger, but everything should come together in time. The final structure is going to be slightly different from my original sketch. Instead of all the sections being stuck together in one rigid mass I’ve decided that I’m going to display them as a higgledy-piggledy pile. This seems to be more in-keeping with the ‘unravelled’ part of the show’s title and allows for me to keep adding to the work so that it becomes a bigger and bigger piece each time it is shown.
If anyone would like to come along to The Brain Unravelled’s opening party on Monday 7th September please email me your name so that I can put you on the guest list, or contact the curator, Rose Lopes, directly at info@thebrainunravelled.com . My email address is waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk .
As well as work from the likes of Anthony Gormley and contributions from some of the top names in neuroscience and anthropology, the show will be opened by Barbara Follett, the Minister of Culture.
So, I hope to see some of you there.

The Brain Unravelled
UCL Slade Research Centre
Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AB
Tube: Russell Square
www.thebrainunravelled.com
info@thebrainunravelled.com
8 – 19 September 2009
Private View: 7 September 2009, 6 – 9pm

Candid Gallery – Summer Show

I know this is a bit of a last minute thing but I thought that I had better mention this year’s Candid Gallery Summer Show – especially since it will be featuring 10 of my paintings and 1 of my prints. In fact it looks like my work might be taking over a whole gallery wall. How greedy is that? About half of my paintings in the exhibition have been seen before and half will be exhibition virgins (so please be gentle with them).
For anyone who is unfamiliar with Candid Gallery and for that matter, Candid Café (which has to be one of the best secret chill-out spots in London), they are located at 3-5 Torrens Street, behind Angel Tube Station in Islington, London EC1V 1NQ.The Summer Show runs from 24th August to 13th September and there will be three Tuesday 6-10 pm late views, starting with this Tuesday’s Opening Night (25th August).
So, I hope to see a few familiar faces their and don’t worry – they do have a bar.
For further information check out www.candidarts.com or ring them directly on 020 7837 4237.

The Brain Unravelled (Cardboard Brain)

The Brain Unravelled Sketch (Cardboard Brain), originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

I’ve been clocking up quite a few late nights recently, trying to complete a new sculpture for the forthcoming exhibition, The Brain Unravelled, at the Slade Research Centre in Woburn Square, London. The show opens in a couple of weeks on the 7th September but to be perfectly honest, progress so far has been a bit slow. My idea for the show was to make a mass of interlocking, multi angled periscopes. Above, you can see my initial sketch which I’ve been using as a loose working drawing. For this piece I’ve been working with cardboard and Perspex mirrors. I had initially toyed with the idea of making it out of wood but considering the limited time frame that I had to work with that seemed a little unrealistic. Plus, after working in cardboard on the maquette for my last sculpture, I had started to develop a bit of an appreciation for the versatilities of this under rated material – which can be surprisingly strong, when used correctly.
Anyway – getting away from my peculiar obsession with materials – I suppose I should mention something about the show and the reasoning behind my sculpture.
The Brain Unravelled is a multi-disciplinary exhibition, pulling together the fields of art, anthropology and neuroscience (I can’t wait to see what the boffins are bringing to the party – it should be amazing). As well as the artwork, which will include painting, photography, mixed media, installation, sculpture, textile, film and some experimental anthropology, there will be a series of talks and events during the show which runs from 7th – 19th September. One of the central themes of the show is the ‘concept’ of consciousness. The show also aims to highlight some of the fascinating areas of current brain research – whilst also drawing our attention to how little we still know about the workings of the mind. Amongst the many people contributing to the show you will find Anthony Gormley, Storm Thorgerson, Future Sound of London, Liliane Lijn, Beau Lotto, Chris Knight, Brian Butterworth, Chris Frith and many more. For details of the show and links to all the artists and scientists personal sites check out - http://www.thebrainunravelled.com/index.html
Although I have strong interests in certain areas of neuroscience and contemporary physics I do admit that most of it goes over my head, so I’m approaching the work for this show from a more intuitive stance. I see my piece as a being a very basic analogy of one aspect of the brain – that of an imperfect (yet marvellous) device for perceiving and interacting with the outside world. I am fascinated by the fact that the world we see around us only exists that way in our heads, because that is the way that our limited senses translate what information we can absorb.
The piece that I am building will rely on viewer interaction to a certain extent. By looking into one of the many window sections of the work the viewer will see what appears to be a distant window to the world outside of the sculpture. However, a series of mirrors will have been reflecting this view over a number of right angles so that if someone else happened to look back at the viewer from the other end of that particular section of the sculpture they may appear upside down to the original viewer and could even be standing next to them, rather than down the other end of what appears to be a long straight corridor. So the viewer sees what the cardboard brain sees - a distorted and isolated view of the world outside.

The Big Draw – Travelling Moleskins.

My Grand Finale - Travelling Moleskins, originally uploaded by waynechisnall.

A group called The Culture Vulture (not to be confused with Miss Holly Howe’s fabulous London based Culture Vulture group) have teamed up with The Big Draw and come up with the Travelling Moleskine project.
The idea behind the project is than a number of differently themed Moleskine sketchbooks are passed on from artist to artist, with each person filling a page or two with a drawing or some other form of mark making.
The theme of the book that I got my grubby paws on was ‘My Grand Finale’ and here is my contribution.
By the end of September, all the sketch books should find their way back to The Culture Vultures, who will be holding a great big arty party and exhibition.

To find out more about the project, The Culture Vultures, The Big Draw and the Campaign For Drawing check out the sites listed below -

http://www.flickr.com/groups/travelingmoleskine/

http://theculturevulture.co.uk/blog/?page_id=1387

http://www.thebigdraw.org.uk/home/index.aspx

http://www.campaignfordrawing.org/bigdraw/dia/dia2006.aspx

A World Of Imaginary Whales

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it back to Italy to see my Poorly Remembered Whale sculpture at the KETOS 2.0 (A World Of Imaginary Whales) exhibition in Reggio Emilia’s Civic Museum. But I have managed to find some beautifully atmospheric photos of the show on the Strychnin Gallery’s Facebook page –


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033008&id=1245480815&l=1092188393

By all accounts the show was very well received and although the work has already been touring Europe as part of the Whaleless show I think that this new venue has given the work an altogether more haunting quality. So congratulations to everyone involved in the hang – you’ve done a fantastic job.