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Manchester from Arthur Millwood Court

2013-01-27T20:43:00.000Z

Just a composite image I made of the view from the balcony of my old flat in Arthur Millwood Court. The image was made using 8 separate Raw photos taken on a Canon DSLR. The photos where then combined in the Microsoft Image Composite Editor.

Manchester from Arthur Millwood Court

Cornerhouse painting show

2012-10-01T00:53:00.000+01:00

I have some paintings going into the Cornerhouse in Manchester. The work will be there from the 16th November this year until the 6th January next year. All the work, except for one painting, is previously unexhibited and I am looking forward to seeing it all up together. All the work on show will be for sale.

Form http://www.cornerhouse.org/art/art-exhibitions/fraser-chapman

"For this show Manchester-based Fraser Chapman is presenting two bodies of work. In the bar are a series of large colourful disk shaped paintings that map the different rock types found on the moon. They are accurate depictions of the geological makeup of the lunar surface, originally visualised by the astronomical community. Chapman has taken these maps and adjusted the colours, playing with their graphic potential.

In the café are a series of small mass-produced canvases of the kind typically found in thrift stores. Fraser has ‘added’ to them by ‘subtracting’ their content. What is left are floating indications of the total scene, now hidden under a flat surface of white paint. Chapman is highly active in Manchester as an artist and supporter of creative practice, through his nomadic shop ‘Grotto’."

Still Life #1, Emulsion on board, approx. 120cm x 85cm, 2012

Still Life #2, Emulsion on board, approx. 90cm x 75cm, 2012

Geologic Map of the North Side of the Moon, Acrylic on canvas, 1m x 1m, 2012.

Souvenir in Affectionate Remembrance

2012-07-27T20:52:00.000+01:00

This piece is based on an commemorative serviette produced in 1910 after a mining disaster at the Wellington pit in Whitehaven, Cumbria, where 136 people lost their lives. The originals were sold to commemorate those who had died and to raise money for the deceased's families. Items like this were not uncommon and were produced to commemorate other notable accidents such as the the mining disaster at Pretoria Pit, near Bolton, on 21 December 1910 where 344 men and boys died.

The thing which most struck me about these items was how their material quality, their fragility, was at odds with the solidity of other materials usually used in remembrance and commemoration. How different in substance the frail tissue is in comparison to the marble and granite of mausoleums, tombstones and cenotaphs.

The print I produced commemorates an accident at Islington Mill, Salford that happened on 13th October 1824 where 18 people died. It was printed on the 186th anniversary of the event at the location the collapse took place. The information on the serviette was gathered from various contemporary sources, such as the Manchester Guardian and Parliamentary papers of the subsequent inquest.

The text on the piece reads:

__________________________________

Souvenir in Affectionate Remembrance

OF THE

POOR MILL WORKERS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES

IN THE TERRIBLE DISASTER

IN ISLINGTON MILL, SALFORD

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13th, 1824.

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH

LIST OF VICTIMS

JAMES GREAVES, Dixon Street, aged 14

RICHMALL GREAVES, aged 16, sister to the above.

WILLIAM M'KINZIE, Rowell's-court, Bank Parade, aged 11.

THOS. CLARKE Hope-street,aged 13.

ANN KAY, Oldfield-road, aged 34.

SUSANNAH HAMILTON, Gravel-lane, aged 18.

MARY MARTIN, Lombard-street, aged 16.

ALICE HALLAM, 5, Back Park-street, aged 30.

MARY ORMES, Irwin's-court, Oldfield-road, aged 30, a stranger from Derby; no friends here.

MARY ANN FORSTER, Davies-street, Broughton-road, aged 14.

ELIZABETH WILSON, Silver-street, aged 35.

ELIZABETH SMITH, Muslinet-court, Oldfield-road, aged 28.

JANE ASHTON, Scotland Bridge, aged 55.

ELLEN ASHTON, 20, her daughter.

CATHERINE SCHOFIELD, Windsor Bridge, aged 11.

FRANCES SMITH, Booth street, aged 27.

ELIZABETH JONES, Union-street, aged 17; a stranger from Holy well; no friends here.

BETTY SMITH, Factory-lane, aged 60: she was found on the top of the engine-house.

__________________________________

Here are two examples of the original serviettes my piece was based on. Both of these, along with the piece I produced are part of the collection at the Working Class Movement Library.

Pretoria Pit explosion memorial serviette

Wellington Pit, Whitehaven memorial serviette

Richard Long at the Hepworth

2012-07-27T20:10:00.000+01:00

Had a great day at The HepworthWakefield today. The highlight for me had to be the

Richard Long room. Some old work, some new, it was both calming and beautiful in equal measure. There are lots of other pieces on show too, Hepworth, Moore, etc but the Long room really did it for me. If you get the chance you should go and check it out. It is on until the 14th October 2012. I was quite surprised that photography was allowed at all, but not to miss a chance I took the snaps below (although they really don't do the work justice...)

The Sky and the Gap Between the Sky and the Ground

2012-06-07T23:16:00.001+01:00

"The Sky and the Gap Between the Sky and the Ground", Emulsion on board, 100cm x 85cm approx. 2012

Punk Britannia

2012-06-04T04:22:00.002+01:00

Some disheveled punk flags and bunting I helped Jermyn at one69a make for the Jubilee celebrations at Folk.

SFTOC 2012 Billboard.

2012-03-26T00:42:00.000+01:00

Putting up the Sounds From the Other City 2012 billboard on Chapel St in the glorious sunshine.

Setting up grotto

2011-11-21T23:02:00.000Z

Just some snaps of the window display and the rest of the shop coming together...

The project is located at the Chinese Arts Centre on Thomas St in Manchester's Northern Quarter. It is not going to be quite as full-on for me this year - as I wont actually be in the shop everyday and the amazing and talented Tasha Whittle (aka TXLW) is helping to run things too.

There are a few artists from last year as well as lots of new ones too - exciting!

New personal portfolio site

2011-07-02T22:32:00.004+01:00

"Horses" Acrylic on board, 2004, Fraser Chapman - New Academy London

Since leaving university my website, as it is, has been hosted on the Manchester School of Architecture server here http://www.msa.mmu.ac.uk/~fraser/. I decided it was time foe an update so I have just purchased the domain http://fraserchapman.co.uk/ and some hosting for my new portfolio. At the moment it is just a holding site, with a range of my work (like the painting above) but I plan to put together a complete portfolio and blog using wordpress to replace both this blog and the site at university. Exciting, just now I have to decide what exactly I want to do!

super-crafts website

2011-06-17T01:57:00.000+01:00

Just finished putting a website for a good friend Hass, he works out of Islington Mill and produces all kinds of cool visuals and products. The site is pretty clean and simple and is based on Wordpress so that it is easy for him to update and maintain. Anyhow, you can now check out the new Super-Crafts website

Everybody's Stalking website

2011-06-03T15:17:00.000+01:00

More web design, this time for a great little Manchester based record label - Everybody's Stalking. I actually had some of their music and merchandise for sale in the Grotto project at the end of last year, I really like some of the music they put out so it was great to be able to do their site for them. The site was put together in collaboration with Hass at Super-Crafts studio who has been doing the art direction for the label.

The site is based on the Wordpress engine and as such is easy to update and maintain. There are a few custom widgets in the build that I put together - including the YouTube and SoundCloud players. The guys at the label, Hass and I are all really happy with the site and I'm looking forward to seeing it grow with content.

You should check out the label and some of the bands they are putting out, my particular favourite has to be Melodica, Melody & Me - the track and video for 'Piece Me Back Together' are both amazing.

Prints based on Young's experiment.

2011-05-30T18:09:00.000+01:00

Had a great day yesterday playing around in the one69a studio. Jermyn had asked me if I wanted to print something as part of the studio was free all day. I put a few things together based around a series of illustrations I have been working on. The piece here is based on a diagrammatic representation of Thomas Young's Interferometer, the classic 'double slit' experiment. I am really happy with the results, especially the technicolor t-shirt and print as these where unplanned and actually the result of just playing with the design on screen at the end of the day.

I plan to sell a few of the sets of prints and tees (there are 7 diagrams in all and I plan to make 5 sets) once they are finished.

The prints here are Acrylic on A2 on c180gsm Fabriano, the t-shirts are Acrylic, medium, plain-white, Gilden super softs.

TXLW website

2011-05-27T21:55:00.000+01:00

I have put together a website for Tasha Whittle (TXLW), Tasha is an amazing artist, illustrator and high-five facilitator...Here work is really beautiful and it has been a pleasure to go through it all whist putting the site together. There are lots of little random bits to the site; the colour of links, critters popping up and simple animations. I really wanted the site to reflect Tasha's illustration style and incorporating little pieces here of her drawings, such as the colour splashes and hand written links, really help to do this.

There is actually a shop feature to be added to the site - (it will be online soooooooon!).
Anyhow, you can check out Tasha's work at her spanking new site here.

su su studio

2011-03-18T12:23:00.003Z

Just some snaps in and out of the new studio...

Street view, trees and better networklinks...

2011-03-04T03:27:00.002Z

Test application showing a loaded network link of live earth quake data from the USGS

I have just committed a new version of the Google Earth Plug-in control library I have been developing. In the update I have implemented support for the excellent new street-view functionality provided via the GEOptions object and the new trees layer. I also updated the support for network links within the KmlTreeView control making by any synchronous calls via the new Task.Factory Property in .NET Framework 4. This means the tree-view is much more responsive when loading large network-link chains.

The library now also uses a wrapper class to deal with all the GEOptions settings - this class, along with a few enumerations of plugin settings, makes working with the options a breeze in manged code .

The final change has been to take advantage of the new optional and default parameters, again from the .NET Framework 4. The GEHelpers class uses them quite a bit to aid generating and working with kml objects.

I had not done anything to the library for a while so it has been good to have a play around with it.

Son of Man - face recognition and digital painting

2011-01-29T13:12:00.015Z

Son of Man, real time digital painting in processing..

I have been playing around with Processing quite a bit of late to help with an art work I have had in mind for a while. Processing itself is an open source programming language and environment - it was founded by Ben Fry and Casey Reas in 2001 while both were John Maeda's students at the MIT Media Lab.

One of the key things I wanted to do with Processing is face recognition and tracking from a live video source/feed. Along with Processing I have used a number of other libraries and tools to help do this; including JMyron, Face Detection Library for Processing (FDLP) and Intel's Open Computer Vision Library (OpenCV).

The object detector I used is part of OpenCV and was initially proposed by Paul Viola and improved by Rainer Lienhart. It works using a classifier (namely a cascade of boosted classifiers working with haar-like features) which is trained with a few hundred sample views of a particular object (i.e. images of faces), these are called "positive examples" along with "negative examples" which are any arbitrary images of the same size.

You can see a quick test screen-capture of the Processing sketch here. Obviously this is at really low frame-rate/quality. The apple in the video is being tracked to my face in real time from a web-cam feed. One thing I really like the idea of is subverting the technology. Recognising and tracking faces to obscure them, rather than to record and catalogue them. I know Google used this method to blur out faces and registrations in their "Street View" software. The trend however is for its use in social networking sites (to find faces in still photos, to be 'tagged') and in surveillance such as city/airport CCTV and by police services.

I plan to develop this more fully over the next few weeks. If you are interested you can see the main code routine I have put together below.

import pFaceDetect.*;
import JMyron.*;

PFaceDetect face;
JMyron m;
PImage apple;

void setup() {
  size(640,480);
  m = new JMyron();
  m.start(width,height);
  m.findGlobs(0);
  face = new PFaceDetect(
             this,
             width,
             height,
             "haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml");
  apple = loadImage("apple.png");
  frameRate(25);
  smooth();
}

void draw() {
  background(0);
  m.update();
  face.findFaces(m.cameraImage());
  image(m.cameraImage(), 0, 0);
  drawApples();
}

void drawApples() {
  int [][] res = face.getFaces();
  if (res.length>0) {
    for (int i=0;i<res.length;i++) {
      int x = res[i][0];
      int y = res[i][1];
      int w = res[i][2];
      int h = res[i][3];
      if(w>50 & h>50) {
        image(apple,x,y,w,h);
      }
    }
  }
}

void stop() {
  m.stop();
  super.stop();
}

// EOF

Grotto pop-up shop

2010-12-30T16:18:00.027Z

For the past month or so I have been running a pop-up shop called 'Grotto' in Manchester's Northern Quarter. The idea to open shop began when I was kindly offered the Mooch art gallery for most of November and December. A pop-up shop is always something I have wanted to do, and is also something a creative city like Manchester should have much more of.

As my own most recent work was already in an exhibition at Islington Mill and then was going on to the Working Class Movement Library - a pop-up shop also seemed a pragmatic way to quickly fill a gallery space with work. In total the shop was conceived, realised and opened in four days with a budget of less than £30 - all with the kind help of one69a.

Grotto Oldham Street - 4 days and £30

Grotto Edge Street - 1 day £2

Part shop, part gallery, part event space - Grotto has been a place for local artists to perform, or to sell their work, in the centre of Manchester's Northern Quarter. Grotto has actually had two locations in the Northern Quarter. Originally in the Mooch art gallery on Oldham Street, it moved in mid December (thanks to the philanthropic offer of Gary McClarnan from Sparklestreet Creative Adventures) to its final location, for this year, on Edge Street.

Door to the Oldham Street shop

The Oldham Street shop front.

There were a two principals I really wanted to run the project under: Firstly - to be, as far as possible, a free market i.e. not selecting products on any personal aesthetic criteria or intervening with pricing them. Secondly, not to profit from others work - only by selling my own art work in the same way.

By being a 'free market' shop Grotto allowed anyone - from students to established artists - a chance to sell work and gain exposure in a great, central Manchester, location. Further more Grotto helped to brighten and give vibrancy to the Northern Quarter. Both locations used in the project would have been 'shuttered up' for the duration of the Christmas period had the shop not used them. In some sense Grotto had economic reasoning behind it as as well - by giving a chance to local artists to sell directly Grotto kept money spent in the run-up to Christmas within the local community.

Coal not Dole, Gold on Navy, Fraser 2010

With the cuts in arts funding it is getting harder for artists to make a living. Grotto served as a proactive response to this situation - albeit in a localised way. The project worked to address the issue by letting artist profit directly from their practice. Not taking any commission from the sale of work (most institutions take between 40% and 70%) meant that many artists were able to lower the price of their work considerably whilst still making more than they would in a traditional environment. This, in turn, also meant that customers could find amazing, original, art work at low prices. In total we had 65 artists work for sale over the course of the project and the vast majority made money from their work. The range in prices for work was from 50p (for hand printed wrapping paper and cards) to £3000 (for the amazing Thomas Mills rocking-chair/library/clock).

Along with all the great art work on sale we had live performances from groups such as Monkeys in Love, Maria and the Gay and Mind on Fire Band. Other impromptu happenings took place over the course of the project such as live printing and a film screenings. I feel the project was a great success with many highlights (you can check a few of these out below). It was really amazing to work with, and meet, so many artist in such as short space of time. It was really fun too to meet the members of the public who came in to shop, browse and chat in both locations.

With all that in mind I am looking in to possibility of doing something similar (with a twist of-course!) in the new year...A massive thank you to all the artists who contributed and to anyone who helped out in any way! Also a special thank you to one69a, Mooch Art and Sparklestreet Creative Adventures for the invaluable help, support and kindness throughout the project.

Mind on Fire Band at the Oldham Street shop.

Couple enjoying Mind on Fire Band at the Oldham Street shop.

Live printing protest signs for the student demonstrations

Monkeys in Love play Grotto

Monkeys in Love play Oldham Street shop

Live printing for Stretch Disco

If you want to see yet more photos from the Grotto project you can do so here.

Joyride Playground

2010-12-28T01:58:00.000Z

I recently exhibited work in the "Joyride Playground" exhibition put together by a new Manchester curotorial collective "Hldtght". I really engaged with what I saw as the principals of the exhibition - immediacy, experimentation, engagement and fun!

The immediacy really stemmed from the curators tenacity in finding a space and appropriating it as a venue. No red tape, no meetings about meetings and no funding applications. Just a simple idea executed with the minimum fuss. The experimentation aspect was due to the loose brief of "Working out side your comfort zone" in terms of materials, aesthetic, etc. This seemed to me a great premise as it negates the stale, rolling out of pre-existing work by artists - forcing them to producing something new - with a large degree of uncertainty attached to the outcome. By running the exhibition as an open studio there was a great level of engagement between the artists and the public. It was a real chance to exhibit "the process" rather than just "the product" (something I am very keen on).

For the show I put together an experimental painting using techniques from ancient cave paintings - essentially using my hands as stencils and spraying pigment out of my mouth. The pigments were based on white tempera mixed with spices; Turmeric, Paprika, Cinnamon, etc. obtained from various curry houses in the Northern Quarter.

All about Comic Sans...

2010-11-09T19:49:00.001Z

Finally got Comic Sans in to a logo design - my work here is done...

Check out GROTTO here...

Geologic Map of the South Side of the Moon.

2010-11-01T03:01:00.000Z

"Geologic Map of the South Side of the Moon" - Acrylic on canvas - 1m x 1m

Object Lessons - drawings

2010-10-19T03:09:00.005+01:00

Here are a couple of pieces of my work done today as part of Object Lessons exhibition at Islington Mill.

Following on from the commemorative napkins I made a drawing taken from an 1828 woodcut that depicts the accident. I translated the original woodcut into a vector image and then outputted it using a vinyl cutter (with the blade replaced by a Biro). Along with referencing the disaster at the mill, with the piece I was thinking about the ways in which mechanisation replaces traditional human labour and how manual tasks are replaced by automated ones.

One thing that really struck me was the movement of the cutter head as it made the drawing, it had a very 'loom' like movement that fitted nicely with the image of a cotton mill. Hopefully I will make some more images using this process over the course of the exhibition.

Accident at Gough's Mill, 60 x 45 cm, Biro on paper, 2010

The other piece is based on the the cards from a board game called 'Class Struggle' (sounds fun huh!). Class Struggle’ was based on the Marxist beliefs of Bertell Ollman, a professor of politics at New York University. Ollman originally self-published the game, producing and marketing it himself. The cards are rather like the chance cards in Monopoly. There are some quite amusing ones and I really want to develop something using them. To begin with I have been scaling some of them up using the same drawing technique as before. I plan to overdrawn on this piece with the other cards I get as I play the game with some of the other artists...

Class Struggle, 60 x 84 cm, Biro on paper, 2010

Class Struggle (detail), 60 x 84 cm, Biro on paper, 2010

More to follow...

Object Lessons - photos

2010-10-15T18:05:00.000+01:00

More images of some of the donated objects and work from the "Object Lessons" show I am taking part in at Islington Mill and the Working Class Movement Library.

"Class Struggle" Board game on loan from the WCML

Various objects on loan from the WCML

Original protest tee-shirt on loan from the WCML

Suffrage tea-towel on loan from the WCML

Trade Union carpet on loan from the WCML

Original Clarion House chair on load from the WCML

Eddie Grow with Yuri Gagarin, photograph on loan from the WCML

"Stuff the Poll Tax"- Screen Print on Jumper, Fraser Chapman, 2010

Paper Cup, Ink and paper, Anna Beam, 2010

Paper objects, Ink and paper, Anna Beam, 2010

Paper book, Ink and paper, Anna Beam, 2010

Paper cotton reel, Ink and paper, Anna Beam, 2010

Paper cups, Ink and paper, Anna Beam, 2010

Books, photographs and clock on loan from the WCML

Political albums on loan from the WCML

Object Lessons - opening

2010-10-14T19:19:00.008+01:00

I just attended the opening of the 'Object Lessons' exhibition and open studio at Islington Mill.

I am taking part in the show and produced my first piece of work in response to the collection today. It is a napkin - commemorating a disaster at Islington Mill that happened on 13th October 1824, exactly 186 years ago to the day. The idea was taken from a similar napkin produced in 1910 after a disaster at Wellington pit in Whitehaven, Cumbria where 136 people lost their lives. The Wellington napkins were sold to commemorate those who had died and to raise money for the dead men’s families.

The thing which most struck me about the original napkins was how their materiality, their fragility, was at odds with the usual materials used in remembrance and commemoration such as the marble and granite of tombstones and cenotaphs.

The napkins I designed were printed, live with one69a, at the opening of the show and given out to people with their tea and cake...

Coal not Dole

2010-10-08T15:40:00.002+01:00

More ideas for the upcoming 'Object Lesson's' exhibition with the Working Class Movement Library, again working with the existing political-slogan-shirts. This design is based on the protest t-shirts produced for the UK miners' strike.

Stuff the Poll Tax!

2010-10-07T01:05:00.006+01:00

I have been working on a number of ideas for an upcoming project with the Working Class Movement Library . One of the things I have been doing is going through their collection of badges, t-shirts, posters and placards.

The immediate thing that stuck me about many of these items were the bold, powerful, statements that they carry. These items were never intended to be fashionable or desirable in the usual sense a garment is, rather they were designed to carry a message, to act as statements.

I wanted to recreate these items and I liked the idea of taking the messages of socialist struggle and putting them into consumer items. I also really like the idea of being truly retro - if the '80s are fashionable - why just pop songs and haircuts? Why not protests and ideology?

It is still very much a work in progress but I hope to develop it further during the next week or so. So far I have tried out the first design on to poster paper and a jumper, I also have a blank newspaper that I want to use to print a different statement on to each page.

The jumper here is in the University of Manchester colours, I think it looks kinda preppy!