There’s been a renewed interest in my t-shirt designs recently and this has prompted a re-jig of what was becoming my over-full shop page.
So, I’ve moved all the clothing products off-site to a spreadshirt store. This has simplified the ordering process and has meant there’s more space for additional things with upside-down bits of Japanese cartography on them.
By chance and/or careful planning, spreadshirt are offering a 10% discount on orders over £20 made between 22nd March and 7th April. Enter “HELLOSUN” in the voucher code box in the shopping cart.
As well as being able to buy Uncertain Eastside prints at the Created in Birmingham shop, I’ve also put together some special badge collections that you can only get at the Created in Birmingham shop and in very limited numbers.
SoPG: Yamanote
Back in 2006 I spent 4 intensive days walking around Tokyo. Rather than using my Lonely Planet Guide, I used a map cut from a postcard advertising an exhibition. With all the labels cut off.
You can read more about the project here; suffice to say that it was something of a pivotal moment in my practice and is what kicked off the whole genzaichi identity/ethos.
Where will you go and what will you see there?
The pack available at the CiB shop will give you both the appropriated map and the genzaichi/you are here symbol from the Yamanote railway line in badge form. You are invited to use them to instigate a random walk from a railway station (or alternative) of your choosing.
Use them to go somewhere you wouldn’t have otherwise have considered going to and then take some time to get to know that place. See if you can find what the point of special interest is.
Perfect for the latent psychogeographer in all of us!
Counsel for the Artist
At the end of my time at art school, I gathered together all the notes I had made from lectures, conferences, seminars and the such and searched through them picking out phrases that resonated. I found quite a few.
From these I selected the 8 really pertinent ones that I wanted to keep at the forefront of my mind when making work in the years following graduation. These became Counsel for the Artist and they are still cornerstones of my practice nearly 4 years later:
The thing with these though, is I quickly found that people from other professions were finding the statements resonated strongly with them too. Hence I’m using “artist” in its broadest of terms: “A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice”.
Is that you?
You can get a selection of 4 statements to wear on your sleeve (or other location).
Counsel for the Artist badges
Postcards and more
The Yamanote and Counsel for the Artist badge collections are very limited availability, but fear not if you are quick enough to get one before they sell out.
For those of you wanting to make sure you get your Uncertain Eastside limited edition prints in time for Christmas, please be aware that the Royal Mail’s advertised last posting day for 1st Class is the 21st December.
Uncertain Eastside prints tubed up and ready to go
Detail from Uncertain Eastside print (B series: 6 overlaid circuits)
I experimented with a print-on-demand service earlier this year and, having just received a trial print of the new genzaichi/you are here T-shirt, I’m happy to say it passes the quality control test and the shop is now live and open for business!
The incentive for the invisible hand came about after increasing frustration that I’d already put all my own spare money into a few major projects – thus leaving me reliant on external funding for upcoming ideas I wanted to develop further. This is ok for some things, but I’d rather not be completely dependent on Arts Council and the like anyway, and sometimes you just need to be able to access some cash on a timescale of less than two months.
This has increasingly been the case as my practice simultaneously moves further into areas that are difficult to describe in a funder-friendly manner (what exactly are the outcomes going to be?) and that need me to be responsive to things happening around me.
The invisible hand was therefore developed as a way for my practice to become more self-supporting. Rather than selling actual artworks (I don’t usually produce objects), I’ve gathered together some of the core ideas that run through my work and I’m now selling products that relate to those. It will also come into play during 2008 in relation to a few publishing projects I’m working on. Watch this space…
Payments are all handled via PayPal and absolutely all of the profit goes into a pot that will only be used in the production of art works. I’ve indicated by each item approximately how much from each sale goes into the project fund.
I’m in two minds about whether to develop any invisible hand branding or not, but I’m thinking it would be really nice to be able to add an invisible hand logo alongside any others that may have supported a project. I want to be able to say somehow that “this work wasn’t all funded by government hand-outs y’know!”.
What do you think?
Hello, my name's Nikki. I make things happen.
My main area of enquiry is centred around interactions between people and place: often using tools and strategies from areas such as pervasive games and physical computing to set up frameworks for exploration.
If you'd like to commission me or collaborate with me, please get in touch via the contact page.
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Artworks and other projects copyright Nicola Pugh 2003-2024, all rights reserved.
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