IP-ART Prize Winner ANDREW GIBSON
Cornhill

23 June - 4 August

Gallery 1, The Town Hall Galleries

Building on the perception that the Cornhill area of Ipswich provides a hub for the town's community, Andrew Gibson Ip-art Award Winner 2006 , spent the six months before his show exercising some of the methods used by the volunteers in the original Mass-Observation experiment to produce a visual response examining the space directly outside The Town Hall Galleries – Cornhill.

“Mass-Observation” founded in 1937 sought to understand something that anthropology and sociology still took for granted: the everyday life of ordinary people. Untrained members of the public undertook research study - similar to anthropologists studying remote, tribal societies – providing diaries, questionnaires, surveys, written observations, and reports of overheard conversations, together with an assortment of daily ephemera. Suggested topics and themes included: behaviour of people at war memorials; the aspidistra cult; anthropology of football pools; beards, armpits, eyebrows; anti-semitism; distribution, diffusion and significance of the dirty joke; and, the private lives of midwives.

Appropriating some of the principles and methods of the "Mass-Observation" movement Andrew Gibson has created a body of work that explores people’s activity – people’s reactions towards one another and the throng of the town centre - using elements such as over heard conversations, written observations, sketches and photographs to observe both individuals and the collective behaviour of the crowd.

He captures this motion with pencil sketches and photographs, which provide source material for the creation of the final images. These are developed through a process of sampling textures and found objects, which are then digitally introduced into his original pencil compositions. Allowing the work to evolve and envelop a sense of time, place and emotion through the distortion and displacement that the textures and objects provide. Like the findings of Mass-Observation specific stories exist within each piece; a lost child, a confused old lady, the isolation of the crowd, each of which serves to give an insight into how people relate to one another in an anonymous environment.

Gibson used this exhibiting opportunity to develop an evolving show by bringing new work and fresh observations throughout. By utilising the participatory nature of Mass-Observation further Gibson invited the general public to become involved in documenting the every day life around the Cornhill area of Ipswich by contributing their own drawings, written observations, recorded conversations, photographs and ephemera.

Afternoon activities have also been scheduled, here he will talk about the exhibition, and discuss his interest in Mass-Observation and its influence on his work, before encouraging groups to participate in the recording of every day life outside of the gallery by using some of the methods used by the volunteers in the original Mass-Observation experiment. Selected observations will be added to the show throughout its duration.

Andrew Gibson graduated in Visual Communication specialising in Illustration from Edinburgh College of Art in 2005. Cornhill is his was his first solo show. In 2006 Andrew Gibson won the Ip-art Award for Visual Arts; his prize was £500 towards materials to make work for this exhibition.
The Ip-art Award for Visual Arts is supported by Ipswich Borough Council and Persimmon Homes.

www.andrewgibson.co.uk
www.Ip-art.com