Focal Point Gallery

Things You Never Got Taught...#9 Tech in an Age of Climate Crisis

For Things You Never Get Taught #9 we host artist Amy Beeston to talk tech, responsibility, and carbon reduction. Amy is an artist working in sound and audio research, living in Orkney, a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland.

‘Things you never get taught…’ is a series of free development workshops for artists, arts organisations and those who want to develop their cultural offer. This series will focus on essential skills that might be overlooked by formal arts education, such as writing funding applications and developing a career as an artist.

Things You Never Got Taught...#8 Decarbonising your Creative Practice in the Climate Crisis

In this session of TYNGT we invited artists to think about their practice in the frame of climate impact. Eco-anxious artist Sean Roy Parker gave a presentation about decarbonising their own practice and then discussed considerations we might all utilise.

 

‘Things you never get taught…’ is a series of free development workshops for artists, arts organisations and those who want to develop their cultural offer. This series will focus on essential skills that might be overlooked by formal arts education, such as writing funding applications and developing a career as an artist.

Things You Never Got Taught...#7 Freelancing and The Coven Girl Gang

Lu Williams, founder of Grrrl Zine Fair and Grrrl In Print interviews entrepreneur Sapphire Bates, founder of The Coven Girl Gang, about freelancing, the perils and the positives. As well as the advantages of peer support.

 

‘Things you never get taught…’ is a series of free development workshops for artists, arts organisations and those who want to develop their cultural offer. This series will focus on essential skills that might be overlooked by formal arts education, such as writing funding applications and developing a career as an artist.

Things You Never Got Taught...#6 Unpicking Proposals

This isn’t a how to, more of a what, why and where. Joined by, Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad (The White Pube,) Shaun C Badham, and Mary Cork (ZELDA).

 

‘Things you never get taught…’ is a series of free development workshops for artists, arts organisations and those who want to develop their cultural offer. This series will focus on essential skills that might be overlooked by formal arts education, such as writing funding applications and developing a career as an artist.

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ’December Swimmers’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“A cold day in December and there are a group of people going for a swim. Although it is not something I have tried, and probably never will, I can see the appeal. In the field recording you can just hear the sound a woman makes as enters the cold water. The lead instrument for this is the bowed psaltery, which has an icy quality to the sound. The track is then built up with other string instruments and synthesizers”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ‘Waters Edge’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“I regularly take walks through Gunner’s Park to Shoebury East Beach, and in December took some field recordings of the water at high tide. I went down the metal steps and held the recorder about 10cm away from the water getting the full stereo effect of the water splashing around me. I wanted to evoke the feel of the sea in winter and decided to use a bowed psaltery combined with a string quartet to do this”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ‘Where the Crows Nest’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“I have always liked the sound that the crows make, maybe not what we typically think of as bird song, but for me there is something wild and free about the sound. Gunners park has many crows and I managed to get a recording of them in full voice. Some of the symbolism around crows can be quite negative, but they also symbolise intelligence, adaptability and teamwork. The piece starts with the sounds of the crows accompanied by some freeform bass clarinet and flute, emulating the caws of the crows, before becoming more structured around pizzicato strings”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ’Under the Fig Tree’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“In the grounds of Prittlewell Priory, close to the main building is a very old fig tree, where I sat and recorded the sounds of the park, with a lot of birdsong. You don’t notice quite how much birdsong there is until you really listen, and the sound recording really emphasised this for me. The part starts with some synth and the birdsong, particularly the sound of two magpies who seemed to be having a conversation with one another. A bass clarinet comes in playing the main melody, before the string quartet then enters”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ‘Into the Brook the Leaves Fall’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“I put my sound recorder very close to the water of the brook that flows through Priory Park, and noticed all the fallen leaves floating on the surface. I then built the music up around it, starting with a melancholy flute melody that then builds into a more positive sounding string quartet-based piece, augmented by some subtle synth parts”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ‘On That Bridge, My Footsteps Didn’t Make Much Noise’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“On a slightly rainy Sunday morning in December, myself and my children went for a walk in Priory Park over to the fishing ponds. The wooden bridge made surprisingly little noise, as my daughter stamped over it, and captured the sounds it did make with my sound recorded. From this, I built up a slightly melancholy, wintry flute and string quartet-based piece”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane