Skip to main content

Ross Hamilton Frew Residency Visit

Last thursday, we took a trip to House for An Art Lover over in Bellahouston Park to visit artist in resident Ross Hamilton Frew.

We met him on his second last day of his residency, in which he'd been experimenting with ceramics to make the most of the facilities within the art shed studios.

Ross Hamilton Frew introduced himself to us and explained some of his background. He graduated from Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in 2007, and considers his practice to revolve around drawing. He later took a year long residency in Newcastle Upon Tyre where he learnt the technique of paper making. He decided to stay in Newcastle after that, and is now based there.

He then moved on to working more 3-dimensional ideas, including working with wax. For his residency at House for An Art Lover, he's been trying to work with ceramics, though he admitted to us that he'd never really tried it out before other than taking an evening class in Newcastle while he was still looking for a studio. He's really interested in the process of fine art and the general experimentation of it all.

Frew is highly interested in Science Fiction, and had most recently read a novel titled 'The Dispossessed', which has political themes featured in it. He picked up on some of the realism in it and how some of today's political society is connected to it. He also grew a fascination with images that NASA release regularly and their space updates.

Another great inspiration of Frew was Ascension Island - a small deserted island in the Atlantic Ocean close to the Equator. This island has a unique backstory, which includes Darwin being convinced to plant a forest at the highest point of the island, which means that none of the plant life there is in its natural habitat. The island also used to be a prison, and a fuelling point for boats. Now it's an army base, but the backstory and its uniqueness was a large think point for Frew.

Frew also confessed to us that he doesn't often find much inspiration from artists, and is very much inspired by stories from both fiction and real life. He reads up on the news and various stories on the regular which keep his mind running.

One of his pieces got passed around so that we could give it a closer look. One of his techniques was roll out the clay and fold the pieces together.  I really loved how the bowl looked - it had wonderful grey freckles on a pink surface almost like a small moon.

Frew is going to be exhibiting his work in March, and his exhibition will feature ceramics, collages, and sculpture. It's all very much a work in progress, but I found it all really inspire to understand how he works and thinks. I also really respected how honest he was, especially with how he makes his work and where he gets his inspiration from. He has a real genuine interest in what he does and was clearly passionate.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The White Pube: Origin Story Talk

The White Pube are art critic bloggers that I've been following for over a year now, who approach art in an honest and unapologetically funny way. When I heard that they were doing a talk at The Art School, I figured it would only be polite to go hear them. (I should add, I didn't manage to get any images of the event, however I did tweet them before asking if I had to pay at the door) I dragged my lovely friend Eoghan along and we made trecks. They discussed their beginnings with the blog and how/why they started. The team consisted, at the start, with two Central Saint Martin's students named Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad. They shared a studio space together at university, and after discussions about how frustrated they were about how there was a great lack of diversity with art critics (mainly with how many middle-class white men seemed to be the only ones to share their opinions on art pieces) and they also just had some thoughts that felt worth...
Post a Comment
Read more

HNC Beginings

I began my HNC in Art and Design three weeks ago; which before then I had just finished a year at Cardonald college studying Portfolio Preparation. Doing the HNC wasn't my original plan, I'll admit. I had full intentions on moving on to art school, however when the plan fell through, the option to take on an HNC was discussed with my tutors, and it felt like the best option. I went through most of my time on the Portfolio course feeling torn about what I did want to specialise in. I began the year feeling dead-set on studying Graphic Design, however as the year developed, I fell for illustration much more, and then later on, animation became the most attractive to me. I felt it the most when I made a short film for an art collective I'm part of and absolutely loved the process of drawing things frame by frame and then seeing the final piece move smoothly. That being said, I still have an open mind. My biggest fear about starting the HNC is that it would feel repetitive and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cubisim and Other Art Movements

In a recent class, our tutor John discussed how we look at artist's experiences can have an effect on their work and how their lives can shape movements. This lead on to each of us as a class having to look at one art movement each and then feeding back all the info we collected as a group. I looked at cubism - a movement that began with Pablo Picasso's famous painting 'Demoiselles D'Avignon'. (Picture source: https://www.moma.org/explore/conservation/demoiselles/) This piece (shown above) is a large oil painting featuring five naked women. Their bodies are shown to have both flat and curved components which gives them a geometric element. This painting took months of editing; in fact, this piece used to feature a naked man, but Picasso eventually painted over it. Picasso was a famous cubist painter, but another artist called George Braque was also heavily involved in this art movement. In fact, the term for cubism came up after an art critic named Louis Va...
Post a Comment
Read more