Below is a selection of projects, exhibitions, and workshops that repreresent the last five years of my practice.

A showcase of works in progress.

What began as an attempt to build some frames for existing works turned into a process of making where the frame became integral part of a new body of work. On top of the idea of assemblage, the work became palimpsestic. Surfaces are layered, reworked and reused. The work includes old table tops, discarded stretcher frames, kitchen splashbacks, and used wet wipes. All repurposed into something new; something unclear and sometimes pleasant.

Sit & Look is bright in colour and simple in shape. It is playful and informed by childcare. There may be shelves, chairs, drawings, collages, and maquettes.

Ross H Frew’s practice sits at the intersection between contemporary art practice and design, and consists mainly of bricolage, sculpture, collage, and drawing. His recent focus has been the development of usable/functional sculpture with a sense of ad-hoc-ism. These works address consumption, sustainability, and materiality through the reuse and recycling of waste and found materials.

For 36 Gallery, Frew showcased a developing series of decorative shelving alongside a collection of ad-hockist chairs and other developing ideas. The exhibition, ‘Sit and Look’, brought together six months of studio development and included works made with his then three-year-old daughter. This parent and child play has made Frew’s practice more playful, incorporating bright colours and simple shapes.

With this approach, Frew embraced the material interplay between mark-making, material, shape and form, and although sculptural, the works are ultimately informed by his background in drawing, painting, and collage.

The works included in Sit & Look were made intuitively using the materials he gathered or found. Scrap wood, plastic waste, and bits of furniture were reconfigured in the gallery space to create an environment where viewers could sit and contemplate the wall-based shelves. These sculptural wall reliefs were populated with the tests and maquettes that informed this research period.

‘for solidarity’
The Newbridge Project
Gateshead
2019

For this exhibition, initiated by The NewBridge Project and the Solidarity Economy Association to launch the For Solidarity project, I produced a seating arrangement in collaboration with artist Oliver Perry and local residents.

The seats were designed to encourage active exchange between gallery visitors and doubled as a space for weekly communal meals and events.


Image Credit Matt Pickering 2019

An Island, An Astronomical Object...’ consisted of three distinctive strands: ceramics, support structures (platforms/plinths) and collage. The work was made in reference to Ursula K Le Guin’s seminal socialist utopian novel, ‘The Dispossessed’, the British overseas territory Ascension Island, and NASA’s OPUS programme.

‘swithering principles workshop’
BALTIC39
Newcaslte upon Tyne
2019

Working alongside graphic design studio [blank spacecraft], I ran a workshop at BALTIC 39 as part of Ways of Learning. We invited members of the public to help develop a collective, participatory typeface. You can see the results of the workshop below.

‘solidarity workshop’
The Newbridge Project
Gateshead
2019

Working alongside The Newbridge Project and Newcastle-based artist, Oliver Perry, I invited local community members to participate in a three-day workshop. The group discussed, designed, and built a seating arrangement using the waste materials gathered from the studios at The Newbridge Project through collective action. The Newbridge Project used the resulting seats during the For Solidarity exhibition (September 2019).

This selection of works has been made predominently during lockdown. It includes the results of workshops, postal collaborations, and experimentations.

Week six of Desktop Design Academy examined maps. For this, I considered cartography, its use of symbols, and how it can communicate a landscape's makeup. As we presently find ourselves confined to the indoors, I looked at how we could make fictional worlds from these symbols as a means of exploring a landscape freely. Language, or more specifically words, can describe such worlds, so I dissected the British Geological Society's index of cartographic symbols to create a typeface. Each letter holds its cartographic meaning, which gives each word spelt out a landscape. The definitions of each letter is as follows:

A. Blown sand
B. Neutral vergence of minor fold
C. Grandorite X
D. Roche moutonnée (sheep back)
E. Undulating foliation
F. Strike of foliation
G. Shell marl
H. General corrugated strike vertical foliation
I. Undulating vertical strata
J. Inclined primary planar fabric, overturned
K. Dip of igneous contact
L. Strike axial plane minor fold
M. Hummocky glacial and morainic deposits
N. Small area of made ground, above surface
O. Swallow hole
P. Overturned inclined strata
Q. Glacial strike
R. Horizontal overturned strata
S. Dextral vergence of minor fold
T. Highly inclined strata
U. Overturned syncline
V. Small area of landslip
W. Anticline axial plane
X. Fossil locality
Y. Direction of younging
Z. Strike of strata