The Outsider Art Movement That Can't Be Ignored
Weekly Art Practice: The missing voice notes have returned, all is revealed
Welcome, If you’re new here, I’m SLART an outsider artist, documenting my art journey whilst trying to free up more time and headspace to create more art. I have a new studio space by a beautiful lagoon that I’m currently navigating with an artist friend.
Last week I asked what peace of mind feels like in a space. This week my foot decided I should find out by becoming all gouty again, so movement has mee limited and rest has been the order of the day.
So, as I said last update, I have been recording voice notes to myself. They were all taken a week or so ago, but I was without my phone for a few days, so they are only landing now. Listening back, they document an artwork coming into the world. Here they are, tidied up just enough to read. The headings are wherever I was when I pressed record.
Brinkworth Road, Tuesday 23 June
I am recording these so I can document my journey as an artist and what I have been thinking about. I have realised a lot of the artist’s work is done before the actual creation of the art. I am enjoying mulling over different aspects of it, joining the dots by thinking about it for a long time, and then I get to the point where I am antsy and I need to make it into physical reality.
In terms of my project, I am trying to answer this question: what would an individual calming space feel like? I do not know if that is the question. I need to work at a better question. But I am starting with the actual framework of the individual space. I have bought some 20mm electrical tubing, which is plastic and hollow, and some corner connectors. It cost about £27 to make, technically, a three metre cubed cube. That is going to be far too big for what I am starting out with, so I am going to chop it up. I will probably do 180 by 180 and save the rest for a smaller cube, or an oblong.
The cube is going to be the individual space, the individual experiential artwork, enjoyed from the outside and the inside. That is a new thing that has come to me: you want it to look right on the inside and the outside, not just the inside. So it will most probably have lights inside it. When it is in a gallery space you will be able to see the cubes and the light. And it is going to have a comfy chair inside.
I realise when I am talking out loud it does not always feel as clear as when I am thinking to myself. But let me go through some of the things I was thinking about yesterday in terms of materials. I have mentioned the tubing, and I have been looking at linen, chiffon and lace as ways to cover the cube structure, and some kind of nice flooring underneath. Having a separate floor is going to give it an extra sensory feel, rather than just the bare studio floor. I was also thinking about layering. Lace curtains with loops in, so they can be fed across the poles and pulled back for an entranceway. And layering plastic on the outside, so there is a kind of frosted glass effect.
When I ponder over these materials to make this calm individual space, it is all speculation. It is nice joining the dots, seeing things in the world and thinking this will work. But you cannot actually know until it is physically built and you are experiencing the space. So how I am going to approach it is: create a first iteration. The blank canvas of the space. The cube structure and some kind of outer covering layer, so it becomes an individual space in itself. Then, when I can sit inside there and feel it, I can intuit and decide what should be added. Each new piece will be an iteration of that.
The good thing about these spaces is that they can be disassembled quite easily and put together in different places. I could set up a space, pack it away, and document that as piece number one, or whatever the title will be. I might just do Space One, Space Two, Space Three. I do not know yet.
I have also had some thoughts around geodesic domes, and a tunnel shape. I am getting these ideas from things used on allotments, the little structures people put netting over to stop snails and insects getting at their cabbages. The tubing I have seen is similar to what they use. There are so many different directions this can go in. But I am keeping one thing in the back of my mind: it is not about being a beautiful space, and it is not about being a perfectly architectured or designed space either. It is the experimentation of something I am very curious about, which is an individual space that lets in a state of no mind. I do not know if that is possible. But we all know that spaces affect the way we feel. Right now I am driving through the countryside, windy lanes, trees, grass, birds flying around. Blue sky helps. The sun helps. Very different to driving through a busy city in hard rain, late for work.
I have always been curious about the idea of an individual sleep pod. Supposedly used by Google, though I do not know if that is true or a PR myth about how compassionate a company can be. The idea appeals to me because I get very overwhelmed, and having permission to have a power nap would transform people’s lives if we allowed it. We are stuck in this notion of pushing through and normalising being exhausted. So these spaces might grow to be more than individual spaces, but I feel they have to be individual for now, because that seems to be where you have no distractions from anyone else and you can focus on your own thoughts. Or focus on the lack of them. Just being. It is not just a meditation space. It is the whole experience taken into account.
I have just got a strong feeling in my stomach about it. I am really excited about setting up this first cube and having this real structure that I have made, standing in a room. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But we forget that we can think about something and then make it. We lose sight of that all the time.
And I am looking forward to going to Scrap Store. I do not know if it is a regional thing, but in Swindon there is a place called Scrap Store. Businesses donate surplus stock and it is sold affordably, and a big part of it is creative materials. It is about £40 a year to join, and there is a section where you can fill up a shopping trolley for free, something like five metres of material every month, plus affordable paints. I am sure I will have an update on that.
I am going to take photos of my bare cube. I am going to sit in my bare cube and see how I feel, and document that. Then I am going to sit in my cube covered, and see how I feel about that. And I have decided I do not want an interchangeable outer shell, because I want each artwork to have its own space and its own feeling. Other people will have different feelings, and that is fine. I am gauging it by how I feel, sat in the space that I create.
A tangent about helium, Tuesday 23 June
I have had a very curious day, going off on tangents about materials and directions of scale. Making smaller cubes with a light source inside, as a public art piece. And then that moved on to my curiosity about helium. How much helium do you need to lift certain objects? Science people can correct me on this, but from what I read it is roughly one to six: helium can lift about six times its own weight, including the weight of the helium itself. So if I wanted to lift six kilograms, I would need a kilogram of helium in a balloon, which would obviously be a huge balloon. I was working out how much helium I would need in one cubic metre. I do not need a floating cube. I want one, though.
Purton, Tuesday 23 June
I have come to realise, as you know, that I am not a man of science. I have never been inclined to use the scientific method. I was not interested in science at school, and I did not do very well. I saw it as a boring subject rather than a curious one.
But since I set the limitation of putting my focus on the square spaces, an internal individual space, it has gone off on many tangents, and one of them was looking at how much helium could lift, and putting that into practice in a cube shape that lives outside. And it has made me think about iterations, having insights, doing experiments, testing hypotheses. I always saw that as quite a rigid act, and in some respects it is. But within that rigidity you have creativity, trying different things you would never have thought of until you took certain steps and failed. That sounds obvious if you are an engineer or a scientist. It is baked into your psyche from a young age. I never had that foundation. I have always been scatterbrained, flitting between things. But I am starting to see the value of the scientific method for testing things as an artist, and I find it incredibly exciting. I cannot tell you how much, because it opens up unlimited avenues for my art.
I pretty much had that before, when I was doing expressionist paintings. I have always got something to share from my personal experiences and from what is happening in the world. But this has a new focus. Rather than focusing on the world itself, it is this tiny segment: how materials behave, how spaces create feelings. Or rather, how people interpret spaces, and how that in turn creates feelings and associations. I am incredibly excited.
Screwfix car park, Wednesday 24 June
So, fucking hell. I have got to this point where I am thinking, what am I doing with my life? I have just been to Screwfix for my ten three metre tubes for the first cube structure, and it is boiling hot today, about 38 degrees. I came thinking they would be neatly tied up. The guy comes out with ten loose tubes, and I am trying to get them in the car, pissing around trying to fit them in, back seat down, and I finally squeeze them in. They are literally on the dashboard at one end and bent over in the boot at the other. My wife would see these tubes in the car and say, what the hell are you doing with those?
It just makes me laugh, the things I end up doing. Obviously I am really into this project, and this is the first stage of the physical manifestation of the ideas, and I will have to do silly shit like this. I thought it was quite funny to say out loud. I bought a little hacksaw as well, so I can start cutting them down. A three metre cube is a bit too much, and it would be wobbly. But the tubing is pretty good for what it is, and I am excited to play around with it.
Westcott Place, Wednesday 24 June
Recorded a few hours after Screwfix. It runs to nearly three minutes and the only words the transcript could find in it are: Jesus Christ. I have no memory of what prompted it. I am keeping it. It might be the truest artist’s statement I have ever made.
The B4014, Thursday 25 June
Popped by the studio and dropped off the poles. Ten times three metre poles, and I am looking forward to building the structure now. It is slowly coming from my mind into reality, and again, that is just such an amazing thing. It is magic.
Space One, first iteration. Diary, day one, Friday 26 June
This entry exists as a voice note, recorded sat inside the cube. You can listen to it as it happened:
First cube structure built, and I feel really satisfied. It got quite stressful, because I estimated a measurement instead of using the measuring tape, and it is not quite even. But this is my first one, and the cube looks great.
I am writing down my feelings sitting in the structure. At the moment I am feeling pride, and the pride is blocking any other sensation. But aside from that, the best I can gauge sat inside the cube structure is: it feels empty. Of course it is empty. But you can feel the presence of something there. There is a beginning of something, and you feel like you are in the space. Saying this out loud sounds obvious, but it is very different from just sitting in a room. This is what I am talking about: changing part of a room into a separate space. An artwork which is examining, hypothesising, a space that brings peace.
I keep changing the question, but it is around the calmer end of the spectrum. What I mean by that is, I could make a whizzy space, lots of lights and noises and screens and interactions, something that grabs the brain and shakes it. This is the opposite. Getting away from the mind. Being mindless, in the good sense. A sense of peace where you can forget about everything, not in a distracting way, in a calming way. That is step one of my diary.
Meanwhile, the rest of Studio BRUT
While my foot kept me on the sofa, Harrie and I have also been launching the Studio Brut website, and it has been a big week for it. The blog you are reading is live, with writing from both of us. The artist directory is open, and the first artist has already signed up, which made our week. Harrie announced The Brut List, her plan to make Swindon’s outsider artists impossible to ignore.
What happens next?
Photos of the bare cube. Then the covered cube, and the difference between the two, documented. A trolley run at Scrap Store. And the question that will not leave me alone, getting slowly better at being asked: what does an individual calming space feel like? Or What does peace of mind within a space feel like?
I am building the answer one little experiment at a time.
A huge shoutout to Swindon Culture Collective and Hypha Studios for your support with this space.
One more update before I go. Harrie Dearing and did launch the full Studio BRUT website, so check it out at studiobrut.art, with a blog, an open directory for self-taught and outsider artists, and documenting everything we are building.
We are also throwing an opening night, and you are invited. Saturday 15 August 2026, 6.30 to 9.30pm, at Arclite House, Century Road, Peatmoor, Swindon SN5 5YN. Free entry, pay what you can, with half of all donations going to the charity Hypha Studios. Come and see the work, have a drink, and say hello.
Bye for now,
SLART
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