Double Act: 1 Feb – 28 March 2008

Artists' Statement: Zeynep Arman/ Gary Turner

‘Streets'

“Double-act: A Creative Conversation” has been a unique project to create this body of work that reflects our collaboration over a period of three months.

After spending some time together and looking at each other's work we realised that we are both interested in architecture and urban landscapes, and that we get our inspiration from everyday life. Going on walks together seemed like the best way to start out the project. During our collaboration we did two big walks covering Glasgow from east to west.

Our first route was towards the east end of the city. We took the path from Project Ability down to Glasgow Green, along the Clyde and up from Greenhead Street back to Project Ability. We were on the look out for the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary. Throughout the walk we recorded everything that attracted our attention. Afterwards when we sat down and looked at our photographs and notes we realised that not only were we looking at similar things - we also had a kind of surrealistic approach towards the mundane scenery. And this gradually formed into our main theme; giving life to Gary 's - part human-part animal - characters on the streets of Glasgow .

Gary 's characters are heavily influenced by Manga drawings. He uses pencil, pen and markers to create these detailed drawings. And my work - being a designer - is quite contrived. In response to both of our clean, structured work we decided to start by making a mess!

We started out experimenting with different techniques like mono printing, silkscreen, various mark making techniques, and so on. This print work can be seen in the two books that we produced. One of the books we produced like a Chinese whisper; where one of us does something to the page and passes it onto the other person to add onto. We also created a painting in a similar way where I started it off by sticking a photograph and Gary improved it with his characters.

In the meantime we also started scanning some of the characters and digitally collaged them on to our photographs.

When we went to see the Feral Kingdom exhibition at CCA, Gary was particularly struck by the artist Dr. Lakra's wall paintings. And so there came our decision to do a wall painting for the exhibition which we thought would be like a stage/ backdrop for our characters.

These past three months have been a true creative partnership. One of the reasons for us to have worked so well together is that each of us brought our own expertise to the table and we worked side by side throughout our project. I really do believe that our collaboration helped both of us evolve technically and creatively.

It has been a very exciting three months, full of discovering all the unexpected ways in which collaboration can propel art works.

Zeynep Arman, 2008

Working with Zeynep introduced me to different ways of working.

Doodles are quick sketches which sometimes have mistakes in them. I draw them quickly and don't think too much about doing them. It was the first time I used my own doodles to make a final piece of work. I worked quicker than I would usually as I like to get into the detail of work. This seemed easy at first then it became harder when we were putting the ideas onto the wall. The plan was to use a Glasgow theme and we sort of stuck to that adding my own doodles and a canvas we did together.

Gary Turner, 2008