Blog | Michael Borkowsky | Perfumer of the People

Michael Borkowsky - Perfumer of the People

Exhibition Opportunity – Food Labels at the Ready!

Michael Borkowsky

Mar 29, 2017
1 min

Exhibition Opportunity – Food Labels at the Ready!

EXHIBITION OPPORTUNITY. I am going to be in a group show in Athens in May as part of a group exhibition called Platforms. In an effort to raise funds we are calling out to artists to exhibit small works to be part of the show. We are charging everyone £5, and your work must be made on a food or drinks label. ‘Revolutin’ By Alan Dunn is an example of the kind of work we’ve received so far. Your work can be any subject and take any form, and must be presented unframed and unmou

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Choosing Chocolates

Michael Borkowsky

Feb 21, 2015
1 min

Choosing Chocolates

Acting as an appendage to Speculative Studio Spaces, I present to you some perfectly crafted chocolates. These are no ordinary chocolates – each is attached to a particular process that artists undertake in their creative practice. These chocolates, then, allow the audience to relinquish control of artists’ processes and as such, a facet of their identity, their sense of authorship and their sense of ownership. The audience may now regard creative processes as subjective, ope

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Charting My Year of Change

Michael Borkowsky

Dec 19, 2014
4 min

Charting My Year of Change

2014 has been a joyously productive beast with a tenancy to provide moments of reflection and a degree of transiency. My practice has meandered from the virtues of re-imagining still-life to exploiting the art found within video games to considering the studio space as a viable means of expression. My identity as an artist has shifted. With a view to dismiss the problematic notion of being considered simply as ‘that guy who makes paint out of food’ I sought new ways of invest

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Artists’ Paint Colour #2 – Empty Frame

Michael Borkowsky

Oct 24, 2014
1 min

Artists’ Paint Colour #2 – Empty Frame

Taking ideas from artists and turning them into paint. Each paint is already primed with implications and preconceptions based on the artists’ ideas: This allows you to choose between using the paint as a raw medium, or exploiting the connotations found within the paint. The choice is yours. Colour #2 – Empty Frame Velvety, rich and decadent with the tactile consistency of freshly churned butter, Empty Frame is a double pigment colour with a subtlety that eludes many. Specifi

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The End of the Beginning is Marked With Success

Michael Borkowsky

Sep 7, 2014
2 min

The End of the Beginning is Marked With Success

Last Friday saw me manage and curate ‘Sweet Tooth’ – a group exhibition around the theme of food at Funky Aardvark Gallery, Chester. It was the first time I had been fully responsible for organising and curating an exhibition since my solo show at Gage Gallery, Sheffield in March. The difference here was the refreshingly positive impact my show had on the other artists involved. Learning from the struggles of producing a body of work and promoting it alone, I decided that thi

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The Triumphant return of the Paint Making Workshop!

Michael Borkowsky

Aug 5, 2014
1 min

The Triumphant return of the Paint Making Workshop!

Unceremoniously, I have sprained my ankle, which has dictated a halt in creative proceedings. I have designed a make-shift studio in my living room, complete with hastily purchased paint products and canvases. However, progress is slow due to the endless balancing act of attempting to apply pigment to surface whilst keeping my foot in a levitated position at all times. And yet, in the wake of such frustration, some excellent news. From September I shall be hosting a paint mak

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Stepping into the Sheffield Culinary Scene

Michael Borkowsky

May 18, 2014
2 min

Stepping into the Sheffield Culinary Scene

For the past few weeks I have had my commercial head thoroughly screwed on. As a contemporary artist untroubled by the stigma that is ‘making a bit of money’, I have decided to thrust myself into the realm of selling my work at a stall on a bank holiday weekend. Well, sort of. Bird’s Yard is an independent shop that showcases local art and craft in Sheffield, and as such, seems like an ideal venue for which to see whether the paints I make have any commercial value. Moreover,

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Reflecting on My First Solo Exhibition

Michael Borkowsky

Mar 19, 2014
2 min

Reflecting on My First Solo Exhibition

A little over a week ago ‘Shelf Life’ – my solo exhibition at Gage Gallery, Sheffield – came to an end. I have had a fair few group shows prior to this, but I would say that ‘Shelf Life’ was my first true solo exhibition. As such, it involved a great deal of organising, developing and promoting. There was a sense of relief when everything was sorted and I could just relax and allow others to engage with my work. Whilst I can be relatively pleased with the effort I went to in

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A chance to buy my original paintings for just £5!

Michael Borkowsky

Mar 5, 2014
2 min

A chance to buy my original paintings for just £5!

Whilst ‘Shelf Life’ – My exhibition currently showing at Gage Gallery, Sheffield – covers a broad spectrum of concerns regarding food, one of its most coherent avenues of enquiry is the principle of aligning the value of art to the value of its subject: If a piece of fruit can be purchased with ease from a market stall then, in the interests of engaging an audience directly and with sincerity, a depiction of fruit should be purchased similarly. So in that spirit, I present to

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The Pressures of an Impending Exhibition

Michael Borkowsky

Feb 22, 2014
2 min

The Pressures of an Impending Exhibition

This is more of a freak post than a new one – it is a direct result of my previous post and acts as an appendage to it. It is merely to express my sheer disbelief at the fact that it is now less than one week until my exhibition and corresponding workshop. I still have plenty to do but I am very much on schedule. I tend to channel the feeling of pressure in a positive and productive way, and at the moment I am producing about two fully completed works a day. Though when I exp

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News About My Upcoming Exhibition and Paint Making Workshop.

Michael Borkowsky

Feb 8, 2014
2 min

News About My Upcoming Exhibition and Paint Making Workshop.

Over the last month I have been feverishly painting as many pictures of fruit as I can; applying paint directly to loaves of bread; wrapping apples in modroc; painting works of still life; looking long and hard at pictures of burgers and applying thirty-two homemade egg tempera paints to a board. So, why the hell am I doing all this? Well, because each of these endeavours form some part of my upcoming solo exhibition – named ‘Shelf Life’ – which will be held at Gage Gallery:

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Michael Borkowsky

Jan 10, 2014
4 min

Fourteen for 2014

A happy and prosperous New Year to you all. I thought I’d better say that now, as the date is unnervingly on the cusp of being regarded as the ‘New’ year and is hurtling headlong into the realms of being regarded as merely the year. Indeed, I intended to write this blog a few days earlier, whereby it would have been readily acceptable to wish you all a Happy New Year. Now, I am in the danger zone of being exposed as a socially redundant and cretinous human being, due to ill-c

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My Open Studio Adventure

Michael Borkowsky

Dec 6, 2013
2 min

My Open Studio Adventure

In the midst of the excitement of reaching our Kickstarter funding (An embarrassingly big ‘thank you’ to everyone to contributed and who helped spread the word, incidentally) I have shamefully neglected to describe and assess the recent open studio event I participated in at my studio at KIAC. So here goes. I have only been involved in one other open studio event prior to this. It was at University a few years ago. It consisted mainly of drinking tea and waiting for someone –

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Biscuits With a Hint of Emotion

Michael Borkowsky

Nov 18, 2013
1 min

Biscuits With a Hint of Emotion

The next piece of work I wish to put on virtual display for you all to gaze upon is this thing: ‘4 Biscuits’ (2013) Four digestive biscuits, coated with four different colours of acrylic paint and present framed and mounded on a canvas board. Here, attempts have been made to allow the audience to respond to this piece directly and with with immediacy. Block colours are able to highlight in a base, almost binary way, emotion. This corresponds with the accessible nature of the

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Back With a Spice Rack

Michael Borkowsky

Nov 3, 2013
2 min

Back With a Spice Rack

If you have been wondering where I have escaped to for the last month or so (and let’s face it, most of you have) I can joyously claim that I’ve actually been getting some bloody work done. The last few weeks have been a relentless pursuit of finished articles before the bite of winter renders the studio I work in uninhabitable. I find it a bit of a struggle to exact a balance between making stuff and networking. Often I fluctuate in preference between one and the other. Over

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My Selby Little Fest Experience

Michael Borkowsky

Sep 24, 2013
2 min

My Selby Little Fest Experience

Last weekend saw me strut my stuff in Selby as part of Selby Little Fest. It was the fist time I had been involved in any kind of arts event or festival and I was more than happy to attend and gain experience, meeting like minded people and discussing potential collaborations along the way. I was to demonstrate the processes used to create paint in situ, engaging the public with the idea that creating paint can be fun and stimulating, and generally delighting and intriguing t

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My Paint-Making Workshop Experience

Michael Borkowsky

Sep 6, 2013
2 min

My Paint-Making Workshop Experience

So, I’ve finally gone and done a bit of teaching. I have finally imparted whatever remnants of wisdom I have onto others, which they can apply to their own artistic endeavours. How did it go? Well, rather bloody well actually. And I am very grateful to Cupola Gallery for their hospitality and for thinking that a paint making workshop was a good idea in the first place. My paint-making workshop in action! My workshop seems to be pretty solid ‘straight out of the box,’ with onl

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Wednesday is ‘Studio Day’

Michael Borkowsky

Aug 28, 2013
2 min

Wednesday is ‘Studio Day’

Wednesday is a good time for me to blog. It is the one day of the week at I can always entirely dedicate to artistic practice. For some parts of the week I have to be a librarian in order to pay the bills, other parts I must adhere to the trivial humane necessities such as ‘socialising’ and ‘shopping for clothes so that I don’t look like a tramp’. But Wednesday is very much ‘Studio Day’ and as such, a whole wealth of creative development needs to be documented, analysed and r

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Diary of a Non-Synesthete

Michael Borkowsky

Aug 25, 2013
2 min

Diary of a Non-Synesthete

As an artist, the life of someone with synesthesia – a condition which can basically be described as a mixing of the senses – is at worst intriguing and at best desirable. The ability to see the world differently is something inherent in all artists, but the ability to literally and consciously perceive the world in a way which is altered from what is seen to be ‘normal’ is something of great personal intrigue. For me, synesthesia acts as an automatic form of artistic express

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Seeing the Future

Michael Borkowsky

Jul 31, 2013
2 min

Seeing the Future

My latest work signifies something of a breakthrough in terms of what a jar of paint can depict: A degree of subjection is instantly attached to the contents of each jar. They no longer represent paint; they represent the essence of paint. Four Jars of Memory The properties of food have still been exploited in order to achieve the paint. But rather than describing the face value of the paint, labels have been attached that describe metaphorical and experiential attachment to

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