ARTISTS TALKING

# 49 [22 January 2009]

The show is just about up. We are off to tweak it in a minute. The gallery floor did have to be reinforced with a prodigious amount of timber. It still bounces a little and every time you walk past Mariele's mountain ranges the sky ripples ominously. Yesterday I finally got out of the gallery and saw a little bit of San Francisco, hopefully I will see a little more today. Annika, Mariele and I visited CCA yesterday where, of course, they knew the curator who had recently come from Berlin. We were having a tour of the show there when suddenly the guide bent double and started talking in a gravelly voice. I thought she might be chanelling spirits or having a fit but it turned out to be some sort of performance. In a moment she righted herself and carried on as if nothing had happened.

Earlier, in the street, I had been passed by a woman carrying an invisible cat. It kept scratching her.

# 48 [20 January 2009]

My eyes are piggy and red and the first film is done, though I'm a bit unsure about one section with a crawling sock. The pal - ntsc conversion program seemed to work ok too but I'll find out this morning for sure. If it doesn't do its job I haven't really got a plan b. After work we all met up with Mariele for a Thai meal. David is extremely nervous about filling her tanks with water. He made the mistake of looking under his gallery floor and was not too reassured by what he found. We may be all under it soon trying to prop it up with bits of wood and old sculptures. 

The show opens Thursday - one more film to make. I'm considering secretly filming in the hotel, my room already looks like a mad inventor's workshop. Luckily my frantic tipping has lead to a good relationship with the house keeper, she keeps leaving me little notes.

# 47 [19 January 2009]

Yesterday was a bit of a daze again my head pounded (still does) I got loads done though. Tall spindly creatures shimmied little pink nail brushes fought to the death and I built a freeway in the gallery. I felt a bit guilty because everyone else was doing the mundane stuff, deciding the hang, changing the colours on the walls, tripping over my growing pile of detritus and not swearing. I'm hoping to get the first film finished today before Mariele arrives.

Oh and someone found my wallet at Heathrow and posted it home, with the money inside!

# 46 [18 January 2009]

Today is the morning after. I think that I was awake for 24 hours yesterday so I got quite a lot done but cannot remember any of it clearly. I had my pocket picked at Heathrow, losing all my cash. I flew to San Francisco and  went out drinking with Annika , Johanna, Ian and David Cunningham. We ended up in a rooftop bar overlooking the city (actually we ended up in the hotel bar).

The Gallery looks great though David thinks its a mess. Everything is waiting to be unpacked including two massive wooden cases containing Mariele's vitrines.

I start making stuff today around 12, my head hurts

# 45 [16 January 2009]

Just before I travel I always feel an anxiety that borders on illness. A short period of pallid sweatiness is usually followed by an embarrassing amount of twitching and bouncing. This wasn’t helped this morning by my friends’ insistence on joking loudly about bird strikes and watery landings. Once I’ve begun however this feeling is soon replaced by boredom. This was how I spent most of my four-hour journey from Ipswich to the Holiday Inn at Heathrow. Now I’m sitting in my plush hotel room with a bag full of junk and electronics thinking about getting through customs tomorrow. On the underground I met a young man who worked for some sort of clandestine Christian agency. He said he had flown on 77 planes last year, collected sick bags and was about to ferry his boss over to the US for Obama’s inauguration. He seemed worried that I made odd little films.

Tomorrow I’ll be in San Francisco

# 44 [14 January 2009]

Animated, the show at Wysing arts centre, is up. Well at least my bit is. I just have to hope the tvs don't go bang and my hastily constructed shelf doesn't fall off the wall. I left the gallery last night in an exciting state of near readiness. As usual everybody else's work looked great and I'm sorry I'll miss the opening on Saturday. Tomorrow is the designated day for finalising my packing and itinerary for San Francisco and I've realised it is not without irony that the sculpture I'm showing at Animated depicts an aeroplane plummeting into an iceberg.

# 43 [11 January 2009]

Last night I was talking to a psychic about a cuddly toy, my monosyllabic grunts and noncommittal answers were being recorded so I got increasingly sweaty as the interview went on. I don't usually choose to do this sort of thing, it was part of a project by Annabel Dover. She is making drawings of the objects, that people brought in, who knows what she is going to to do with the recordings. I'd arrived at her studio after one of my more fruitful trips to London. I'd dropped in to the Whitecross Gallery to pick up my Mooney and been to see a lovely little show at Rokeby. I'm beginning to get more comfortable about going into galleries and I'm finding them more easily since I was given a sat nav for Christmas. Still, wandering around London holding it out in front of me like the word of god while a disembodied voice tells me to turn left is perhaps not the coolest thing to do.

The rest of this week is laid out in front of me and everything must go really smoothly or I will be forced to cry in public.

Monday: Teach sculpture during the day, then pack up 5 vcrs and 7 tvs and various tapes and dvds and sculptures for Wysing.

Tuesday: Drive to Wysing (using Sat Nav) and set up show. (Make tvs work and write instructions for the invigilators)

Wednesday: Teach video during the day, organise paperwork for San Francisco (etickets, visa waivers etc) look at a map and quell panic. I realised today I've never been abroad on my own before, I feel like I'm about to become truly adult.

Thursday: Pack up and weigh all my film making equipment (actually repack it for the third time) pack some clothes. Double check that I'm not trying to take anything illegal.

Friday: Teach painting then drive to a lovely Heathrow hotel for a good nights sleep.

Saturday: fly

# 42 [1 January 2009]

Things are coming to a head. With two shows looming I am strangely relaxed and not completely prepared. The show at Wysing Arts Centre is nearly all ready to go and packed into cardboard boxes. I'm showing quite a lot of stuff and foolishly I agreed to put together a sort of installation of older work. Actually its less of an installation and more of a pile of old tvs which may or may not work. Some of them twitch and flicker, another blurts out occasional static obscenities while a third spookily picks up one of the video tapes (the wrong one) without being connected. Lotte asked me to come up with a title for the pile. I have a lot of trouble with titles and usually settle for something crassly obvious in an attempt to avoid pretentiousness. This time I think I am going for pretentiousness (The Best of all Possible Worlds) in an attempt to cover up anything that goes wrong. I've also bee asked to come up with a price list for the videos. I went straight to the AN site where I hoped to find a guide which would provide a list of prices that should be applied to different editions of dvds of varying lengths made by artists who are in turn rated by some sort of star system. "Ah yes an edition of 5, 3 minute dvds by a two star artist (I can dream) that would be £47.99" But alas no, lots of advice but no hard figures. I have two price lists on the go at the moment one I think is in line with what other artists seem to charge, the other is more like a Woolworth's sale.

More interestingly I have just been sent an email. In an earlier blog I accidentally put the wrong details for my protest film blog www.protestfilm.blogspot.com I stupidly missed out the blogspot and am being  threatened by a litigious North Carolinian domain farmer. Here's an excerpt:

" If you continue to use the name ProtestFilm.com for your own purpose and you do not remove the links where you have used this domain name. I will charge you a 3,500 a month fee as June 2/2009.

I will also approach google and Blogspot to have your blog removed from the Internet. You are providing a fictitious link which is corrupting their search engine results.

I am very serious. I will acquire a judgement from the North Carolina court system and then put a lien on your personal property. I hope we wear the same size shoes... Since we North Carolina is the North American headquarters for Nortel, Cisco, and IBM, we have very strict laws dealing with Internet property. The law is on my side."

needless to say I've changed the post.

# 41 [4 December 2008]

The Best of all Possible Worlds

 I think I'm heading for a fall.

 Refutation is live, now available at www.refutation.net

I went to the launch party which was wedged (literally) into a small shop in Islington. There was beer at the entrance and a narrowing crowd pointing at an iMac sited bizarrely under a golden steer's skull.

I stayed in a hotel near Kings Cross, it wasn't too bad.

I went to see the Turner prize expecting to be disappointed. But I wasn't, I enjoyed it.

I went to see  Jock and John Mooney's show 'Hell of a Fight for the Last Piece of Pudding" (great title) at the Whitecross gallery expecting to like it lots. And I did, so much so that I have become an art collector. I bought a little creature: an exposed brain growing out of a severed leg, its eyes were on stalks - well they would be wouldn't they? It could be the first piece of artwork I have that wasn't swapped or stolen, I might be growing up.

I queued for a Thai curry served from a van and was asked for directions twice.

Back home an Icelandic curator with a wonderfully long name wants some of my work for a dvd magazine she is producing and an Italian website has asked me to curate a show of british video art for them. As usual I haven't a clue where to start.

# 40 [9 November 2008]

I got in a mood and failed to go to Space - that's only partly true, I realised I'd been spending too much money going to London and as I'm off to Amsterdam this week I thought I'd better give it a miss. Speaking of cash I've started to think about winding up my Arts Council grant, which is already rather overdue. I've done most of the things I set out to do (with revisions and diversions) but the one thing I haven't done is be mentored. I did tentatively arrange to meet up with Jordan Baseman but upheavals at home interrupted and I feel too embarrassed to get back in touch now. It occurs to me I could put an ad up on the opportunities page: 'mentor wanted must have the key to artistic success'. To get my evaluation started I've been looking through my cv and at my work in general to try and work out if I've moved on, plateaued, or got worse over the last two years. Its not that clear, and I'm not totally convinced its that important. The only measurable change is that there are a couple more solo shows and a higher proportion of the things I'm involved in have come about by invitation. I could say I have been sought out, but to be honest I've become such an internet whore that I think these people probably trip over me and become entangled.

 This navel gazing could become redundant soon as tomorrow I am taking 50 students on the ferry, storms are forecast.