ARTISTS TALKING

# 191 [6 May 2010]

PROPOSALING

On the subject of applying for things (money) - see last post, I came across this while cataloguing for Intute today and thought it might be interesting.

http://www.viavaudeville.com/proposal/proposalpubl...

It is a publication (downloadable as a free PDF), which contains proposals, both successful and insuccessful from a number of artists. It's interesting to see how other people go about it...

Have you voted yet? Well go on then....

# 192 [9 May 2010]

It suddenly feels like everyone is waking up.. there are lots of exciting things afoot in Liverpool and the weather is nice enough and it is light enough to want to leave the house.

Last night there was the pre-launch of the Drawing Paper, a new, free paper concentrating on drawing (see images for an idea). The first issue had 20 artists in, me included and we all put £40 in the pot and Mike Carney designed and printed 3,000 copies. If you would like a copy, email me your address and I will send one. If I get a million replies I may ask for an SAE though!

emilyspeed@hotmail.com

Some images and a bit more information here:

http://drawing-paper.tumblr.com/

Next weekend, although it is light night and there are an insane amount of things I will miss in Liverpool, I am going to London. I want an art-saturated couple of days, to catch up with old friends, and to buy lettpress ink. My studio group is in 'No Soul for Sale, a festival of independents' at Tate Modern from Friday - Sunday for the 10th birthday celebrations. I have put some things in, so would like to see the chaos in person. 

Next exhibition up at Royal Standard 'This Matter' looks incredible, as much for the music at the opening night (the Grubby Mitts) and the programme of talks and things running alongside it as the work. This is really interesting and ambitious stuff, and I can't wait!

http://www.the-royal-standard.com/events/

I am almost settled into my new, double sized space there too and it is awesome. I feel delieriously happy there and I had a dance around in it yesterday. It still needs a tidy and shelves assembling/filling, but it is a GOOD space. The Royal Standard just keeps getting better and better.

http://www.thismatterblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/thegrubbymitts

# 193 [10 May 2010]

Heard from a magazine in China this morning that my copy of their May issue is on the way:

http://www.youthvision.cn/

They have featured me on their discovery page, with Inhabitant. Not sure what it will be like exactly, but looking forward to seeing it.

Conversation with Dan last night about the fact that everything is so manic at the moment and we are both a) exhausted and b) ratty and that c) the house is a hell-hole. He seemed to be realising that things might not ever change and that was a bit hard to fathom for him. No matter what I think about the old stereotype of the artist working all hours for the love of it, I do work an insane amount of hours. Things are especially mental at the moment though and my incredibly tight schedule for April/May got messed up by a death, a car blip and a birth, so it's worse than I thought. I didn't allow for life in my bad-timetabling.

His worst fear, I think, was that life is going to be a perpetual battle for time and non-stressed wife. But I have learned my lesson (a bit) this time, it has been too much to manage over the last two months and all for things that weren't necessarily awesome uses of my time. I'm sure I'll keep making dodgy decisions - but hopefully less all at once.

At the Taxed Skillmarket last month, Susan Jones advised me to keep track of hours worked. I have been doing that and it is working out between 10 - 14 hours a day, including weekends! I'm not sure that's very efficient working mind, there is a lot of anxiety getting in the way of that. She also advised that this could be used to budget time for future jobs, but that you always need to add 25%. ADD 25%. Got it. 25%. I might just make it 30%.

In other real-life news! My twin sister Ruth had her baby last week. Millicent Rose, who is a divine little creature. She smells delicious and I have been quite greedy about going round and holding her all the time (when I can get past the neighbours and grandma's - honestly!). Far more important than all the other worries. Dan is broody.

Right, back to that YSP book and student loan deferments....

# 194 [10 May 2010]

I have sent out a batch of Drawing Papers this morning, another one tomorrow or Wednesday when I find more envelopes (there must be hundreds in the house somewhere...).

I reached my limit yesterday for sending out, so if you would like two free copies, please send me an A4 SAE with 81p paid on it. Email me for my address:

emilyspeed@hotmail.com

Cheers +

# 195 [22 May 2010]

Been a bit awol haven't I? This last couple of weeks has been fairly manic! Several things have happened that I should have written about, but because there is some time lost, they have lost their immediacy. It's hard to write when it's not fresh. 

Things I will no doubt come back to -

Making a Living's open letter to Tate and Tate's 'No Soul for Sale' weekend.

The new government and the state of the arts.

The difficulties of trying to make ambitious new work for an exhibition where there is no budget available for anything. Currently £123.81 down. More to go...

So, the sun is a blessing as I am working on a 14ft high tower in the garden. I love making things like this, although I am not the best at it and can get very frustrated when things don't go to plan. A family friend has been incredible with his van and local wood yard discount. He is taking the work to Liverpool on Monday, so that means I have to finish the thing tomorrow - good deadline; a week in advance. There is no projector, so one piece of the work cannot be shown. It changes it all completely of course, but I just refuse to pay to hire one myself, and I'm certainly not buying one. So, sculpture and drawing it is, there is a slide projector, so maybe that will do.

Anyway, enough whining, apologies! Spreading the drawing paper in London was a joy and prompted lots of great conversations. If you asked me for one and haven't had it yet, please remind me, I got confused with my mailing list!

I also saw this when I was catching up with the papers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/may/22/fine-a...

What to do with a fine art degree. Hmm, sorry Guardian, but this is pretty useless as far as the title goes. It is essentially saying that fine art graduates don't so very well as far as employment goes. Yep, we know that. No mention of how crappy the data might be given the difficulty of collecting statistics in this area.

It also goes on to say what skills you may have gained, but the focus is on practical skills and creative flair. No mention of any other transferrable skills or of the kind of roles that a lot of artist make money from.It's also too simple to say artists might be good in jobs that will use creative flair, because altough this may be true, employers will generally have difficulty making the imaginary leap when looking at a CV with no industry experience. This also misses the vital point that people would need certain skills like using photoshop to a professional level for this kind of role; a different matter to being self-taught and using it to edit images of your work and make the odd flyer.

The graphs at the bottom mean little to me. Data here, collected by the  Higher Education Careers Services Unit and Graduate Prospects

This shows the kind of work people are doing - retail, catering etc, gender breakdown, what happens after uni and lastly, a sector breakdown using descriptions like commercial artist, fine artist and photographer. Trouble is, it just doesn't mean anything. It's all too generalised and doesn't account for people saying they are a fine artist, but not receiving any money from that and so on. I remember putting that on a questionnaire for ECA one year. There was no way I was calling myself a waitress, although that is how I payed my rent. It seemed very important to hold onto the fact that I was an artist, however dishonest.

Looking at these statistics doesn't give much idea of what actually goes on in the art world and how graduates operate. Also, it would be hard to look at this kind of thing and use it to improve things, which is surely what an overview should do; make obvious the big gaps/problems. The only thing that seems obvious is that there are too many fine art graduates per fine art related work opportunities.

Thanks for putting it in though, better than nothing I guess.

# 196 [5 June 2010]

Hi there.

It's been a while again hasn't it? All my energy has been going into getting through everything at the moment. There's still a lot on, but I can see the end in sight a bit more now (july 19th!!).

My copy of Vision Magazine arrived in the post this morning, which was nice to see. It's a fashion/lifestyle magazine published in China. I have a teeny section in the discovery part showing Inhabitant. The editor emailed me in March saying

I would like to report your work "Inhabitant " in our VISION DISCOVERY Section, which is a special section telling of fresh and good ideas in all fields.
I feel "inhibitant" is very good and want to show it in VISION DISCOVERY. 

I liked my cardboard adventures being described as very good. The magazine is a pretty beautiful thing too, lots of matt paper and photography/art content. So, very pleased to be in it basically.

http://www.youthvision.cn/

The Liverpool Art Prize opened on Thursday night. Apart from nearly falling through a banner while having my photo taken (thought it was solid), I managed to be pretty respectable all night. I loved working in there, making new things, so when people asked me if I was pleased with the work, I was. That's not the same as thinking it's great though, and there is (as usual) many things I would change/develop. Anyway, it's up, no one kicked anything or got killed by the tower, so a success all round.

http://www.liverpoolartprize.com/

Been thinking about the set-up of LAP though and must send some feedback or suggestions or something. It has cost about £200 to make the work I did, with no money available to help with that. I wonder if the prize money might be better spent with some new-work budget i.e. all the artists get a small participation fee rather then two people winning prizes. It came at an okay time for me, so I could find that money, but ask me in 6 months and it will probably be a completely different story! Strange position to be in really, when you're getting judged in such a wonky playing field. But I have no doubts that being in it is beneficial - apart from showing alongside some really interesting artists, having a great space and a huge audience, the LAP is sending quite a lot of traffic to my website and probably introducing a lot of people in Liverpool to my work.

Some images of the prize exhibition by sponsors Mycoy-Wynne

http://www.mccoywynne.co.uk/lap_2010/

I am now working on a printed work of Nathan Jones' poem 'Slow Magic' for his opening to celebrate the end of his year as Poet-in-residence. It's on 16th June at the Lost Soul and Stranger Service Station at the Bluecoat and it seems he has partnered up with lots of people for it. I like that approach and he is certainly spreading his funding around Liverpool! I am making a screenprinted and digitally printed thing that is a turkish-map folded paper bound in greyboard cover. I am enjoying myself immensly. Dan and I were having a look at the poem last night again and saying how much it is like art - difficult, dense but ultimately very rewarding when you spend some time and thought on it.

Details of the exhibition here: http://nathanatthebluecoat.wordpress.com/

Poem can be read here: http://mercyonline.co.uk/flatline/flatline05.pdf

My book for end of bursary at YSP is currently being proofed, so I shall get that back on Thursday and then the real book-panic begins! Pretty much shitting myself about completing such a big task when I am also working in schools solidly for the next 5 weeks. But it will be done, must just make sure I'm not mean to Dan for the duration; he usually bears the brunt of my stress and it's just not fair! It's also been a nice task to do though, so I'm looking forward to it, just DAUNTED! It shall be great practice for compiling a catalogue for my show there next year though (I won't be so hands on with that one though).

Right back to the poem, and some schlepping around in my pyjamas.

# 197 [7 June 2010]

Talk about crash and burn. Why is it that even though I know this always happens after a big install, I am never prepared for it. All I can say is a big grey cloud is stubbornly loitering.

I find the competative aspect of this exhibition pretty difficult and the whole award ceremony thing just seems horrendous. I did just email Ian to check they weren't going to make us sit on a stage this year (the poor sods last year did). I don't think I could do that - all those people watching your reaction, infact, all those people just looking at you! I am sure my uncontrollable blushing may return from high school if we were on a stage. NO NO NO.

Anyway, sometimes I have to wonder about my moods - my aunt who died last month had Bi-polar and my mum and sister have some pretty similar behavioural traits, as do I. But bugger that - I'm not even going there while they are just moods, i.e. they go away in a few days. Most of it is anxiety I reckon, which comes straight from stressing out. There just has to be a way of being busy and working hard, but in a less extreme way, right? I am already looking forward to July with joy and dread, nothing to do = bliss, but nothing to do also means I'm not working and no money will be coming in. More consistentcy please.

Anyway, the big thing that I am looking forward to in the summer is some time to research. I realised during A Curriculum and getting work ready for the Liverpool Art Prize how amazing time to play is. Figure things out, mess things up and ultimately see a bit of development. At the moment that mainly consists of collecting envelopes and undoing them. There are some beautiful patterns out there!

Tomorrow I am going back to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and will be there working with school groups for the next five weeks solid. I feel exhausted just anticipating it! What a relief to not have to collect recycled materials any longer though, Dan will be estatic :D

Right, enough moaning, sorry about that. I'll be more cheerful next time, I promise.

# 198 [9 June 2010]

I have a working week at the moment, which is odd, and making me a little annoyed (I want my autonomy back now please), but having work and a little planning ahead are also things to be grateful for, I know.

I am going into schools doing big cardboard den/building kinds of things - knackering and loud - then have 5/6 hours cataloguing to do every evening, and full days of it at weekends. Not forever, but I am getting behind with so much already. It's easier being in Yorkshire because I am in a hotel, so I can just get into pyjamas and crack on cataloguing. It's satisfying too, working so hard and I am glad to be busy to take my mind off other things (see previous post).

At the back of my mind new things are growing, mainly some work I want to make, a film of crushed and collapsed things, and some text/book work and sculpture around eggs and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Sounds random I know, but it makes perfect sense to me.

These will have to wait. I really have to apply for some research funding somewhere down the line - although I feel lost and unsure about where to start. Arts Council route always seems unlikely, but probably more so at the moment. I think I know a few people who've had R & D funding, so I shall have to see if they are willing to offer some pointers. I will have to have a very good think about these things in my week off in July. Wait, that would be working though. Oh shit. Perhaps I will sleep for four days and think/read/write for three, but only about nice things, with wine and barbeques. That's not a bad compromise.

Tomorrow is meetings at Yorkshire Sculpture Park so I am looking forward to a good furkle round the education archive and a delicious lunch - seriously, the restaurant there is amazing. There is also the new David Nash show to see and I have heard rumours of a drawing workshop involving Jenny West.... I hope I get to meet her, I LOVE her work, but most likely it won't be her day. I am also getting the proofed version of the bursary book back, so I am fairly terrified of that. It's hard not to take these things personally, even though I spotted a typo as soon as I'd emailed it through! At least I won't get lost; I have spent the last two days doing many extra miles trying to find schools and meet people - my sat nav doesn't have wakefield's new roads on and it hates me.

# 199 [16 June 2010]

Post #200! Yikes.

Back from Yorkshire for a day and just catching up on cataloguing/admin/invoicing and general life. Someone drove into the back of my car on Saturday night so I have a very sore neck and have been pretty fed up about the timing of it all. Going all that way in my little red van has not felt the most reliable way to travel! Anyway, everyone was fine, so that's all that matters really, insurance should sort out the rest, although my third party managed to give me some dodgy contact details, so hope the debt collectors can find her!

A piece of the art prize work got broken on Friday too, so that didn't help my mood. It bothered me more than I expected, although I knew having delicate casts on the floor was asking for trouble. Going to replace it today, although the new version is not as good as it's been made in a rush. Oh well!

I saw this today on a-n: Gallery, dealer and agent agreements.

http://www.a-n.co.uk/knowledge_bank/shortcut/artic...

I thought it was a good read, and importantly stressed the importance of the two way relationship. I felt lucky this year to speak to two gallerists about the way they work: Ceri Hand & Kate MacGarry. They were both keen to demystify the whole process and it was nice to see that they are just people working with other people (artists).

I interviewed Ceri briefly, when she was kind enough to spare a moment during a busy day at the gallery (preparing for imminent art fairs, mid-visit with Rebecca from Saatchi and all on her 40th birthday!). I was pretty distracted by her amazing dress, so was glad I recorded the conversation. She described her relationship with her artists a bit and how they had all developed together since the gallery opened. Kate MacGarry said similar, as most of the artists she represents have been with her from the start. Ceri also talked about studio visits (saying that a lot of artists, especially in the North, seem to have little idea what is expected during one), and the difference of choosing work for art fairs over exhibitions and that a lot of artists need input on this. Sounds good to have such a critical friend/gallerist.

Ceri also stressed the importance of artists knowing what is appropriate and the fact that respect goes two-ways. So, if you want a gallery to look at your work, do your research on them first and don't rock up asking for a job if you haven't even set foot in the place. Also, turning up with a portfolio randomly is not the best idea.

In the a-n article, they mention the fact that these relationships are never static - so pretty much the same story as with all other aspects of being an artist! I think I have come to realise since I graduated (in 2001), that having a gallery is not the be all and end all. There are plenty of other ways to make a living or exhibit or work. They may not come with much support or input, but they exist. I may start looking for some more critical friends though - people have asked whether I have had any feedback from the art prize show and I can't really say I have. Not any that I can 100% believe as most of it was heard at the opening.

I'm going to have to carry this on I think... next post.....

# 200 [16 June 2010]

In reality, being represented by a gallery is not for the many. Hearing lots of curators/collectors talk at the symposium at A Foundation, which was part of The Economy of the Gift exhibition/art fair, was like being in a different world. About 30-40 people attended, all collectors, gallerists and some artists (those in the show). They seemed to be used to operating in their specific circles and a lot of the discussion indicated that unrepresented artists were pretty much invisible to them. It was about wider issues too though, and a very interesting discussion to sit in on. One man (whose name I don't know as he was a last minute change to the programme), made a bit of a derogatory comment about a-n, their activities, or artists - I'm not sure of the intent entirely, but it made me bristle. I paraphrase, but something like - 'it's all very well a-n printing guides to being an artist and trying to 'professionalise' the arts, but you either have it or not'.

Anyway, sitting there, as one of those artists without a gallery and finding a-n's guides pretty useful, indeed, writing about these things myself, I felt belittled. I felt he was basically  talking about me, so I could conclude that I do not have it, so may as well go home. But I think he was wrong to generalize like that, and perhaps it says more about his view of where the art world lies. Maybe he is not getting to enough shows/events outside a certain area of the arts? But generally I felt it was unfair and I wanted some recognition for my own position.

But then, evidence of his point turned up. and the case for artists was not helped by an audience member who turned up late. After a discussion on the state of public collections in Eastern Europe by the panel, audience member popped his hand up to ask a question. 'Can you give me some advice on how to get a gallery' he asked. You could almost see those around him shuffling their chairs away. Eyes rolled. I cringed inside - what was he thinking? Why did he think such a self-centered question was in any way relevent? How did he think this made him (US!!!) come across? It goes back to the respect thing again, if you want some advice or input from these people, surely you need to listen to what they're saying and respect the situation, decide what's appropriate.

Interestingly, an artist on the panel showed another gulf in understanding. She was asked a question about some of the issues brought up - something about public collections, and she said that she didn't know about that, but could talk about her work. She then proceeded to talk about her practice from ten minutes. I was baffled. I think there were some language difficulties, but I suspect the same might have happened regardless.

So why are many artists unable to engage with the bigger issues or add their opinion to debates? I suspect it is the same reason that we are not very good at presenting a united front; because there is a tendancy towards introspection and self-interest. There is no time to read around these issues while you are trying to make work and work. This is often necessary to make a living, to stay on top of everything, but I wonder if it is also embedded a bit at University and is a standard expectation in the field. I do it sometimes I'm sure - just look how quiet my blog has gone since my workload increased! But I hope I will never get to the ridiculous level of feeling entitlement like audience member. Thankfully, Katriona Beales redeemed us artists at the symposium by making a very intelligent and considered plea on behalf of artists outside of London. There was tangible relief in the room as this eloquent artist spoke up and wiped out the memory of the previous question.