ARTISTS TALKING

# 81 [31 August 2011]

It has been a while since I last posted on here. This is because I have moved to a larger and grander living arrangement where one half of a open plan space exists alongside another, one side being my studio, the other my living space:

             Bounce and haul-ass

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Sitting on the bright orange plush sofa in my open plan loft apartment I relax, having just listened to a rendition of some other song or other on Jazz FM. I turn my head to the corner of the room looking passed the spiral staircase in front of me. There, in this corner, I see my desk. I stand up from the sofa and step back on to its cushioned surface - giving my vision more panoramic height I survey the rest of my apartment and its contents. To the left of the desk and heading back in to the centre of the space there are several pieces of cut wood ordained with oil paint and beeswax varnish. At the foot of these 'props' sit several counted objects of similar colours, shapes and sizes.

Two movements come to mind as I stand on my sofa in place of sitting still. One is to bounce, just once, as if a trampoline exists beneath my feet. The other is to haul-ass to the other side of the room passed the staircase to join in with the objects.

I make the first move and bounce once on the sofa. The sofa implodes beneath me and I end up on the floor of the living area behind staring at the underside of the coffee table. I then stand and begin to move awkwardly towards the stair in the centre of the room. I turn and look back at the orange sofa - it's more like a deliberated sculpture now. Bright and ornamenting it reminds me of an office-cum-staff room I used to take breaks in, which housed a similar couch for lounging on next to the curator's personal assistant. With her insistent typing she declined every hot cup of tea you offered her, instead you laid back and watched her send email after email and answer the phone with a flash of an arm movement - her face was painted with the colour of the monitor screen she stared at whilst speaking.

I make the second move now. I haul the sofa and my ass from one side of the apartment to the other - there it is to become a colour-way for a new set of paintings or props in the 'studio' area of my open plan habitation. To do this I have to take a half moon trajectory around the central staircase - reaching a quarter of the way I stop pulling, take a peek down the steel steps, half moon around the orange mess itself, and push for the rest of the journey. One half moon tipped with a tangent of another, slightly smaller half moon. After hauling my ass, the sofa transforms and reaches another possibility in its existence.

I bounce, and then I haul ass. I break and then I drag the breakage from one context in to another, as if moving from one continent to next with the flick of a switch.

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# 80 [22 July 2011]

The adventures of Kim-bob and me [part 1]

I slid open my phone to access saved contacts; under favourites I find Kimbal’s number and press dial. The phone nears on connection and then fails – I lift the phone away from my ear and press re-dial, this time it connects, but alas to a foreign dial-tone: he is on his travels again but still he answers:

Hi Richard how are you, I am currently in a queue for a bus in Athens having being scolded by the police for attempting to hitch a ride to the shore, I’m not island hopping I am undergoing a performative exercise that will result in an exhibition in Manchester at the end of June. It’ll be more like the end of July at this rate. Hi Kim, is this costing me a bom? No it is me though, I have to pay to accept calls – oh and that reminds me, I have little credit: but how are you? I’m good – I just wanted to touch base on the project we discussed last month forwarding the residency we underwent last year. Oh okay. Well, can we speak when I am back in the UK? Okay. Will call you beginning July. Good luck.

It is now July and I get around to calling again just before my journey to London from Edinburgh with East Coast, after tracking Kim’s location on Facebook I map his current capacity on the road back to London from Manchester. Whether he is on a bus or as passenger in someone’s car I’m not so sure, but I slide open my phone to access saved contacts; under recent conversations I find Kim’s number and press dial – I anticipate a foreign dial tone but it never comes, instead it connects to UK fluidity: it dials, and dials some more. I get to the point of counting the dials as if I am counting the turns in the road as I chase Kim on his bike around South Tottenham. I say to myself only two more rings and then I am done – I don’t like leaving voice messages so instead I draft a text message in my head: a sort of haiku in place of prolonged conversation:

My hotel is near
Greenwich is that too far for
You to come meet me?

Kim answers a few seconds in to the first draft. Hi how are you I am currently on a bus back to London the exhibition went well. Not so bad thanks the weather is shit here in Scotland. I heard the storms will meet me in London on my arrival. Are you hitching? Yes. Okay, can you speak? Erm, not for long don’t have too much battery can you email me instead? Okay.

Email to Kimbal:

Hi Kim,

I am about to walk down to the train station for the 3.30pm East Coast train to London Kings Cross, I arrive I think around 8pm. Are you around this evening to catch up? We could do with talking about this in person and get our ideas together.

I have to find my hotel first, which is in Greenwich – is that near where you are in terms of transport? If it is lets meet up for a beer and get this ball rolling.

Also, I think we should build a schedule to get drawings and written texts sent to one another – start building up a dialogue and a library of one another’s ideas. How about once every two weeks on the Friday we post something to each other. I will take your address down later...

I will be at my emails on the train as I have editorial work to do, so will catch anything you send back.

Cheers

Richard

# 79 [18 July 2011]

Fourteen days later dually image

[a nod to handstand technique]

I am heading backwards in to the south again, for the second time in a week. Soon I will hit England with the North Sea on my right hand side and the track towards Cumbria on my left. As the breadth of the country matures pasts its bottleneck the coast will slowly disappear as the train heads inland. The clouds, according to the weather report, will close in on the train to the eventual point in time where relativity excludes itself from our spearheaded location. If the earth stopped moving the atmosphere would maintain its viscosity across the surface of land and sea: high winds would rip us from the earth at speeds beyond macro-recognition and the skies would blur between you and the next solid object. Instant death would hit you in a matter of milliseconds. 

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In editing these two trains of thought I would have to extract one from the other and place them side-by-side. This editing would efface any tautological misreading allowing the reader to cross-reference one narrative with the other. But on a whole one stream of access to the idea is relative to the other. 

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If I had your speed and you borrowed mine for a second or two we could work out what displacement lay between us: as your window seat catches up with mine we get to enjoy an expanded lapse in time where visual contact is exposed and slowed. Your face flickers gently with recognition. Mine probably makes the same involuntary contortion as always, and for a brief calculation we stare in to one another's eyes with exacting measure. 

# 78 [4 July 2011]

"Image directories. One image holds the centre of the next image. This image gives away its centre as it knows its own centre will have space on the image that comes after..."

To opt-in and opt-out: on image conference and directories

Question: How many times can you cut and how many times can you paste? And which tools do you use to defy the appropriation of an image, bypass its content and connotations - how much does it become about 'cut' and then 'paste'.

I think we cut and paste from conversations we have.

Mild chats to full blown heightened infused arguments - afterwards and during reflection, we tend to cut and paste elements. Try a conversation you have with your camera. You have a direct dictation of the image's content in terms of the still-life in front of you, and your conversation is to have this still-life recorded using the correct lighting, the right sort of angle - I suppose this can be widened to a conversation (or a conference) between the camera and the tripod and then you, the eye's and the fingers that press the shutter release.

The conversation is then exposed. And there is a direct, then, cutting and pasting that happens in your mind as you say, "I will photograph this with a 5:7 ratio, but I will edit it square not rectangular… so I can cut this bit out, and this bit and the next bit using this next bit as the centre of the image. The centre of the conversation… the centre of the conference."

You then stand up right, hands placed carefully on hips, and you stare back at the still-life in front of you questioning its content: you decide to take another two or three shots, one or two maybe with flash, using the camera as your conversing tool.

But what then of the post-production process. What then of 'non-wet' photography and its apparent freedom and its actuality in ratios and measurability? A quick change from one size to another, attributing printing quality and deriving web capability. One colour mode to the next colour mode and then back.

So you finally have two images that you are both happy with, both the camera and yourself that is. But in terms of the installed composition - you want to excerpt more of a collaged framing. So… you take one tool and place it in one hand… and you take another tool (something with a straight edge) and place it in the other hand: the camera sits there and watches, just as always, documenting your approach and your changing and shifting of an image.

You take one tool to the image: cut.
You take the next tool to the image: cut again. You take the other image, which matches the prior-image in size and ratio exactly, and on this image you paste from the other.

You then do the same to second image, opting-in to a mirrored affect. Following the same movements You take on tool to the image: cut. You take the next tool to the image: cut again.

You then end up with two image that speak to one another. Or two images that have the affect of you, and your camera, staring in to a mirror… asking a question of the reflected inspection.

# 77 [12 June 2011]

brand new arrangement studies

I think the correct term to use here is studies. These are by no means finished works, just arrangements for possible installations, possible props for movement and alternative contexts for widening and exploring the content of existing drawings.

I suppose I start off with the drawings in mind at least and then work from there. Work formally, seeing what fits and what photographs well (so it is remaining instilled within documentation too) and also what colours go where with other collected objects and materials.

I can see some of them developing specifically in to film works, closely recorded and then build in to larger performance pieces when I have the space to do so. It is important however that the performances - using my camera as collaborator - are worked on site-specifically, dealing with an outside context as it were. Not the context of the studio specifically.

For now these works exist in a tangible yet changeable state. Each time they are returned too they are indeed re-visited (just as the site may be too) and things are added or taken away. I see this as being connected directly to the drawing process adding and taking away erasing and making more marks - in the end it is compositional.

I would also like to return to photopia here. These are images that are taken / photographed on walks, days out, days where I do not want to concentrate entirely on art but want to get away with taking snippets of ideas using my camera phone or my SLR if I have it with me. These are indeed snapshots that are then edited digitally and formally too. They are then stored in one place allowing direct reference at a later date.

Some images may appear in more than one place.

# 76 [2 June 2011]

Changing times

I am about to get on a bus to Glasgow, final destination is the Centre For Contemporary art. At 1pm I will be giving a tour of the galleries and an introduction to the artists involved in BAS7. During this I will think of flying, singing, bin diving and food. I will weave like an otter from art work to art work using the notes I have just made and gestures of so called significance with my hands to extract any form of concentration the audience may have wished to have paid to the words that I speak. In reality I will tell them the following and I will play the magician. After the tour I will then eat:

Triangulated airplane music

"When I worked on the airlines, we used to play our own selection of music: the office would receive letters and phone calls after the flights I crewed, from people asking what the music was. They wanted to hear more. So we played more from my own selection. Before long though the royalties did begin to seep in: now we play spin off pop songs sang by second-rate artists who always hit a note too high when we're decending lower and lower. And as we touch the ground the plastic taste of the airplane food is concretised by the electronic drastic resonance of a cheap keyboard preset for "Triangle"."

Fake restaurant review

"If you walk in to the restaurant around six thirty in the evening you will most likely bump in to the waiter serving Poission at a reduced rate. Poission is a form of chicken served in small numbers and even smaller sizes - and they taste phenomenal. The atmosphere is somewhat drab though, and could do with a bit of updating in terms of its royalties and the music it plays, it needs a bit of charitable input, so to speak…"

Delectables

Who else collects food - the way of the artist is to hit a posh enough supermarket at the right sort of time. There are two times that are best, one just after dusk (depending on the time of year) after the out of date food is thrown out. Another time is usually early evening when someone is paid to scour the shelves for produce that will otherwise be thrown out that day, to take their labeller and ticket each item accordingly - thus making your food expenses lesser and lesser still.

Bin Dive

I have a friend, she lives in Bristol now and works as a carpenter, who used to know the way in to our local supermarket's bin yard that was barred by iron gates. She would, with her nose to the ground, slither underneath the gates (I was usually on watch at this point, ready to give signal if anyone turned round the corner) and appear on the other side. Like some kind of otter she would mount each bin one by one and dive in. A few minutes later she would surface with healthy-balance yogurt drinks, tinned fruit, cakes and bread. 

# 75 [31 May 2011]

Is this the place for duplication?

Image directories. One image holds the centre of the next image, this image gives away its centre as it knows its own centre will have space on the image that comes after. This is another form of collaboration. I do believe:

An old sculpture trail

"This is a triangulated object that helps us focus. Existing in time, in and around the changing colour of leaves, it changes with each perspective that is happened upon it - it is no sociological structure just an object for precise contemplation…"

What of this object then? How can it act as a point in direct collaboration and why? And why would anyone care as half the time it is just covered in leaves? This photograph is very orange - you need to change the white-balance on it - it looks old… too old.

"It will work as a point of collaboration as it is a formal pyramid with four sides. Each side a reflection of the respective other - a geometric representation of the actuality that happens during collaboration. A propensity object. Each side is the same, but as you turn slowly around the concrete pyramid you notice imperfections that spell out differences. There are indeed many differences that this photograph does not depict - in many ways this is a romanticised representation of the object and its specific location. For one thing the object is framed yet again by the camera's eye - a direct response to the perspective of the viewer…"

How do you mean it is a romanticised version?

"Well, what you do not see in this image is the two people dressed in patterned dialogue. One holding a stick, the other precariously wearing high heels muddied by the turf. These two people have the collaborative ability to de-familiarise the object… so take a long hard stare. At the photograph that is not the object in front of you. Take your stare and keep it - the next time the object is framed and shot it will be entirely different."

How will it be different?

"Lets just say it will be something like standing on your head…"

# 74 [20 May 2011]

Enclosure

The first studio I had was a room without windows that had two strip lights, which resonated with a communicative buzz. I used it as a room of reflection and an enclosure to let loose my wide collection of bouncy balls:

If I happen to be incommunicado it is not my fault. I am in writing jail - a self-set constraint where I retreat in to four walls, feed off their flatness and project ideas back on to the key board resting on my desk. Ideas are bouncing around all over the place; I find it hard to stop for breath or for water of for Spanish meats.

A friend of mine is off on a week's meditation retreat in the bowels of Western Scotland. I am jealous of her power to jump on an bus sharing the destination of others, arrive and then be absolute in the solidarity of her own mind and the connections therein. Sometimes I make up the practice of meditating. The last time I visited home my mother was preparing to move out: I was laying across her bed watching her pack - I picked up a supplementary magazine from the weekend paper flicked through its pages and found a relaxation technique spelled out in a sidelined column referencing 'ways to deal with stress', it said: "... breath in for four seconds through your nose, then breath out through your mouth for another seven seconds". This is well practiced within these four walls, I count in and out envisioning waves on a beach swelling in 1 2 3 4 and... swelling out... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. I imagine the words associated with migraine and anxiety washing away to drown in the sea.

One: I hit the desk with the heels of my hands just above the wrists, my fingers flayed like antenna projecting out towards the walls around me.

Two: I am a bat loosening my thoughts and waiting for the return of measured displacement with my eyes closed. I am in the dark until their return.

Three: I feel the crochet under my feet and liken it to crotal lichen. I am otherwise here as well as there. I am beyond the walls as well as within them, using their divide as a platform to frame and otherwise throw ideas at, bouncing too and fro.

Four: I slowly clench my toes and my fingers tightening the hole of my mouth waiting for immanent exhale. It works and my back is aligned with my neck as the rear of my head arches to allow the tip of my nose to face the ceiling.

One: I realise the ceiling is not there, instead there is sky, my process of meditative state seems to have worked.

Two: through my mouth I begin to blow a balloon filling it with helium that is reverent to my elevated state.

Three: this balloon begins to lift me, still attached to my throat, and my body tears away from its seat. My wrists leave the desk; my feet leave the patterned floor.

Four: I get so far and something stays my flow as I begin to run out of breath. But I push on anyway hoping for more. The balloon's size increases but exponentially, soon its volume will reach its plateau matching the capacity of my lungs.

Five: the peak is reached. The ceiling manifests and returns to hold me within. I bounce gently against it and then settle as if the room has been turned upside down, filled with water and I have gently floated to the bottom.

Six: my potential weight takes over and I start to reduce in height - I prepare myself for landing, I retrace my steps making note of each second in the elapsed time. I will repeat the process and perhaps the ceiling will remain gone.

Seven: my last second and I feel the magnetic pull of the desk, my seat, the floor and its crafted edging, pink, purple, blue, red, yellow, green with intersecting faded white squares. I don't open my eyes - I return to my exacting and grounded formation. And I repeat the process again.

# 73 [19 May 2011]

Spelling herbs: Basel is Blackford hill and beyond

Well, what sits on the window cil matches the mood green outside. At the top of the hill on the top floor the coffee machine whistles away and so does the wind outside, you wouldn't think we were about to break in to summer, or is what used to be mid Lothian (now Edinburgh) always like this? Perhaps its just written in the script. The clouded sky does bring out different levels of green though, which I quite like. The same greens that are Basel, Coriander, Parsley, more Basel, Thyme, more Coriander, and some Lettuce - all fighting for their own light.

It begins to rain again slightly, one or two drops fastened against the window. This matches the sound of the fridge next to me as it extracts the warm air from inside leaving a fairly cold temperature. This method of extraction is also like leaving the flat and confronting the rain. Its probably colder inside than out.

There is a red leafed tree sat just beyond the green line of trees just below the window. This colour matches a plant I once had in my possession, bought from Homebase on 15% off day. A wonderful purple-y red and leaves like velvet. I used this as a prop in a film piece I made starring myself. That was in Glasgow and I remember holding the plant, still wrapped in its plastic, and clambering on the train with my other props at Haymarket station. This was around a month ago now.

The gallery where these props were filmed alongside myself is just off George Square in the centre of Glasgow. Its a tricky one way system to get to the correct street and luckily my friend has a nippy 70s soft top to manoeuvre there. I enlisted her help in exchange for an apple juice to help me pick up the props after the exhibition: she kindly agreed and we drove back to her place afterwards lifting the plant - now out of its wrappings flourishing with its colours - from the car and taking it in to her ground floor bedsit.

The plant now lives in the bedsit and this little bit of colour that resides in Edinburgh, just outside of my window enclosed within the tree, now lives in Glasgow's west end near the Kelvingrove museum.

My friend is from South Queensferry and detests Edinburgh as the city she had to return to from London after study. Since I moved East she has not been too visit me. But yesterday, like a character from an Iris Murdoch novel, she crept back in to my life. She knocked on my flat door I let her in and she sat at my kitchen table, in the seat where I now sit writing this. It felt displaced, she said "its just like your old flat in Glasgow, but in Edinburgh". With her usual expectant hunger I fed her.

I begin to think of partnerships now. I have realised quite recently that my drawings and perhaps my films and performances - under the guise of 'collaboration' - are in fact an exploration of partnerships.

Soon we will return north in the same 70s soft top. But its raining pretty heavy now and the slick black leather roof would leak... 

# 72 [20 April 2011]

Out (mirror image) and (painting as prop) with (house plant)

"I ended up having a late lunch with Geoff in his office, smelly cheese and crackers handed to me one by one. I said to him, it is foremost about documentation - I am not a film maker, I am a someone who messes with props and builds installations. Therefore I am not making a film directly, instead I am investigating the concept of a film by building frames one by one, by way of stop frame animation."

Day out with out with simulacra is a film project using ornaments of everyday and objects of a gallery context to explore the cross-division of front room play and exhibition performance and display.

I have been using 'out with' a lot in my writing recently, it means something different to outside of, it also conjures a play on words that is, if anything, satisfying: "A day out with simulacra", could mean a day out on the beach say with mirrors and plants and friends and your camera, or it could mean a day without simulacra, thereby being a day without any representative image of anything else: a day that is outside of normative exploration.

The 'act' then, in the end, was immersive and experimental - a whole day was spent (with dried fruit and ginger beer for sustenance) making imagery with the objects I brought with me and in the end making movement image. These films were then built on and finally rendered in to twenty different versions: each version untitled was then posted to a different audience member who consents, if they will, to take the DVD with the film on it home with them.

Thus the film never touches the gallery as an actual film, it exists erstwhile as another object hidden within the politics of space that is a gallery-cum-assembly or resource.

Images here are:
A 'painting' on the wall of a 'gallery'
A day out on the beach in East Lothian
A film still, or photograph that in the end made the film, "Day out with simulacra"
A plastic plant found outside the gallery in the corridor