ARTISTS TALKING

# 71 [30 March 2011]

A Plan of just down the road from George Square (the leaf it tagged as me)

Mary Cooles's perfection - alter-image - I entered in to her domain and the painting remained as my disguise.

"I am talking to you today about alter image." This alternative image is changed during intervals in the installation process. You see before I made considerably large movements, God knows I had room for it then, now I make smaller perfections.

There is something about the house plants that litter my window seat in the living room. They have entered in to my drawing process as my drawings take place in that room, they have entered and are a part of - or perhaps already were a part of - my experience.

The other day, in envious delight, I visited the studios of two other artists who think a lot. In envious delight their studios exist on a mezzanine surrounding the gallery of the studio complex below. One of the artists has a cactus on his shelf, the other a picture of a cheese plant on her desk next to an open book or two. I now have a picture of another cheese plant's leaf next to an empty espresso cup on my wall above my writing desk, tagged with bent over masking tape. In the picture, according to the photographer, the leaf is also tagged as me.

There must be a connection here. There are fucking house plants everywhere and this studio complex I entered in to uses house plants to make you feel at home, or to make the studio holders feel at home.

In this studio-cum-gallery in Glasgow, I will use a houseplant or two to make a projection in shadow on the wall, I will move one leaf one by one, tacked with masking tape to the floor.

Back to the window seat, where each pain, as you lie underneath the sill on the white sofa, frames another gull in the sky and another flag whistling in the wind: there on this sill I cannot sit, there are too many plants, and instead I place an oil painting on the window seat to dry in the sun. This painting is build on systematic geometry that is deliberately altered, a very conscious choice to go wrong. In the middle of this painting there is a whole, or a window, through which you can focus in again on the framed image: a gull seems closer for some reason, and the flags more resonant whipped in the sea air. I will bring this painting with me please and I will use this painting please as it is a painting and it belongs in a gallery not on a window sill.

# 70 [18 March 2011]

Having moved

I thought it was time that I tackled the view from my flat. It adds layers to the city. The flat itself is on the top of a hill and the back faces southwest in to the hills. In the far distance there is a ski slope that is lit up at night. The weather of each day affects the view: some days (like today) you can see the hills as they dress the sky line and on others all that remains to be seen is the bare trees at the foot of the window across the garden. It is a different kind of view from that which I became used too. Glasgow offered the reflection of your flat within the windows of others. Leeds was much the same - quite on show that you were. This view reminds me of the hills of home, North East Derbyshire encroaching on the seven peaks of Sheffield and the Peak District itself. You could see the water tower next to my uncle's house in Norton, south Sheffield from the landing window.

Perhaps this is it. Landmarks are a given in this place.

The other evening my friend needed the toilet so we entered in to the foyer of an arts centre around 6.30 pm for him to find suitable facilities. Before long we were asked by a young woman, who's accent disguised her past, if we wanted a Peroni. We of course said yes and then three Peroni's later we had learned she worked for a bank and was posted all over the UK to help promote one of its clients (you can guess which one). The promotion this times was in the guise of a photography exhibition, rare prints taken from Italian or Italian inspired films, in which Italian costume designers played a huge part. One particular print took my fancy. It depicted a 70s bar with one woman wearing a 70s style dress and three men with moustaches and matching suits. We decided to get to know the Peroni girl a little better - another bottle later we learned that she was from North East Derbyshire (Clown in Chesterfield to be exact), the town next to the one where I grew up. First off though she said she was from Sheffield too as I had said that is where I was from (well I was born there, in Jessops hospital, the hospital where my Grandmother on my father's side had worked as a nurse). We were then a lot more exacting and confessed at having grown up just south of the Yorkshire border instead. I could see Sheffield and the water tower from my house on the hill though so I was sort of half lying.

She did not sound as though she was from just north of the midlands. And neither do I except when talking to Scottish people, as I want to accentuate my roots during my time living here. The landscape is the same but the accent is different I think.



# 69 [17 March 2011]

To dally on the walkway and marry at the door

I seem to have acquired myself a mentor. A mentor that is impeccably fast at replying to emails - almost too fast, and definitely faster than I am at producing the work in the first place.

The mentor is currently working through this text for me. The text is then edited at a faster pace than it takes for the mentor to get back to me, this being a response to her well-practiced speed in reading, thinking, responding and making things constructive. 

Keep writing (making) making writing she says.



# 68 [22 February 2011]

"I would like to give you this but I would not recommend it

Today I changed someone's gender. A male walked in to work through the glass doors. Using this pen, keeping a tally of the footfall we, I marked him down under 'F' instead of 'M'. He is now a

Today someone recommended me a pen. It was the same pen they held in their hand - a pen which I assumed to be theirs. Later they took the pen and placed it in their coat pocket. Later still they left their coat over the edge of their chair and went to the bar. Whilst they were at the bar I stood up, reached for the coat, put it on and left. Later still I got home, took off the coat and hung it over the back of the door in the kitchen. I put my hand in the pocket and stole the pen too. These words are written with this pen. These words are a confirmation of this very theft. It is enough to write this story on this page rip the page from the note book and place it, folded, in to the coat pocket replacing the pen. I shall return the coat but not the pen and say thank you for the recommendation.

Female. This pen is transcendental of gender but only has affect as far as its ink can stretch, therefore upon back to the other side of the glass door his sex changed back again in time. Much like an upside down nature fountain (a waterfall) and an upside down modernist waterfall (a fountain) things change depending on how you name them. Things change depending on the name they are given."

I came across this text whilst studying the catalogue for 2011's Glasgow Film Festival. Someone had left the catalogue on the floor in the foyer of the Glasgow Film Theatre. I picked it up and out slipped a page with these very words on it. Here I have copied them word for word entirely but what I find strange is that this pen, whether it's the same pen in each side of the story, happens to take on a certain character with a certain agenda. It has the ability to change things. Maybe at one point this was written with a pen in a hand, but now the text exists in print out with the raw element withheld in hand writing.

I'm not entirely sure what I think about it.

# 67 [22 February 2011]

The dog that hangs around (and jellyfish that have minds)

An idea that may or may not involve hanging a dog from the ceiling, which ceiling I am not so sure. Not this ceiling it is too high. Not just any ceiling though.

If I recall the landscape has no proximity to primary colours. Instead it is full of muted dampened washes reminiscent of my bad watercolour days and lazy brush strokes. Want I want to instil are reds and bright whites that are alien to the landscape just as I am alien to this city.

An action or happening for story

Using a spherical lamp shade - as an object out of context and therefore rendered entirely in its own right with its own defining properties - carefully stuffed with helium filled balloons (enough gas for it to float in the sky).

This will be a dramatic act that goes beyond the confines of the "room" (thanks Virginia Wolf) that is or would be a studio - restricted by the city - beyond in to empty and explorative space that matches that of the mind.

Why photographs and not film

It is important when performing for yourself and your camera to extract the live element and leave it within the real time experience. Film and its motion picture quality, even in a digital sense, tells a lie. It pretends to be live and manufactures a bad quality dummy experience. Still photographs taken in quick succession is more appropriate. In this the actuality of film is dealt with and the animated quality becomes a work in its own right made up of fractions and snippets from the real time event. This is more explorative when it comes to editing too.

# 66 [21 February 2011]

Dummies and divine sense (or following the same paths and learning the same way)

"On occasion I am dressed accordingly and on these occasions I get to lie about who I am. When wearing clothes I get to wander through the gardens surrounding the institute, passed the bamboo, over each and every stream circumnavigating the amphitheatre - where on other occasions we are instructed to perform - and then back through to the institute... and usually back in to storage."

The divine sense of dummies - when I think of this I think of Ghost in the shell and an apparent consciousness or sentience in man made objects that are produced to resemble human existence. Cyborgian is the term. This term is perhaps now a little dated. If one part is human then the non-human part is the opposite of human.

The divine sense of dummies - I would like to extract the zombie-essence from these artefacts and question (tap in to) how qualified their reasoning is. Why do they exist and when they are stored out of sight what is their reason for being there?

The divine sense of dummies - is to be found in the basement then, at the bottom of the city museum. Here, in this room, a found-photographic composition is located. A lens is placed and the remote on the shutter is pressed gathering the correct exposure to render an image of these objects tied together like limbs. There is little stability yet something holds them upright and gives them a lingering sense of balance.

"I made up my mind and then changed it, I changed my mind, my mind changed... and all of a sudden I was naked like a doll exposed for a life-like drawing exercise. When I walk my legs wobble and my head remains still staring straight ahead. I do not have the ability to see rather I know the direction I am walking because of my prior function and my installed intuition. My reason for being here instructs me to walk this way and that, and eventually to climb the plinth in front of the spectators, to be observed out with obscurity and to be drawn from and sometimes upon."

# 65 [9 February 2011]

FROM CONSTANCE AND FROM VIOLET

I am currently in the process of moving flats from Glasgow to Edinburgh.

I came across two old USB sticks I kept files on during my studies at Leeds University.

Here is an image and a piece of text, possibly related probably not...

04/05/2007

Ha - the non-performance of the half hour drawings, by wearing some kind of dress!

Ok so I didn't measure the dimensions of the drawing in relation to my body - it is evident in the photographs how large the overall garment was.  However this is somewhat irrelevant as they were to be worn what ever the circumstance - and at least I got a photograph.  In fact the situation of the photo-documentation is interesting here as I had to direct someone who had never used an SLR before to take the photograph (this statement may be slightly hypocritical in relation to some of the photographs I have taken), so the realisation of the idea could only have happened with someone else present.  It is relatable also to how the artist parades his ideas and art works in front of an audience and I think this 'performance' highlights this.  The paradox of me coming up with the idea then building the suit by myself with the fact that I needed someone's assistance in order to put the suit on and then to record the fact that it was on - highlights the importance of an audience in such forms of art.  Performance has always been something that has been available to me aesthetically in order to dabble in, but only as an extension of some form of documentation, and it is interesting that in order to document such perspectives another person always has to be involved.  This subtle form of interaction with another person in such situations is interesting in an indirect sense, such a sense that always gives way to the notion of someone else being there outside the frame of documentation, as either of us is documented in some kind of task - such a task that is essentially directed by the artist.  The notion of control becomes evident here, as the artist remains the director in such situations.

# 64 [2 February 2011]

(Design magazine page) Geometry race (Su's secret Santa paper) and Bell Tower Communication painting

I had left the bright red Chinese lanterns next to the canal in South Tottenham, but they seem to have floated back to the shore again. One is broken and has lost its steel axis, the other two (one with its dragon dressing) are intact - they're currently drying out on the radiator. Meanwhile I discard of the broken one in the large commercial waste bin next to the Italian restaurant at the bottom of the road. I do this in the cover of darkness and use the fairy lights hanging down across the restaurant's front window as my screen.

I have stopped using lanterns as before they were over used. The two that are still intact are now dry, deflated and stored in the dark olive green bag I was given by the Chinese shop assistant when I first bought them in London. I remember that day - it was hot and the capital smog attached itself to my limbs. The gift shop I went in to was respite from the sun, I saw tits and vaginas splayed across magazine covers as my eyes stroked lanterns hanging from the ceiling in all manner of shapes and sizes.

Now I sit in my flat in Glasgow, its cold, windy and stormy and I have just packed the last of my DVDs in to a box. I am laid on the granny bed futon in the kitchen drinking luke-warm coffee and I notice a drawing framed last year, by myself, depicting two runners with hats in the Scottish countryside racing across a stream. In their hands they hold long branches snapped from near by trees - at the extremities of these branches three Chinese lanterns wave with exulted momentum: their design is novel for the scene that is otherwise set by browns and purples lucid with dampening rain.

Set beneath the drawing in the frame, acting as its mount, is a yellow page I used in an installation piece (again last year). It sets out a number of names, of people unknown to me, the page was ripped from a design magazine - ripped out of context purely for its formal characteristics. It depicts encompassing circular forms like a chart: a periodic image of who may have won which race at which time perhaps.

Another frame I keep to hold an older and dustier piece of work: a small idea-based painting of scarlet red shapes upon a lined light affect non-acid-free paper. It is lined as if an obsolete address card. With the paint marks - copied from the altar tile-design situated where an installation once completed the painting's reasoning - sit pencil strokes and notes for further ideas. It is a sketch foremost but sits, non-the-less, lightly and comfortably in the frame.

Set beneath the painting in the frame, acting as a mount, is a piece of wrapping paper that once wrapped my boss's secret Santa gift. She discarded the wrapping paper after carefully retrieving the present inside - it is of floral design and displays subdued colours that compliment the dishevelled tone of the light affected address card.

From the broken lantern I kept hold of one thing. This thing is a yellow tassel that once hung down from the bottom of the lantern with yellow and red string, the weight of the tassel is a small green globe of plastic. This tassel rests now on top of the aforementioned frame...



# 63 [8 January 2011]

THE SEA (THE ARTIST) THE WRITER (THE SEA).

I have this art writer friend who lives in London, she's originally from Surrey and likes Iris Murdoch novels. We once took a walk through the park opposite the ICA together talking about literary references to art. It was invigorating and summery. For a while now, well since she wrote an accompanying text to my first exhibition in Leeds back in 2008, she has said she would like to make the transition from being a writer in to being an artist - I contacted her a few months ago via email to say that my practice as an artist is taking hold of a writing practice also. Its as if we were engendered to meet in the middle.

One way that writing meets visual practice is through interview. So I proposed to my friend that we both interview each other at the same time via email. That way an artist is writing and asking questions of a writer and the writer is writing and asking questions of the artist:

As an artist, what is your attitude to the idea of 'permanence'?

I want to begin with an artist statement:

"My practice feeds off the placement of idea-based conversation, site-specificity, documentation, research and their relationship to drawing and writing. These then engage with the definition and presentation of art making using curation, photography, projection, performance and object association. A foremost concern is to deal with the connection between artist and audience and the underlying task of conservation embedded in art practice. In this, drawing and writing are used as forms of initiating, collating and recording ideas."

When I think of permanence I think of how often they way I write about my work changes. And how the work I produce is defined perhaps by the short concise piece of language and grammar squeezed in to a paragraph.

Permanent is not something an artist should be nor aspire to be as far as their practice goes - but I suppose another way of looking at things is how artists exist permanently through self-conservation - archives - documentation etc. And my work does deal with documentation quite a lot...

I suppose there are two edges to the sword then...

Do you think this interview via email is organic? Are we talking at each other rather than to each other? Is that important?

I do not think that we are talking to one another or at each other. We are leaving notes for each other - we're playing chess with words and awaiting replies together. That's how I see it. I do a lot of interviewing other artists via email and I think it does seem to work as often, visual people do need time to consider their response if their writing it down. So in this sense, I suppose it is less organic and more engineered...

One thing I will say though is that with my blogging and the writing I often post along side images - is more so organic and also automatic. I type, edit slightly, post, publish and then erase the actual text off my computer - it exists in the organism of the Internet instead, which I also see as an archive.

# 62 [29 December 2010]

The Russian Sauna Exchange

I sit across from the same two men, fully clothed in the office back in North London. They're both Russian, I am English but come from Welsh decent. The company we all work for necessitates our occasional journey too and from Mars. The sauna on Mars is nothing like I would have imagined - and you get there by car after landing by shuttle. It involves buckets full of hot water that soak twigs and branches and leaves bound together with twine. You sit in just your towel fully prepared for you office colleague to ask you to remove it, approach the bench in front of him and lay flat on your back - suddenly you are faced by this man, who you usually communicate professionally with in a suit, completely bereft of clothing brandishing a collection of twigs, branches and twine in his hand. He then proceeds to whack you with them moving from your face down over your nether regions passed your knees ending with your toes. You're left sore but surprisingly acclimatised for the galactic air that waits. But... why the ritualistic act? Is it really necessary on the evening of landing on another planet?

My brother and his partner received a present this Christmas from his partner's mother and step father to visit a local all day spa in the middle of Nottingham Forest. They said they had to pre-book their treatments before arriving to save disappointment and began to list to me, much to my annoyance, the different 'procedures' they would subject themselves too. I asked the name of the sauna, they said it was called the torture rooms - I then asked them if Russian Sauna Exchange was available - to this they replied with blank faces. It's a Russian exclamation for exfoliation and acclimatisation I said... you should try it, they do it on Mars mostly but someone might know what it means in the middle of Nottingham Forrest... it involves using twigs leaves and branches drenched in boiled water: there's plenty of that in Nottingham Forrest.