ARTISTS TALKING

# 20 [15 March 2010]

Well, the bed sheets have apparently elicited much comment and no one has asked us to take the exhibition down on the grounds that they are unframed. Nor has the Tallit been deemed unsuitable or offensive. I seem instinctively to produce work that is aesthetically attractive and that will entice the viewer into staying long enough to be intrigued into finding a darker message. However in the present febrile climate I fear always that I may find myself answering for having inadvertently offended religious belief. Maybe this, like political correctness in the office, is just something that stalks every artist engaged with some subject matters. It feels a little as if there are a set of unwritten rules out there that I might inadvertently transgress - find that I had stepped on the cracks………………………..and face an unspoken punishment.

Today was the first day the sun has really felt warm on my shoulders. As the days lengthen I can feel my brain unfurling.

I swear it curls up with its tail round its nose all winter long.

This weekend has been spent helping paint signs for an exhibition in June. Fowle Hall 4 will be the fourth year of a successful contemporary art exhibition in Paddock Wood, Kent. I exhibited last year, had great fun, met some brilliant people and got involved with Accident and Emergence. I was thrilled to be invited back again this year.

When you do these things you never know where they will lead. Looking back on it now, nearly a year later, I can see that A&E has crystallised for me how much I enjoy working collaboratively and how important meeting new artists, crits and projects are to the way I work.

Today I stood in the sun in the orchard where all the artists who exhibited in the stables last year will exhibit in 2010....and now I wait for that trickle of ideas that will whine to be written down in my notebook to begin again............

# 19 [3 March 2010]

It’s been a busy week. The Tallit is finished. As is usual in my practice the piece is attractive to approach and slow to reveal its darker side. The Tallit [life size] now has four tzitzit; one in each corner. I am proud to say I learnt how to tie them myself using a Jewish video that I discovered on the internet. Mind you I am very sure that any self respecting Jewish person would have laughed until they cried had they seen me manfully trying to master the art. And an art it is.

My primary interest in this work has been in the diminution of a lived human life into numbers and symbols. The work shows a portrait drawing of my grandfather and numbered sections of his entry in Vad Yashem – the Holocaust memorial site. It is decorated with coloured badge shapes that labelled concentration camp prisoners Jewish, gypsy, homosexual….they have an abstract beauty despite the terrible history that they hold.

Below these are symbols from Hitler’s genetic science – a crazed Aryan world reduced to Mendel's fruit flies.

The work is to hang in a restaurant area in the theatre. I shall be interested to see if anyone will study it closely enough to deem it inappropriate company at afternoon tea.

This week has also seen the end of a collaborative book project. Eleven of us; printers, painters, poets, a musician, fashion designer, gilder, all swopping our precious pages after a great lunch…….As we did so we all talked about the work on the page and the journey that took us there. Sometimes art is very close to therapy. The pages are beautiful. Somehow they seem generous- as in a gift. Next month we meet again to bind our book before exhibiting them ………….

# 18 [20 February 2010]

I really am the world’s worst time manager; I had been hoping to do a weblog of the poetry collaboration but time keeps slipping away. I have however managed to find out how to upload an MP3 track for it, so let’s hope I can do get it down again!

A long time ago I agreed to a low key exhibition in a theatre that had just re-designated itself as an Arts Centre. The promised exhibition space is pretty disastrous, but we plough on. The exhibition has become ‘Three artists, Three sheets, Three Weeks. The hope is that we can use the time to progress our individual interests and that the choice of support will push us out from our normal practice. We now have only two weeks left and apart from having managed to purchase fitted rather than flat sheets all three of us are now truly engaged with the project.

My recent reading- Rodinsky’s Room – a collaborative nonfiction story by an artist and a writer – has reawakened my interest in 1940’s Jewish life. There is something unbearably poignant in the fragile ordinariness of the lives that when photographed were about to be erased by a ruthless political machine. Maybe that emotion is present in all situations where looking back we - the viewer- retrospectively knows an outcome that the viewed did not.

Rodinskys shadow is still on me and making an art work seems somehow a necessary part of breaking that spell. I toy with the idea of using my sheet as a Tallit. The tallit is a short tabard worn by some orthodox Jewish men man under their outer garments. At all four corners of the Tallit are tzitzt – woven and knotted fringes that remind the orthodox of their religious duties. I am not sure why I feel the need to use this format and am still unsure. I am cautious and afraid of causing offence.

I have arranged to visit my elderly mother to trawl through some family documents with her. I am hoping to connect with something from my grandfather’s past, from the days before he was deported to Riga Concentration camp.

I have reservations about the project on several scores but one is that by involving my mother in this intense way I will invest it with a greater significance than the quality of work will be able to bear.

While researching I discover a T-shirt for sale on the internet:

‘My grandfather died in Auschwitz’ it declares across a graphic depiction of barbed wire. ‘He fell off a Watch Tower’.

My surge of anger subsides as I realise what it actually says. How strange that this Comedy Night humour which I can plainly see for what it is and actually find quite clever and amusing nonetheless follows me around all day.

I think I am still unsure as to what my reaction actually is.

# 17 [17 February 2010]

I send R. my most recent photos of the bones. The bones have temporarily taken on a new personalities adorned with lace and long, sharp black pins.

In my sketchbook I write; Artist to make artwork- imaginary grave goods - using goose bones that look like something they are not. 

To be presented as if from an imaginary museum.
Good discipline - write now about the concept behind my work. Equals integrity and ultimately makes for strength and clarity. So- I think we need to look again at the concept. We have the basic artwork concept So - how to proceed with the poetic element of the collaboration?

My feeling is that the poetry should also follow the concept-- the bones look like something they are not, the grave goods are something they are not, from a culture that doesn't exist, and all ostensibly from an imaginary museum…….

I write to Rowyda: Would this help us meet in the middle?Artist to keep the concept of the non - existent culture but to work within the constraint that nothing in the materials used would exclude the pre Islamic Arabian world. This would allow you to interpret the grave goods with reference to an imaginary/ historical  Arabic culture of your choice if you wish………………

5^th February  I send Rowyda new photographs of the bones. They now feel finished to me but then again maybe not.

In my mind I am moving on to how to display them. I think every nuance of what one chooses matters. I tend to be more anal about the exhibiting than the work sometimes. I have no idea if R. will understand this!

7^th February We meet in the Fleapit in Columbia Road with all the other poet and artist collaborators. Rowyda is feeling unwell but has struggled in. There is a huge buzz in the room. This is such an exciting project and listening to everyone talk is awesome. So much talent and goodwill.

Anika and Ellie announce we have a venue in Stoke Newington for April. Now the exhibition feels real and there is a time scale. I have bought the bones with me and Rowyda goes home with them. They are so fragile that leaving them with her is a definite act of trust. They are not an artwork that could be remade.

At home I feel as if I have forgotten something………………presumably the bones.

# 16 [14 February 2010]

25^th January ‘I have begun a test piece of scrimshaw on the goose bone bangles. More difficult than I thought. I hope practice makes perfect.
 Have set the eyes in the bangles - they look good. I will send photo when I have a second. I have spent the day writing a Q&A interview for the South East Open studios newsletter. More bothersome activity that gets in the way.............’

I also send a fascinating article on Loek Grootjans at S.M.A.K. Museum Gent, Belgium. An exhibition called ‘Leaving Traces’ – it is good to share things I find during the day. 27^th January

During our day at the British Museum Rowyda told me of her research into the last of the Beothuk, an extinct race from Newfoundland. Trawling the internet I find a lullaby recorded in 1910 in the now extinct language. I send it on to R. 

1st February. I spend the day collecting fishbones on Dungeness beach to try and make nests with them- as you do! I then sit down to think about the project.

R. and I have been discussing how to progress the central concept:‘I hadn't realised that in writing down what I intended to do to the bones I was also silently telling myself about the woman's character.
Having something written down has been very disconcerting I have discovered. It as if that first person kept slipping away from me as I worked and someone else took her place!
The bones now speak to me of a woman who was wealthy, powerful, able to instil fear, overtly sexual and very feminine’………………..

I am also now mulling over what I am actually doing by making these imaginary grave goods  [belonging to an imaginary woman], from an imaginary culture,  that I have 'put' into an imaginary museum…………………
 
The idea of the artwork as a fabricated museum object has a tension - in that we look at both art and museum objects primarily to feel and discover but we also look to the museum object to have a basis in fact.
By putting an artwork into a museum [even an imaginary one] I think I promptly transmutes its aesthetic value- but I am not sure into what.
 
Similarly the fabricated mythology of the artwork mocks the fact that the genuine museum object will have had other associations which are lost when the object is put into a museum; whereas the artwork has had no previous existence outside the museum………………..

I think we have reached a really interesting [and difficult] bit of this collaboration, namely the character as she lives in my head and as she lives in yours. Who is she to be?
 I hadn't realised that you too were working on making a story for her before you saw the work.
This leaves me with a problem;
 Do I offer you the finished work and you respond to that?
 Or do I now change it to meet your thoughts?

[If I do the second the work will cease to be imaginary grave goods in an imaginary museum and will become a work in response to a historical culture and deity]….....I still love the idea of uploading your poem onto Youtube/similar so it could be downloaded as an audio guide. Maybe we will have to get to the very end of the project to know if that will have any resonance with your final work. I think it important the two works have a related interface somewhere..........

# 15 [14 February 2010]

6^th January R. responded that she thought the bones beautiful and inspiring and that she liked the idea of an imaginary museum. She suggested we met up somewhere that might be inspiring. The British museum perhaps or the John Soanes? ‘Your butterfly drawers sound interesting, so strange that there should still be creatures living in them’ she said. It was a revelation - I hadn’t thought like that.

6^th January. I receive a Facebook invitation from R. to a poetry reading. Yet again I wish I lived in London. The last train from Victoria is no fun  nowadays …. 6^th January

‘How about we meet at the British Museum on Monday 18th January and do a trawl around the museum and then a relaxed lunch?  Talking about masks has reminded me that when I did my A level we had to do a unit on African art. My final piece was based on the Benin heads in the British Museum - around the fact that they were displaced - I felt a sadness for them that they were so far from the culture they belonged to.
 Amazing how our creative core seems to be like a magnet. It just resets itself each time even though we think we are doing something quite different.

When the snows have gone I will photograph the butterfly boxes......
Until then here are some photos I took of a tethered balloon in the fog when I was in Berlin. Not sure how to use it yet. Maybe I never will find a way but I love their fragility and sadness’. 18^th January We finally meet. Rowyda is just as in her e-mails: bright, sensitive, relaxed and good company. We set off to join a free tour of an Arabic gallery. It seems like something we would both be interested in and gives us something to do together.

Then lunch and chatting and more chatting and a relaxed meander around the museum taking pot luck on what we find.

And coffee and more chatting. I have bought the bones – it seems important for Rowyda to see and handle them.

We talk about the bones and the death of cultures, of museum artefacts being far from home, of turtle doves and owls and where we live and books and being vegan.

After we part I go into the museum shop and see an owl postcard. I buy it and send it to her. 21st January. R. writes to say she has just come back from the library with some books on archaeology and tombs. 'I'm quite interested in exploring the idea of your objects as grave goods - thinking of a context and an owner '

Accident and Emergence organise a meeting for all the Pistols and Pollinators participants. R. and I check we can both go and I really look forward to meeting up again. 22nd January. A & E send out a call for artists wanting to perform at Fowle Hall Features [their Kent based contemporary exhibition now in its fourth year]. I wonder if R. might be interested and send her the details. She says she might well be. It is good to be able to pass her an opportunity.

# 14 [14 February 2010]

20th December. Running around trying to sort out Christmas for thirteen people, but still fixated in my head on the collaboration. I send R. images of some drawings on the theme of Pampliset and a poem by Graham Greene that seems to fit the mood: ‘It was like a life photographed as it came to mind…’

21^st December. Rowyda sends me some of her poems. They are stunning. 23rd December. I am still sending R. things- this time images of ‘Requiem for a Lost Language’ – my insect installation.

Obviously I am in the Christmas present – giving mode!

I also send on bits that I recall from the research I did at the time….’Have you seen a luna/moon moth? They are huge and an unearthly green................ 

The luna moth lives only about a week. It doesn't eat, doesn't even have a mouth. It only reproduces. And when it is exposed to daylight, its green colour slowly fades.... So sad’.

 23^rd December. Standing in the Christmas check out queues I stand doodling and writing in my sketchbook. On my return I write to R: 'I have not been wasting my time in folly and idleness - even in the half hour queue for the tills! I filled a page of A4- the back of my shopping list- with spider diagrams and ideas around Diaspora and our Jewish/ Arabic divergent heritage.I am now 'interrogating' as they say in the best art schools- the concept of 'diamond papers'.
I used to be a jewellery buyer and most of the diamond dealers the world over are Jewish. They carry their wealth in diamonds - in tiny, specially folded papers [with inner transparent linings].

As a race that has had to move from place to place fast they can hide these about their person or property and escape with their money. Anything paper we can of course print or emboss with poetry................It might be interesting to marry a Jewish diamond paper with a poem about the Arabic diaspora ......... especially as whatever is carried in the paper is usually deemed incredibly precious.Just a flash of thought at the moment........will be good to meet up.
After Christmas and New Year I went down with flu but I had bought back with me treasures which were much on my mind. I write to R:

‘I am slobbing about feeling sorry for myself................... The Welsh party contingent demolished two geese for supper over new year- with the result that I have come back with the most amazing bones; they look like a mask, two skulls and two bangles. I intend to bleach them and then plaster and PVA/decorate/write on them..........
We could inscribe poetry on them if anything about them fires your imagination.
I am thinking of them as imaginary objects from an imaginary museum at the moment- relics or tribal.....somehow the lost art of the Nubians keeps coming to mind’.
5^th January 2010

‘Herewith the goose bones for your perusal...........!
Do tell me if you might be interested in working with them. If they don't intrigue I will use them to produce work for an exhibition in June. 
 
Today I was given six beautiful butterfly drawers by a neighbour. They are extraordinary. Thirty years ago they held a collection which has turned into dust.
In some of the cases there is only dust and labels left. Unfortunately in others the specimens are still being devoured by something - tiny larvae- so I have had to leave them in the shed until I can get them to my studio. I have a fantasy that if I open the box they will devour my house contents too.........
 
I will photograph them and send the photos on- not sure if I can capture the spirit of them though.
 
The snow is now falling thick and fast so I guess there will be no gallivanting about for a while’.
 

# 13 [14 February 2010]

In the time I have been offline some exciting projects have begun to line up for the year. Since September I have been very engaged with 'Pistols and Pollinators' - a 26 artist poet collaboration organised by Accident and Emergence.

Excerpts from my diary of the project so far……….

 22 November 2009. Irritated. I should be at the inaugural meeting of a collaborative art project but am instead taking down an exhibition. It is always thus- too much scheduled for the same day. One of my friends, a printer, has agreed to go in my place. She is interested to meet the poets and will ‘play’ me in the joint activities that are to be held prior to pairing up poet and artist for the project. 23 November. Accident and Emergence- the artists group who are organising the collaboration - send a list of the participants and their websites.Spend hours trawling through them. This should be very special. Some really interesting work here. 1^st December. Accident and Emergence send us the pairings. Having not been at the first meeting I hadn’t realised that those who were had asked to be paired with others. Maybe this is better. No expectations left unmet. No rejection either. So there it is – ‘Rowyda Amin & Franny Swann’

I send her an e-mail:

Hi Rowyda
We are a couple!!!!!!!!!!!
What a fascinating name. I am up to my ears at the moment. This is normal- I can never say no. I want to do everything the world has to offer and then I run out of time and my hair falls out.....I attach a clip from our local newspaper of my trip to Germany - in November. Am now busy running a two week empty shop gallery in Sevenoaks. We only knew we were going to get it last Wednesday; so all a bit full on. Flyer attached.
I am involved in a collaborative book with other artists at the moment and having a crisis about which way to take my work next year........
Maybe we need to chat on the phone/meet up?
I am out of London but can train it up no problem.
Some of my work is on www.re-title .com.....................
Must go......am going to an artist’s forum tonight.
How exciting.              

5th December. An e-mail! She apologises for not being able to get in touch sooner and tells me she is up to her ears doing a PhD. Suggests meeting up and coming up with some ideas.     We speak to each other on the phone; non –stop! Rowyda’s PHD is on the Arabic Diaspora. I am thrilled. Much of my work is underpinned by my Jewish heritage, memory, loss and secrets. We talk about our families and secret keeping, about Diaspora and about our work. 19^th December. In our telephone conversation I mentioned an Arabic poem that I love. I send R. the poem:    I apologise…… Unaware and unintentionally, my breezes shook your branches and dropped the only flower you’d ever bloomed.  HARIM AL- MASSRI.

# 12 [8 February 2010]

Well its 2010 and here I am again. I have just re-read my blog. What a strange feeling – mine but not mine, and somehow it all seems such a while ago.

I hadn’t really intended to restart the blog now but a recent  interview as the retiring chairman for the South East Open Studios newsletter came out entitled ‘Franny Swann – Artist, aged 56 and a half ’ and then gave the blog address! So now I feel duty bound to re-present myself.

The blog was very much meant to be my tracks in the mud- for me to be able to retrace; the flour in the bag principle.

Well, the big painting got to Berlin and so did I, together with my elderly disabled mother and her carer. We sat together in the front of an audience far larger than I had expected and listened to my Jewish grandfather’s name being recited and his life recounted and I felt humbled. Humbled by those who had lost so much and had turned out on a cold night in old age to see the painting installed and also by all those who have taken on a burden of guilt for a time when they were not even born.

After so much organisation I returned home feeling as though I had lost something, or maybe left something behind - the painting? I don’t know.

The studio was certainly emptier and I celebrated by moving things around. I have hardly been in since. It has been so cold that I have worked from home. Warm, cosy, TV, food, coffee …..but space limited as far as the work goes.

 Being cosy seems to affect the work; I get cosy work! Better that I am in the studio slumming it and concentrating on the job in hand. Time to go back; but maybe after the next snows.

# 11 [23 October 2009]

Into the studio with my studio mate Sue and the whole day spent making a huge wall painting for our collaborative work on the regeneration of Dartford Central Park. It is to take up a recessed wall in the gallery.

After the technical hassles and a tussle with the aged OHP we settled to working like two small children with the crayon box- mostly engaged with our enterprise but with the occasional little spat about line or colour or negative space.

Exhausted but pleased with the outcome we finally locked up at 9pm. So much for supper.

It will be interesting to see what we think of it when it resurfaces for hanging at the end of the month as it’s now carefully rolled up in plastic.

I like to mull my work over and I invariably leave it up so I can prowl round it trying to catch it unawares when it’s not looking at me.