ARTISTS TALKING

# 31 [1 August 2011]

Monday. Meaning the weekend has come and gone with nothing done at all in the work line. I am still hoping for an appearance of the French handmade paper as promised. Knowing that they offered to make two Imperial sheets especially for me I feel a bit vulnerable. I shall feel happier when I have them with me.

This morning I spent some time looking up TB; lots of chest X-rays on Google images which fascinated me. Skeletal, but they reminded me of medieval wooden crucifixions where the ribcage is so prominent.

I also watched a medical video looking at a TB patient's X-ray - such little changes visible and such huge consequences. So fine is the balance of Life and Death, and so arbitrary .........looking at the images I was struck by the medical possibilities of today's world - so far away from the 'sea cure' of yesteryear........

After much deliberation and trying out of X-ray images beside the moths I made the decision to draw the x-rays and the moths together on my paper. Immediately I had done a couple I had that frisson of excitement that means I am totally engaged and excited by what I am doing. Not sure how others will view the juxtaposition but I feel happy to defend my choice so that usually means it will be ok.

And I have been offered a box of moths......yeah!  Ask and it shall be delivered unto you................

Meanwhile the Hobby Horse Project saga goes on, two venues still not having got back to me after seemingly being very excited to host us. How often can one phone/e-mail hoping for some sort of definitive answer? As we need a team of people to install them each time it does all get a bit wearing when we are left hanging and we look chaotic our end..........hopefully  all will work out fine but it's all so time consuming ..................now I just want to draw moths........and X-rays.



# 32 [2 August 2011]

This morning's post bought me a dusky moth in a small plastic box - from another artist answering my call for moths. Finding a moth, boxing it, wrapping it, sending it - how lovely is that?

Feeling that I should honour the gesture I put aside other things and drew it this afternoon so I could send her the image with my thanks. And while I was at it I drew another X-ray; but they don't look like X-rays. They seem to have a life of their own and look much darker, much more to do with Death, try as I might.

They don't dominate the paper - the moths images are holding their own, but the piece is now undeniably a dialogue about Mortality between the two - with me in the middle. 

# 33 [3 August 2011]

One of those days when things get resolved and all seems good and then suddenly it all evaporates..........

Ros and I had been waiting for the Ramsgate Squall and the Folkestone Triennial Fringe to get back to us about hosting the Farningham Hobby Horse Project and were getting concerned about having enough time to get an installation team together. But we are all back in contact and on track for two great days out with the horses, so thats all ok. I can put all that on the back shelf of my overloaded brain for retrieval later.

Brilliant. I have been lent a pot of dead moths [!] by another artist - had to be didn't it? I was getting very concerned I wouldn't have enough in time or that I wouldn't have the time to finish if they did turn up. Another worry sorted.

So this afternoon has been spent drawing moths alongside the chest x-ray drawings. Thing is that I can only use twenty seven moths between the two sheets of paper as each moth represents a life. Now that I have completed one sheet I am really no longer sure about the work. The drawing is fine. The composition is fine; it just seems weaker than I had imagined. I had thought that the sum of the parts would have a greater impact, even though the box itself is only small -14" x 10".

I keep creeping round it, worrying at it, waiting for it to tell me what to do next. At present I think I should complete Box 2 and see if having the two boxes alongside eachother gives the work greater weight.

On the other hand it may just be me. Am I the only one who finishes something, feels it to be totally unsuccessful, walks away and comes back four weeks later to decide that actually it's ok?

I am hoping...........

# 34 [12 August 2011]

Both drawings now completed and boxed up. Two is definitely stronger than one. I have worried and fussed about maybe drawing a line around the squares, both around both the moths and the empty spaces, knowing that one false move would be disastrous as even the softest rubber lifts the paper.

Final decision; that although it would make the initial viewing stronger it would destroy the fragility of the moths which in my mind reflect the fragility of the girl’s lives. 

Also the blacks in the x-rays give me a strange feeling that the darks let you sink right down into the black of the box lining paper; as if there were another dimension under the paper; which feels relevant to the crypt. I think outlining the squares might destroy this too. So - finally finished.

Completing the crypt work seems to have cleared the decks in the overworked brain and given me new impetus to complete my ongoing 'Memorial to the Unconsidered.'

Forty - seven more insects to be drawn onto Paper One. Last night I worked until 2pm happily esconced on the kitchen table, surrounded by jars of dead bugs ...getting madder.

# 35 [13 August 2011]

Elena’s comment on yesterday’s blog has got me thinking again about why I feel it necessary to work in a repetitive, museum format. This is a tendency that was always there in my work but has grown until now I instinctively think artistically in repetitive museum formats.

My practice, which has evolved along interdisciplinary lines, is now underpinned and referenced by Memory and Memorial; in part a citation to family members lost in the Holocaust.

There are certainly echoes of labeling and cataloguing my childhood nature museum in the repetition and museum style presentation of my work nowadays, and I have become very aware of how museum style presentation changes perception and expectation of a work.

Certainly my work has become more controlled. My perception of myself as artist is now one of assimilator, controller and curator. Integral to my work is an initial word based research period – amassing a filofax of facts. This has become almost a mantra, a security blanket, a calming period during which my thought processes float above the physical job of filing facts.

This becomes a process of curation; archivings of loss are ordered by me as collector, creator, and final arbiter. There is then a metamorphosis into form which is again archived, collated, tagged for view and presented in museum linked formats.

It is this final presentation that can transmut the object’s aesthetic into something more than the sum of its parts.

Appropriating the role of the museum as both a mirror of the past and an institutional voice of present authenticity exposes tensions inherent in the multi-layered narrative or fabricated mythology that I often use.

The language of the museum will also intervene, control and contain the primal energy associated with loss and reflect it back to the viewer. Which is interesting. Maybe it all goes back to not wanting to confront the pain of my mother who survived the Holocaust?

In installation work I nearly always use both found and made materials. This seems to hint at a struggle between control and letting go, as does the use of the personal - the human story always being defiant of a clinical, neatly- wrapped museum presentation and outcome.

So – I glimpse the reasons for my need to work in this way – until, like a unicorn in a forest- they slip out of sight just as I approach some understanding. Meanwhile I continue my hunt for museum boxes as they get ever more expensive………….

# 36 [15 August 2011]

Well now. I am constantly pestering my art mates to collect dead insects for my huge, never ending drawing piece - 'Memorial to the Unconsidered.'

Everywhere I go I come back with little pots and boxes in my handbag. Quite barking mad.

But look at what has turned up in someone's conservatory - a cuckoo wasp. Kingfisher of the insect world I would say. Quite awesome. So bright she thought it was a sequin and nearly didn't pick it up at all.

Now I need to get something the right metallic red and turquoise  - nail varnish/ eye shadow? To do it justice.

Having spent a year on and off drawing insects I now find that I am, by default, amassing insect knowledge.

I love this about my art practice, its never ending input, the continual making and mapping of new relationships and contacts and the feeling that I never, ever know what the next day will bring.

Literally.

# 37 [16 August 2011]

My little wasp has caused a buzz on my Facebook.

An artist sent me this photo of a dress made for the actress Ellen Terry . It is covered in metallic green beetle wings, and has recently been restored to its former glory. I shall be close to Smallhythe Place this weekend so will try to drop in and study it.

John Sargeant painted a portrait of Ellen in the dress so I guess it must have been well known in its day, although I see from Google that in many parts of Asia it was an art making beetle wing material for the wealthy.

One of my best Google finds was this wonderful Victorian beetle wing tea- cosy!!

I keep the insects I am drawing and now have a growing collection of dead insects silently waiting for me to work on an installation ...........maybe dead insect tea- cosys is the way forward............

# 38 [20 August 2011]

My moth boxes are gone - I took them down to St Mary in the Castle Crypt in Hastings yesterday and installed them alongside Cathryn Kemp's residency work.

It was the first time I had seen her installation other than in her beautiful photographs. [ see her blog on Projects Unedited to find out more.]

Cathryn has installed white petticoats in this damp, silent place in memory of the 27 young girls who succumbed to TB in the seaside sanatorium and are buried there. Her lighting is very soft and the sound installation is whispered and unintelligible. It engendered in me a feeling of gentle sadness, femininity and of lives that were robbed of the girlish gaiety that the petticoats speak of.

I had wondered if placing the boxes within somone's completed work would be problematic, but they found an instant niche as sometimes things do. Concerned about the damp I decided to put them on top of a grey wooden apple crate- dusty, and spider webbed. I hoped it would melt into the colour of the crypt walls and it worked well. It also raised the drawings to a height where they are more easily viewed.

I am pleased. They are something to be found. If studied closely the X-Ray/crucifixion images and the fact that the moths are dead add an unexpected darker touch to the installation.

The crypt which is entered through the crypt cafe on the sea front has been an innovative art space but under threat for a while. Thankfully the crypt has been reprieved for a year.

I have been offered a residency in this very special place next summer......I am already percolating the possibilities in the brain.

Lots to think about.  

# 39 [27 August 2011]

Today the Farningham Hobby Horse Project was to have been a presence at the Ripley Arts Centre. We arrived, unloaded the cars, set them up around the lovely sensory garden in the manner of a sculpture park - something we hadn't tried before - and the heavens opened. We were drenched, they were soaked and the paper and feathers and the PVA and the sequins and the ribbons so lovingly put on by their makers hung damp and dripping. We voted to bring them home and dry them off. The rest of the afternoon was spent drying everything so we can be on the road again first thing tomorrow for the Ramsgate Squall - on the coastal path - weather permitting.

This project is hard work, requiring two cars, a team of at least four, crowbars, electric drill, generator and endless patience. Somehow in the excitement of starting it all we chose to overlook the sheer repetitive nature of the endless e-mails and phone calls to set up each location, and in the loading and unloading, storing and repairing of 120 hobby horses.

Soon we will have to start looking for indoor venues, but first we have to work out how to stand them up. The favoured solution is some form of wooden 'log' each one taking ten horses. Then we can be flexible as to venue and space as they can be in a line, a square, in lines... now just how to make ten of these cheaply..............



# 40 [28 August 2011]

Another day of sun and showers with the Farningham Hobby Horse Project - this time part of the Ramsgate Squall. We were on the costal path in George VI Park - with Weapons of Sound next door to us as our sound- track.

Great visitors, but a constant watch on the sky and all hands to get the plastic bags on the horses to prevent them getting ruined in the showers made it all a bit wearing.

Ros my partner arrived wanting to try setting them up in a circle reminiscent of a fairground carousel. It took longer to set up but worked well - allowing visitors to go inside and look at the inside rows as well as the outer ring. Less problem with small children wanting to stroke and touch them this time. Last time the parents couldn't get in to get them out!

Finally left defeated by the weather, accompanied by the drummers, the cafe couple and the visitors. All damp but having had a good day.

All very British by the seaside.

www.farninghamhobbyhorseproject.phanfare.com