ARTISTS TALKING

# 41 [29 August 2011]

The last time I turned up at a PV one of the artists made straight for me clutching a screw of kitchen roll- which I was obviously thrilled to receive. I could see the curator looking somewhat intrigued. Little did he know it contained a wasp and a fly.

Everywhere I go people hand me little jars and pots of dead insects. There is more than a little insanity in all this…………………..

My lovely friend Juliet has sent me a matchbox through the post containing moth wings she has collected from under a bat roost.

I am stupidly excited by their arrival and spend the day lovingly constructing in my mind works with them. Favourite at the moment is to paint each one separately in watercolour - and then as a pile of wings - both works on separate sheets of paper; then frame them side by side as one work.

This seems to honour each insect and memorialise it, while at the same time  telling the story of its demise.

I can hear an echo of the listing of names on a plaque at a place of massacre.

Anyway- nothing can be done for a while…………just too much else to do. I need to get my work /life balance sorted. I have so many projects waiting in my brain and no time. The hobby horses are very time hungry.

Maybe by the spring I will have changed my mind as to what to do with them completely and this imagined work will be no more than a homeopathic vibe within the final one………

# 42 [4 September 2011]

The last few day have been spent in Groningen in Holland.

As you come out of Groningen station you are instantly assailed by the strangest building – Groningen Museum. It was finished in 1994 with separate sections deliberately commissioned from non architects, one of which was Phillip Starck.

Too brutally modernist and spatially too harsh for my taste but you always find something interesting don’t you? I was fascinated by the fortuitous way that bottomless black holes appeared to form in a green algae pool when fresh water funnelled into it. The mix of colours, perspective and the dark piercings gave me a sinister wish to dive into them.

The town turned out to be warm and friendly, chilled and cultured, full of art, theatre and antiques. My high spot was re- visiting the museum to see Chinese digital photographer Chi Peng’s first solo show – ‘Me Myself and I’.

Stunning. A tightrope walk of politics and folklore, adolescence and the headlong growth of a country. As a non Chinese I knew I was missing references to culture, stories, film and heritage but the show was so strong it seemed immaterial. Photography is not my first love and I don’t claim much knowledge of it but this exhibition reignited my interest.

The other image I bought back with me was of the many trees with scarves tied around them. Apparently some of the trees are under threat of destruction and tree lovers have knitted them scarves to show they care. With so many scarves of so many sorts it becomes a clamour impossible to ignore…. .

The collaborative artists book 'Quattrodecim' that I did with thirteen others printers seems such a long time ago now, but is suddenly reappearing in my life. Thanks to the generosity of a Hastings based printer who took part in the collaboration my book is now ensconced in her Open Studios exhibition, as I think are my moth boxes from the Crypt.

This morning the postcards arrived for our Quattrodecim exhibition at the Pie Factory in Margate . Fabulous. I am always in awe of anyone with unerring graphic design skills. I have none.

Today was spent with the Farningham Hobby Horse Project - wet again. This time we were at a local Heavy Horse show when the rain came down.........the only thing to do is throw plastic recycling bags over all 120 of them, load them as fast as possible, drive home and dry 120 hobby horses and wet plastic bags over my Aga.

Absolutely barking mad.

# 43 [9 September 2011]

The other day an artist sent me a paragraph of text lifted from my recent blog and asked if she might use it to label some of my work. I had no idea she read it ……I felt quite startled. Am I alone in feeling almost stalked?

This is crazy. I blog to an unseen audience, that’s the point, or at least part of the point; the wish for discourse, to feel less alone, to feel that there are others alongside also struggling to make sense and headway of whatever they are working on……….The other is of course to listen to my own creative voice coming back to me, to catch it unawares and see if it sounds different to the endless chats I have with myself.

Sometimes it does sound more grown up, but I think that might be a matter of wanting to sound like I know what I am doing in print rather than knowing what I am doing – which is of course, different.

Anyway, the silent reader, the one who reads and moves on and leaves no trace……

You blog. No comment. Sometimes it is immaterial to me, sometimes I feel as if my blog has been found wanting – too boring? too ordinary? bad writing? bad art? But hang on – is this me being childish, petulant, attention – seeking? Probably the majority of blog entries remain unacknowledged and after all I still have the other half of my bargain – the echo of my blog voice.

I think on reflection that maybe it is the fact that any mention of my blog in conversation invariably means we have at least a faint connection. We know each other. So my being unaware that they are reading my blog feels somehow socially uncomfortable…..as if I should have known something I could not have known.

Now – why don’t I feel the same about Facebook?

# 44 [10 September 2011]

I have been offered a solo show next May. A whole gallery space to play with. Nothing grand, but a lovely space that was once part of a large church. It still retains the feel of a small chapel and suits the low key colours and the detail of my work.

Suddenly next year seems to be shaping up too fast; a residency in the crypt and a solo show…….great opportunities but the responsibility of making new work that hangs together and that I feel good about - within the time frame - is rolling in over me. Is this sickly, panicked claustrophobic feeling universal? It will of course come and go from now on.

The apocalyptic nightmare of having nothing, or nothing good enough to show, is sniffing around me already. But I know the rules, I have been here before. Every good idea, every happy experiment, every finished piece will push him further back into the outer ring of darkness whence he came.

So - nothing for it but to start work. Driving is always good. Long delicious hours of free flowing unconscious ideas ……….

# 45 [13 September 2011]

Would I like my solo show featured in a museum ‘passport’ being printed for 2012? As the museum is over the road from the exhibition gallery, is very art oriented and has its own gallery- and my work is museum orientated, this seemed a no - brainer.

So - I have spent much of the last two days choosing an image and an exhibition title for a show that isn’t on for a year and will feature work as yet unmade. Slightly mad.

Image was surprisingly easy.

Title surprisingly hard.

Titling as I see it is about positioning the show for your audience, giving them a clue.

Art titles. They seem to come in three sorts- the ‘this is what I am doing sort [‘The Drawing Room,’ / ‘Crossing Frontiers, looking for an Eastern Identity’], the poetic sort [‘Memoirs from a Cold Utopia’/Shadow Catchers: Pinhole Photography’], and the ‘you should know in advance that my work is contemporary’ [Every Jetson has a Flintstone inside’/ ‘I will eat this sleepy town’.]  There is also of course the no holds barred approach culminating in the famous Shanghi Biennale title ‘Fuck Off’ in 2000. Translated from the Chinese meaning ‘Uncooperative Approach’ ……………….think we guessed.

And if of course you are Picasso or David Bailey, just your name will do, although we now seem to have a fashion for the colon, ‘Gerhard Richter: Panorama’/ 'Rene Magritte: the Pleasure Principle.’ Maybe I should have one of those………..

Having been told there existed a random art exhibition title generator [sncart.blogspot.com/2011/02/random-exhibition-title-generator.html] I thought I had to give it a go……result: ‘To Find the properties of gaming: figuring the Local.’ It then exhorted me to enjoy the show’!!

Maybe not.

I have always favoured the poetic. I feel this may be a failure in me, that I should favour the hard edged; the difficult. My work is tightly controlled, archived and curated. Maybe I use my titles to ask my viewer to find the poetic that I can see in it.

In the knowledge my work will be low key colours and that viewers will have to be close to engage with it I finally settled on ‘Sotto Voce.’

Doubtless it will be hopeless by May and I will hate it with a passion. Hey Ho.

# 46 [24 September 2011]

How can the Fates be so rubbish? Sometimes I think someone has it in for me.

Nothing but endless bloody rain.

The Farningham Horse Project continues its perambulations around Kent.

Most Saturdays Ros Barker [my project partner], my husband and any passing teenager, neighbour or friend who can be talked into helping us out, loads 120 hobby horses into the cars and the cavalcade sets off.

Ramsgate it rained. Shoreham it rained and last weekend at the Folkestone Triennial Fringe it rained again. We sat in the car for half the day and then went looking for another venue - one that was dry. Eventually we carried the horses up a hill to some caves on the Leas Costal Path. We put out our lead horse - our Gay Pride Gardening Horse - don't ask! – hoping its 5ft flag would bring in the curious.

It did its job - and we spent a happy afternoon explaining the project to the surprising number of hikers and families out in the wet.

Now we have to decide on a strategy for the next six months......first we need  to come up with some form of support that will mean we can exhibit them indoors - galleries, shopping Malls, underpass etc.

No funding at present for this part of the project but more importantly no one has come up with a solution to the problem of how to stand 120 hobby horses up. I favour narrow strips of something with holes in that will take ten horses at a time. Flexibility is important. I can see them in one long line or around the edges of a room, or ten on each stair.........

Some are quite top heavy, all are 4ft tall. Whatever we devise will have to go in an estate car boot......I suspect each support will have to be assembled on arrival. Maybe there is something in metal or plastic manufactured for something quite different we could utilise?

All suggestions warmly welcomed - please use the suggestion box below!

# 47 [25 September 2011]

I have started the moth wings...........painting, not drawing. I am finding it hard to be expressive in paint. I haven't painted for ages, small or large. Maybe I have just got used to having a pencil in my hand.

Yesterday I counted all the wings; eighty - three. They are extremely beautiful - many with an extraordinary metallic dusting. I wonder what evolutionary purpose moth 'bronzer' fulfils.......

When I was gifted a matchbox full of wings from under a bat roost it was the massacre of such soft and gentle things that resonated. Dismembered in a clinical way and only the wings left.........Hannibal Lechter on a grand scale.

I decided to paint each individual wing as a memorial and had intended to paint them as a 'pile' at the end at the bottom of the paper. They are of course so thin that there is no such thing as a pile. At present I have no solution to that problem and am just continuing to paint one wing after another trusting that some form of conclusion will present itself at the end.

It is a very meditative way of working. Quite new to me

# 48 [11 October 2011]

I am still painting my moth wings, snatching time from other things and occasionally getting a few consecutive hours to work. It’s so intense that to be honest I can only work well for a few hours anyway. For some reason focused working always makes me hungry, so I tend to roam about, sandwich in hand, restless to get back to my paintbrush. I wonder if the Victorian botanical artists felt the same.

The Farningham Hobby Horse Project has hit a moment of technical hitch. Try as we might we haven’t come up with a cheap, successful method of standing the horses so we can exhibit them indoors. Many are very top heavy, some – like the mosaic one – dangerously so. I have a vision of them either standing in a contraption that allows us to move them about singly, or in a contraption that allows for say ten horses to be stood in a line and shown in lines. Nothing works. So frustrating.

Tomorrow the builders come to knock out an old loo in the room my PC is in. Now it is empty and about to be enlarged the room seems suddenly to have real possibilities as a work space.

So now I am trying it on for size in my head………..do I want to give up my big studio in a studio block? I never liked it there; no window but a big space, with a big electricity bill to go with it and freezing in winter. I never felt settled or safe there and it’s become a huge store room for all my installation components and past work I should find the courage to throw. Can I still justify the expense in the present straightened times?

How many of my art books can I contemplate parting from? Could I get the plans chest in the new room and maybe get a small press on top of it? Maybe I could swop the big studio for a small one and try working from home for a while before giving up a studio space entirely.

All this has made me consider closely the path of my work in the last few years….does the present flurry of small drawings result in part from my reluctance to spend part of my week in the big studio? I am happy in this space but for the future? I was the one who always claimed I would use whatever media the work requested of me. I am beginning to think that I should go with what will work for me now and trust that the future will take care of itself………….

Escaped tonight to a funding lecture. A good evening but not enough time to chat to those I know or connect with those I don't......I did bring home a handful of buisness cards so I suppose that's the next job.

So many facets to this art malarkey.

# 49 [12 October 2011]

This morning the postman bought me a parcel - with a box wrapped in the old fashioned way with strong brown paper and string in it.

Inside - a beatiful nut brown wooden 'Collection' plate, the kind used to take the retiring collection in church. It is wonderful - a chestnut patina of love on the front, and on the back two wooden oblong patches held in place with wooden pegs. A repair to something regarded as precious, done many, many years ago.

It makes me wonder. Surely it would have been simpler to ask the local carpenter to make another wooden plate in those days.....the skills must have been in every village. What made them patch it rather than replace it?

It also marks my first Ebay purchase. So now I have joined the merry band of artists all hunting for a small press. What my husband calls me being in truffle mode - nose down, tail up, on the scent.......deaf to everything else. Another thing to eat into my art hours.

The Collection plate has been purchased in the hope that a proposal might be accepted. Will tell all if it does.

# 50 [23 October 2011]

Great. The proposal for a new work called ‘Collection’ using my walnut collection plate has been accepted for ‘Beta’ at the Kaleidoscope Gallery in Sevenoaks. I said I would explain, so here goes – the plot:

As an artist working with memory and loss I appropriate the impermanent and transient, and by way of collecting, archiving and indexing, re-present it in a final memorialised form.

My constant choice of the museum presentation acknowledges the special relationship between collector, curator and exhibit – a contract of permanent care. So permanency of the final solution is important to me.

In this new work I am stepping outside my usual format to look at the collection as a fluid, rather than a permanent entity.

The collection plate is going to be left at the gallery door with an initial collection of silver and bronze money and ‘pocket items’ – button, safety pin, wrapped sweet etc in it; together with an invitation to donate by swopping with the items in the collection.

Doubtless there will be those that just donate or take.

From the first intervention the initial ‘art work’ collection will no longer exist. With each addition or subtraction a new, temporary ‘collection’ will be formed. There will be no stated resting place for the final collection; no curatable final resolution in any form.

Historically a Collections Plate has been passed around or left at the exit door – traditionally in silence.  Donations are made in the belief that the Collection will be used for ‘good works.’ Substituting an item for money in the hope that others will think you have contributed is regarded as a cheek. In passing the plate from hand to hand or leaving it at the door the honesty of the public is plainly an issue, so traditionally the community has achieved this honesty by regarding the taking of donations as a contemptible crime.

I shall be interested to see if the following issues impact on the way visitors choose whether to interact with the work or not:

How willing will visitors be to disregard a gallery taboo and disturb an artwork?

What does it mean in today’s world to disturb or ‘rob’ a donated collection?

In this time of recession and riot does swopping/ taking money have a different resonance?

Does an item such as a sweet have an intrinsic worth - would a visitor feel that to swop it for a hairgrip would be to accept something lesser or more?

Does the fact that there will be no advertised end place for the donated money and items prove problematical for the giver?........Now I find myself embroiled in trying to find the right table to place the plate on….with only three days left before I go away………hmm………..