ARTISTS TALKING

# 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?

# 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.

# 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………

# 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

# 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..............



# 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.  

# 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............

# 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.

# 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………….

# 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.