ARTISTS TALKING

# 61 [20 January 2012]

Having been the lucky recipient of some London Art Fair VIP tickets via a friend I collected one of my art mates and we sallied forth. Free entry and catalogues was enough to make us happy.

Last year I visited the Art Projects section last when I was hot, footsore and waterlogged with it all.

Am I the only one who quickly becomes over burdened trying to give fellow artists proper time and regard at these events? Now we have lost all labelling I am at sea so much of the time – especially faced with one work. Given a solo show the artist has at least a chance to inveigle their thoughts and wishes under my skin, but with one work I can manage little more than decide on its merit as an image and have a stab at where the artist is coming from. Thankfully the LAS catalogue offers just enough on each artist to allow you in.

Man to the rescue – having found myself chatting to one of the directors of the London Art Fair he told us that he was about to lead a tour of his eight favourite galleries and invited us to join it. Result.

We joined his tour. He, with pink egg timer in hand allowed curators and artists five minutes to talk about what they wished and then we moved on. His ‘Desert Island Discs’ selection included the Jealous Gallery who spoke about the annual MA printmaker who is chosen to join them, and Caitlin who choose 40 UK graduates ‘with potential’ to showcase. I studied closely the illustrated contents of the boxed book that we were handed on the train home trying to find any overall links. Fascinating and intimidating.

I enjoyed the throw away lines – ‘meet the nicest man in art……..we were here at 7.30 with the artist trying to work out if we had the right colours together…….’

Stand P8 bought us into the world of L-13. [Light Industrial Workshop]. This installation of ‘A Brief Survey of Art Hate Field Propaganda’ was work manufactured to look in period while not being so and dealing with events that never were. Art Hate was founded by Billy Childish and Harry Adams and as such was an obvious strange bedfellow to its neighbouring profit making galleries – and a staged one. I couldn’t but help think that for all it’s obvious anti -establishment intention, that by allowing themselves to be bought into the LAS arena they had allowed the work to be neutered and subsumed by the ‘Art World.’ Given the philosophy and intelligence of the artists involved this seemed most odd. I still feel I must be missing something here……

Back downstairs in amongst the more conservative galleries I find myself meandering about trying manfully to  impose some sort of order - stick to the right or left - hand lane……doesn’t work. I see something far more interesting and dive off towards it. Quickly I find myself giving works [with a few exceptions] less than a cursory minute each. This can’t be right. How am I meant to ‘do’ this?  I find a friend’s work and am cross for her that her works have been hung deliberately close to another gallery artist whose palette is so similar- they seem to bleed into each other.

One thing did hit me forcibly – an overall ‘vintage’ feel to a lot of it, from Robin Katz proudly showing us his Lynn Chadwick sculpture on the tour to the endless Ben Nicholson’s, Prunella Clough’s and their friends…..a sea of browns and greys and concrete …………

The other was the interest that abstract seemed to be getting. Just an observation.

Oh - and I was too knackered to go back upstairs to Photo 50……so sorry -next time.

# 62 [2 February 2012]

Ok.

It seems like a long time since I was here but actually it is only ten days or so ago.

Since then?

I have decided to exchange my large studio for a substantially smaller one in the same studio block. Change over day is April 1st. I have closed my brain to all the inherent problems of quarts into pint pots.........too scary and it saps time and energy for any work. Doubtless it will all be a bit disastrous. I don't like the big space - no light and slightly sinister.....the small one is a bit too small, but I do now have a space to work in at home as well.........

The Farningham Hobby Horse Project is getting back on the road....Ros Barker and I have had all 120 out of storage and given them a once over. Wind and rain have left their mark so thats another job before they get exhibited in March- together with all the PR and so on that takes so long...

The moth wing paintings are so slow- three a day maybe..........is it worth it? No idea yet. I like the medatative , repetititive side of it but you do have to stay focused or it can catch you out...

I tend to stop and drink hot chocolate - gives me a buzz and warms me up...

I am trying to keep down a rising sense of panic re my solo show at the moment. June seemed so far away in November but my hefty dose of flu, a sick elderly mum [ongoing] and setting myself such slow, intricate projects has seen the time shorten considerably. If I don't work full on then it won't be done.

I have been invited to send a proposal into 'Telling Stories - Hastings' which is wonderful -something I would really like to get involved with. Last years 'Telling Stories - Margate' was such a great show ...

The proposal has to be in by the beginning of March which has taken me by surprise as the show is not until September. In my brain I had compartmentalised everything I am doing -  and filed this to start after June...

So - ideas heavy and time poor at the moment...........ideas keep pouring in like water. Probably because I am working daily again. Nothing for it but to run a sketchbook and hope the ideas stay fresh.........

Am I the only one who needs to live to be 100 to get it all done? Maybe studio assistants are the way to go; aka our Damian...

Edit... Edit....

Now - how to tackle five delicious moth boxes I have been given- where the contents are decaying into dust?

just beautiful.............

I may be a little mad.

# 63 [7 February 2012]

I am really not winning here.I have spent all morning organising the Sevenoaks Art Forum that I run.

By the time I have walked the dog in our beautiful snow filled woods this afternoon the light will be going and I will feel more like collapsing with a cup of coffee than starting work.

Facilitating other artists again - I love it, I think I do it well, but its a sort of character weakness in the end. A sort of wanting to care for, or be loved/liked for.....any one else a sufferer?

Don't do it I suppose. Great things do come from it; an artist network, an artist/curator/organiser profile for myself, great friends, opportunities....but it is so time hungry on one's own practice. 

At the last SVAF meeting one of the artists approached me with a wasp nest...they all know I am quite barking. Beautiful. Pink and grey stripes of wasp made paper mache.

The nest is now esconsed in a bell jar and I am happily painting dead wasps bright red.

I am not yet sure why, or where I am going with the work; but there is somethig here about the vulnerability of home. The nest is disintegrating and the original inhabitants have turned in my head into aggressors.

Maybe the Holocaust connection again. It surfaces unbidden after periods of absence I find..........

# 64 [9 February 2012]

Shouldn't really be here- late and I am knackered.

I have been thinking about my wasp nest work all day while attempting to paint a pile of moth wings. Truly hard. The wings are  mostly dark and are of course incredibly thin.....even 85 of them.

I was totally unprepared for the level of difficulty and am in danger of messing up hours of previous work here.

One would hope that my brain would be focused on the job in hand. Not a bit of it - it keeps sliding off back to the wasps.

No idea how I set up the wasps - on wire or rigid plastic maybe. Not sure. I do know I don't want to hang them. The nest has been in and out of the bell jar. The jar distorts the nest which I like but it also reduces the impact of the wasps - which is a pain.

I do have a name for the work though - Homeland Security.

That often happens, the name before the work is finished- but it makes the work easier to complete. I know what what it is now. It has a face.

# 65 [10 February 2012]

To London, to London to look at the Queen; or in this case Grayson Perry.

What fun.........I fell for this guy when I attended a V&A talk he gave as his alter ego Claire several years ago. His honesty and integrity and his willingness to make a fool of himself in his search to portray what he wanted were disarming, and his work ethic extraordinary.

All of the above came through again today. The show is in places laugh out loud funny, silently sad, fragile, vulnerable and wise....and massive in its scope and in the work.

My only concern was that it was maybe too much, maybe ten minutes or so too long. I would have cut half the last gallery.

No slightly sadistic or elitist withholding of information or intent here - his voice comes through clearly in the labelling...a running commentary on the artefacts he chose to use from the collection and his own work. I have rarely seen an audience so intently engaged with a show. They were also smiling and talking to each other, plainly relaxed and  comfortable.

Suddenly the man himself arrived on the scene, trotting though with some friends, laughing and chatting with visitors and signing the pencil drawings [his suggestion] of a group of A Level students.

What a rare thing this was - an exhibition without airs and graces that dealt with Life and Death and Sex and everything in between that left me with as many questions as answers and with my horizons broadened and my heart lifted.

My vote is for that gallery to be retained for a constant rolling exhibition of museum - led work by artists from all disciplines.............

And then a visit to the wonders of Falkinders and their beautiful papers........

What great way to clear ones head.

If it snows tomorrow I have the perfect excuse to shut the studio door.

# 66 [10 February 2012]

An 'oh bollocks' day today - no snow, no work done, elderly mum not so well again..........

High spot; Mischa and I walked our short walk in the crisp wintery sun as the temperature began to fall.

We saw a pair of lapwings.

Only thing I have done today in the studio is empty the waste paper bin.

# 67 [25 February 2012]

I had no idea it had been so long. Fifteen days. Far too little work is getting done round here.

I am up to my ears in admin. for things and facilitating everyone else as usual.

If I could only find gainful employment doing that all would be well and my work /life balance would be sorted.

My work on 'Massacre' is done; working with the moth wings from under a bat roost. It was slow, tiring, concentrated and very time consuming but I do feel that I have memorialised them and marked what happened in that space. 

I am hoping the title will allow the viewer to find their own way into humanitarian parallels............

Now just to organise photography and framing.....this time I aim to employ a photographer. I want to see if a professional photographer can help. My work tends to be delicate and repetitive. I aim to draw my viewer in to approach right up to the work itself.

Photography is always an issue for me. Details are great but the overall image can be hard to read and certainly tends to have limited visual impact.

The biggest problem is that when entering open submissions it isn't always possible to offer a detail.

Will be good if he can offer me some ideas.

# 68 [7 March 2012]

Hmm.....just can't find the time for this. It feels like one thing too many, but I really don't want to give it up.

Lots has happened. I have been incredibly, stupidly busy but in the middle of all the admin I have found the time to see things in media outside my usual sphere. The images are crystal clear- they are really staying with me. 

Three days in Groningen in Holland - a huge exhibition by Azzedine Alaia. True haute couture - he draws, cuts and sews himself. Ten years work of unbelievable craftsmanship and beauty.

Then Late at Tate to see the English National Ballet perform new ballets choreographed to reflect the Picasso in Britain exhibition. Breathtaking. Performed in the Duval Galleries. We got there 40 mins early and were five rows back - with the crowd behind us stretching right back to the front door. How lucky was that?

The photos tell it all really.

I am making a pact with myself to step outside the art world more and let some other art forms wash over me.

# 69 [9 March 2012]

Right.

The Farningham Hobby Horse Project goes into the Kaliedoscope Gallery on Tuesday. Its been a bit mad really - getting stands made, painting them, gaffa taping them, getting vinyls made, putting up posters.......Ros Barker and I seem to have been doing something for this project every day for weeks and weeks.  

Last night I started phoning the villagers who made the horses, reminding them that they can have their photos taken with their horse for the village historical archive and maybe for a book. Everyone was so lovely. Suddenly the project and I were reunited again in my frazzled brain and I was really proud of it.

Can't wait for Saturday 17th now. Its going to be fun.

The rest of the day was spent finishing a proposal for Telling Stories: Hastings. 

Part of this was me trying to photograph a bell - jar. Bonkers. The images you see are taken from about a hundred. Not only that but the bell jar and I were to be seen everywhere from the garden to hiding behind the kitchen curtain in an attempt to cut the reflections...........getting crosser and crosser  as the 5pm deadline loomed closer...

The bell jar work is part of an ongoing narrative offered as a memorial to my family lost in the Holocaust.

In my mind the work links to my family history of religious persecution by various sovereign states and the wasps can be read as sinister or benign, as guardians or aggressors of the family home. I have called it Homeland Security.

A great exhibition which follows on from the very successful Telling Stories: Margate . It will be in the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery which just up my museum style presentations street.

Fingers crossed.

# 70 [10 March 2012]

I wonder how many conversations go on behind the Artists Talking curtain so to speak?

I occasionally have e-mail conversations with artists who having read my blog e-mail me rather than post...maybe if you know someone well it seems oddly impersonal to post. I don't know.

Anyway, I have spent the day wondering about a response to this one:

' You're right, I think the wasps can be read as defenders or aggressors. How do you feel about appropriating other things to make work as opposed to making it all yourself? I've always used found items in mine, and find it quite tricky and a bit lonely when i don't. but I've only just started thinking about this recently ..... I know you do both, so I'm interested to know if you feel different about work that has found objects as key ingredients?'

In between doing stuff I have wondered about this all day. How come I haven't given this proper thought before? In this time of eclectic materials does it matter?

Why do I do it? How does it fit with my work?

I came easily to the first conclusion -that the materials I use do have great resonance for me.

They have to be absolutely right. They have to say what I am saying. They have to be perfect for the moment, but made, bought or found is truly immaterial.

Why do I continually mix them? I tried to work out why. I have no agenda or political or eco reasoning for using found objects.

It appears it is the age or emotional content of the found object that allows me to expand it into a full blown work. I spin the narrative from the objects - goose bones, leather suitcases, dress pattern tissue, dead insects......the starter material must match my 'voice' for the piece and everything must be right - colour, texture, age, size...

Objects either offer me a narrative or they don't. My work always deals with memory and memorial in some way. I seem to be looking for my found objects to contain something ethereal, some homeopathic memory that still flutters in the world that will allow me to spin the story..........

I don't seem to be able to get any further than that. I hope it will suffice for my friend.