I have been given the opportunity to curate two exhibitions in the studio exhibition space at Harrington Mill Studios in Long Eaton. I have co-curated a couple of things before but, even in such a small gallery space, it is an interesting development. It is the other side of exhibiting, the flip of the coin. Breaking the process down to space, artists, artwork, exhibition don’t cover half the tasks. Thinking about how to get people to come and see the work seems to occupy half my time. So today, I have created flyers to hand out at previous exhibition, Chicago Chicago, as an early invite, well, actually, not that early, first one Plot 74 with artist Veronica West opens on March 15th.
I’ve learned to love the studio again. After months of agonising over what, where, how and especially why, I think I have resolved something. The coming together of practice and theory to develop an idea, not an illustration of the idea but a piece that moves all the ideas forward. Ok, so there have been some highlights along the way notably the work Palimpsestuous but still felt there was a way to go. Of course, I am still not ‘there’ and never will be. Why would I want to be as it would mean a creative void. Mmm, a creative void, now that sounds interesting.
Continuing with my experimentations in the studio, I should have been a scientist ha-ha! Actually really enjoying this phase maybe I am just not used to not having an immediate goal. Just been rejected for a job as not enough contemporary visual arts experience – 12 years of almost exclusive focus through education and exhibition, where does that leave the young BA graduate? No jobs for artists until mid-thirties?
It’s hard to concentrate in the cold! But new work coming on apace. This is a time of planning and thinking. I love being in the studio but sometimes feel that I do too much playing and not enough focussing on an end. As soon as I wrote that it sounded wrong. But there does come a time when you have to pull something together. I think that learning to be an artist is just and never-ending constant process, which of course is how it should be and why it is so appealing.
A live art work on how the border can become invisible due to human activity is being developed in the studio. Temporarily called Erasing the Border, there are a lot of themes going on including the colonial/postcolonial debate. Performance brings its own problems of documentation, where does work end and documentation begin for example, is the documentation the work? I felt a great need to look at some of the basic tenets of art this year. The debates about performance and documentation fall into this category but also, for example, simple(?) questions such as what is sculpture?
