I’ve already started to plum the opportunities that Margaret Street has to offer. It has 3 beautiful wooden stairwells and I spent last week trying out ideas and making sketches in tape in the only one that has a new extension at the top. I chose this because the new architecture of glass and steel contrasts finely with the old iron and varnished wood. I needed to begin to understand the building and work out my relationship with it. I guess I felt a bit like the new stairs, dropped into this solid resisting history and I had to work out place to exist in it. I feel the nurturing force of this place, just about every nook and cranny has been mined by artists, it’s a protective place where acceptance of new ideas is the norm instead but it is also very dominating physically. It has an aura of expectation and there have been only a few peices that I’ve seen here in the last two final year shows that have negated that domination and said something for themselves. Yet I am really glad not to be working against a blank canvas. Last year’s studio was a white cube and I felt it’s fakery – I ended up making an obvious fake wall.
In this new/old space I got tangible ideas but the most valuable thing was realising that the greatest impact I made as an artist on people in this space and was by being physically there. I was aware of a performative element to my work but always regarded the remainder; the physical result of the work, as being the work. But it’s the making that has the greater impact.
By Wednesday I realised that and began to think of material ways of expressing this. Perhaps I could leave more of an essence? My work with tape can be straight lines or messy but both result in something quite clinical, and optical but to me has always lacked the ludicrous random muckiness of life.
Anyway, I had to wrap the bannisters in clingfilm to protect them from the tape so I ended up creating sealed spaced within the clingfilm and filling them with my breath. It sort of worked; there was more of me left there at least. But I know its the performative and involvement of the audience that are the most interesting aspects. This is my new point of departure and I can’t wait until I can get back into college to pick it up again. But, before that, there’s another day in Madrid, bored, a flight and a whole lot of prep to do for the essay. I’m not worried about the essay but I want to do well in it and that’s all about the preparation and the reading…
