blog…

Hobby Horses installed and the PV over and done. Loads of people – and lots of them villagers coming to have their photos taken with the hobby horse they made. Our great project photographer Sarah Medway worked hard all afternoon welcoming, calming and posing everyone.

Its just so rewarding that everyone is so supportive and engaged. We even had two more horses made and delivered to us in the week before we opened in the gallery.

Sweetest photo was of a tiny Brownie with the horse she made us towering over her. Our oldest visitor was 87.

Lots of fun this project, especially for for me as Farningham is my village so every venue is yet another chance for a party. I think sometimes that it must be a bit hard on Ros all this meeting and greeting…

Everyone now wanting to know where they will pop up next – no firm dates; although we are in talks as they say. Another job to be tackled between us.

All this takes so much hidden work doesn’t it? Ordering decals, making signage, taking photos, sorting images, thank yous, evaluating, sending photos to the local Historical Society to be archived, uploading onto the website….on and on.

No time at present.

I have two days left to sort out a talk on being an ordinary artist that I give to the students at my old college. Scary because they get some well known faces and great curators in a series of talks that ends up with me telling them how to be their own secretaries and find opportunities. Still, its all the stuff I always wanted to know but was too scared of looking stupid to ask….

I always think plenty of questions = ok talk. I will let you know!

This is how to waste time and not do the work you should be doing for your solo show………….!

Just back from great friend’s birthday party. Spent a happy afternoon doing this yesterday. He runs a firework shop………………

Will I ever stop procrastinating and get on with it?

Like a naughty child.

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.

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.

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.