Last night was second college tutorial.
Eleven of us, one great young tutor.
Two talented and eager young artists talked us through their BA and post BA work and we gave the crit. Pasionate about their subjects and clear lines of enquiry. How envious I am. I feel so disenfranchised by it.
Six years out of college and I have just slithered to a halt. I have to find out what all this is about or die in the attempt – at least that’s what it feels like. Last chance saloon.
Interestingly while taking a full part in crit and debate I was writing notes – they just flowed out. Nothing to do with anything in front of me, but about my work. My situation. Possibilities. Revelations.
As the speakers spoke I was putting my work/methods/ answers against theirs and interesting things were coming out.
Sitting in the half dark it was if my brain was untethered and on auto pilot.
This is what is now scribbled into my big green note book:
‘Other installation artists – why don’t they interest me more? Museological, archeological- I would rather be at that exhibition.
My work is always inside glass boxes, museum cases…am I keeping the viewer out? Plinths and boxes- add venerability. Give object importance.
Elements of replication. Formula.
Keifer, Boltanski, Doig..I react to their emotional content. A universality. A melancholy. Find in my work.
Influence – Rothko, Hesse, Hillier- much of all this is the same era. Does this make my work old fashioned?
Only other art that affects me is large scale work using very brightly coloured abstract …Total flip side.Wondering if I should set myself task of going as far in opposite direction to present work as I can.
Sublime/ Romanticism? Try to avoid the Victorian sentimentality but no singularity or muscularity in my work…
Want my work to resist a quick interpretation. Human scale.
Insatallation Artist = I have to react/respond to each project. Each project produces very different work. So – no clear progression.Would be if I painted.
Should the progression be in the importance of the actual project?
Each installation stands alone. Not re-used.
To submit need more than one image. With my work = Problem. Work always hard to photograph in entirety.
Have I got to point where need to apply for bigger commisions?= applying/handling funding. Dyscalculia [number blindness] means will always need collaborator /curator to check figures for me.
Jewish focus work early on – was working through own history as students do. Normal. Remains thread in work to this day. Own private project alongside public work. Political, but even here work same way. Lure viewer in with beauty, stillness and find the difficulty on closer examination.
Craft? Comfortable with it.
BA; a painting was my course resolution. Very intricate work. Seemed important. Still does in my work.To examine closely. Proof of having taken the subject seriously?’
So – Franny’s book of Revelations.
A bit like Napoleon who apparently after waking from a dream wrote down how to win. In the morning he had written something about fruit.
