The 'boys don't cry' collaboration is moving on, even though the nature of our collaboration's exchange of ideas, (and maybe this will be true for other artist's collabs too?) usually happens during 'passages through' the staff/class room, the mobile/email or this blog. Whilst I spent yesterday in the company of 'gifted & talented' boys at the Design Museum near Tower Bridge, discussing the true meaning of the 'student-speak' term "Shank", Faga asked some leading questions with a group of boys back at school like, "When was the last time you cried?".
(do not forget) A face to face artist's meeting, will be planned for somewhere in the vicinity of Muswell Hill as this is a location near to all our homes asap to discuss boy's feedback soon!
When was the last time you cried dear reader, and where were you; were you amongst friends/strangers or alone? It would be great to receive comments from other artists about their own expression of emotions on this blog.
Since receiving Arts Council funding for a collaborative residency at the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture in 2006, I have been working through the contexts and meanings that developed in my work as a result of that residency. I've always had a fascination for domestic ritual and as an eldest teenage daughter, one of my chores at home was to lay the table for dinner. The unfolding of a crisp white tablecloth, the correct positioning of serviettes and cutlery. In the study rooms at the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MODA) I was in my element reading post-war publications about 'how to create a perfect home'. Is this always a female preoccupation? A good friend of mine challenged me recently concerning my work as an artist in relation to Gender politics, and said that if it wasn't for the groundbreaking work of Feminism my fascination with domestic ritual probably wouldn't even be getting a look in. I think that what I came away from MODA with, and what I learnt about in terms of the contexts and meanings contained in my work was more about a process of 'disengagement' or 'absence'.
I have been so challenged by the works of artists such as Franko B and Kira O'Reilly; who cut/pierce/wound/divide/brand their bodily surfaces before an audience to reveal an 'inside', in relation to Kandinsky's 'Concerning the spiritual in art'; with a personal need to question the relationship between that which is 'seen' and 'unseen'. My own experience of being unable to view the works 'in the flesh', but a desire to read about them, lead me to want to question the abject material of human emotion more. To support these questions about 'emotions' and 'feelings' I started to perform the domestic action of chopping onions before an audience.
