Talking through my work during my tutorial yesterday I am beginning to realise what my work might be about. What seemed to resonate was less the ideas relating to female subjectivities, which I am interested in, but the idea of looking and the sense of the body being present in the drawings. And it is the looking that brings together drawings that I had thought were very disparate: the quicker ones based on recall and more furtive looking, and the longer ones based on more intense observation.
I'm beginning to try and 'see' the photographs I take with the same eye as when I make drawings. I am attracted to things that are hidden, half seen, poorly remembered.
There always seems so much to do. I finalised some info about DAD for a-n today so that can be ticked off. Next I have to fill in an application form for some funding from the town council. Then I have to send off some drawings and I have some translation work to do (keeps me solvent) which will take all week. Somehow have to find some time for more drawing.
I joined fellow CSM students at Millbank yesterday to see the Tate Triennial. I enjoyed Tacita Dean's Russian Endings and wondered about the original postcards at their source. What odd postcards!
When I am not thinking about my work, I have to admit to being totally obsessed at the moment with training my dog, an 11-month labrador puppy called Junzi. I took him to gundog training on Friday (you don't have to have a gun or want to use one) and he was the class dunce. It was a totally traumatic morning during which Junzi behaved so appallingly that I ended up totally embarrassed. The other dogs were all near perfect – and no doubt their owners – all kitted out with the right gear – are putting them in for level 1 just for fun.
It was like taking your kid to school and finding out s/he is the worst behaved.
At least this means that the puppy is now a true surrogate kid: a tie, an embarrassment and loads of fun. And I can experience at one remove what it might have been like to have had kids.
I went to the opening of the MA interim show last night at the Bargehouse: a taste of things to come next year. With work by 62 artists on show, there was a huge range of stuff to see and my toes were absolutely freezing by the time I'd been round all three floors. Because of the cold and the eratic hanging, I was more selective in what I looked at than I might have been otherwise. So I took a long hard look at all the drawings and resolved to work a bit harder at my own.
