Flesh on the Bones of the Belfast Child

Feeling mildly unhinged recently. By that I mean most of the time I invest a lot of energy in keeping myself on the tracks as it were, focused, working, applying and generally moving forward hopefully. Every now and then though I turn around to look at the view and somehow derail myself.

The children are off school.

Recently I read a post on Facebook by Artlyst featuring a woman artist discussing how she managed a career in art with a young child ( despite trawling back through older posts I can’t find the name of the artist), the trials and tribulations and how she has surmounted these. Great, that’s definitely great, but I would so love to hear from the women artists with big families. It’s just a different ballgame altogether – with more balls as it were. Perhaps I’m just being unrealistic, perhaps I just need to put on my pinny, settle down to the ironing and realise it’s just a step too far. If someone would just tell that to my head that keeps pouring out ideas and to the knot in my stomach which disappears when I lose track of time in the studio. Get this, I was due to pick my daughter up from a sleepover at 10.15 yesterday. I was late. Why? I sat down to tie my shoelaces, noticed there was a pen and paper on the table beside me and decided to start writing a novel. What sort of crazy, freaky person (and somewhat hopeless parent) am I. What made me think that starting a novel when I had to leave in 5 min time was a good idea? ( I must point out here I’ve never written a novel before but have started more than a few), and yes, with all the inevitability that this situation held, I forgot about the time and ended up late.

A few years ago, when I decided to return to making work, I went to my first exhibition opening. I was late, nervous and alone. I got horribly lost in the new Forest and eventually found a little group huddled around a table of wine, in a gap in the trees just next to the shoreline. Nearby in the woods was a large site-specific sculpture which was the focus of the gathering. Frazzled by my loan adventure navigating my way pre-satnav, I took some wine and struck up a conversation with the artist. I genuinely loved the work and we talked for some time. We found out we both had large families, she had five, and I told her I was just returning to to exhibiting. She was really supportive and assured me that she had managed to get back to work quite successfully. That was, I now know, Phyllida Barlow, a hugely successful sculptor and her words at the time and her generosity at sharing her experience has stuck with me. She remains the only other artist I have met, myself, with a large family.

Anyway, time today to rally round, get my act together and get back in the studio.

It looks like there’s much to be said about Debut Contemporary. They’re not the only drain though on the emerging artists bank balance. I know that the open submission is well entrenched in contemporary art culture but I’m still uncomfortable with the whole system of dependence on artists entrance fees to such an extent.

Contribution to admin costs of £10 and under is reasonably fair but when it stretches to £30 as many of them are, very few artists can afford to keep this up for a long. The argument that this amount is needed to sustain the gallery/show I don’t feel justifies the whole setup. If this is the only way the gallery or exhibition can stay open them the organisation needs to look at other ways to function. Personally there is no way I could afford to apply on a regular basis for shows such as this and I do tend to target the ones with a limit of £10 if I do apply which is rare. It would be interesting to know the fall off rate of artists a year or two out of college, running out of money and disillusioned with repeatedly paying £30 a month or more for a one in 800 chance of being selected for an open exhibition. I can imagine we lose a fair amount of talent through this process. It might be easy to point the finger at extreme cases such as Debut Contemporary but the culture of artists forking out large amounts of money for exposure seems to be a fairly regular occurrence.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on this subject but reading Emily speeds entry on Debut contemporary reminded me to get on with it. I be interested to know if any other artists have had dealings with debut contemporary. http://www.debutcontemporary.com/

Here’s what they offer, Samir Ceric,

“Kingmaker” (International Life Magazine) of creative talent… launches DEBUT Arts, having already discovered some of the big names of the new Young British Art movement in the past decade.The DEBUT Arts licence fee will entail exhibition space, an 80% net profit from all sales facilitated by the gallery, be it for a piece of art or a commercial deal and most importantly guidance and mentoring by a team of industry professionals and much more. Artists will be prepared with a business savvy mind whilst they maintain their artistic freedom and creative licence. The gallery space is based in the area populated by some of the leading international collectors, curators, art & business professionals. The likes of Simon de Pury of Philips de Pury, Damian Hirst and many other art industry heavyweights are either based locally and/or are often seen around. (that sounds a bit weird I thought!)

The minimum time an artist can sign up for appears to be three months at a cost of around £95 a week from what I could read the details. After being invited to come to London for an ‘interview ‘ I immediately responded with an e-mail which included this,

…As your central aim is to support emerging artists, it would concern me that you are only able to represent a specific stream of artists,i.e. those in financial situation where it is possible to meet the fees, and I’m sure you are aware of the artists in many situations and from many backgrounds where this is inaccessible to them and therefore of the amount of talent that is excluded…

This was part of the reply…

Essentially, we are all about passing on the tools and the know-how in order to equip you better for your own career, giving you a much better chance to succeed and not only live off your work but achieve a very comfortable standard of living doing what you are passionate about. Hence an investment from your end is needed and will in most cases be off-set by a few sales the gallery will facilitate on your behalf for the duration of the programme. However access to all these experts we have onboard and their invaluable expertise and knowledge worth thousands of pounds will be available to you, if you were onboard. Hence we often tell all talented and ambitious artists that if they are really serious about their careers, they should be looking at ways in which they could earn, borrow or save an extra £95 a week, because this scheme represents a unique opportunity for them to invest in their own careers. If artists invest by going to art schools and spending 3or 4 (or even 6) years studying, surely £95 a week over a 3-month long period on the professional development course might be the best investment they’ve ever made.

Interestingly, I am linked to an artist through Facebook, mentored by their Gallery I guess under such a scheme. They clearly do do what they say as her work is constantly on show, in a variety of venues, and talks and multi-disciplinary events are organised around her work. She seems to be at a constant flow of career development talks and seminars and her online presence is very high. I will be interested to see what evolves from all this constant promotion though. Does anyone else have any experience of this organisation? Like Emily, I immediately heard alarm bells ringing.

What is that image I hear you ask? What is this hastily erected structure, a shelter created from cast offs, gleaned from our greedily consumerist society, teetering on the verge of collapse, a metaphor for modern city living perhaps? This is a Esme’s snail hotel. It is one of many constructions which make up snail city and inhabit our patio. Stuffed with it’s now rotting lettuce and rather neglected grass bedding, baked in the sun beneath its clingfilm skylights, to snails it probably more resembles a Japanese prisoner of war camp rather than a utopian hotel complex. I’d like to add here that I have done my best to protect the snails welfare, at least by putting the boxes in the shade, but I fear the death toll may be on the rise. An end is in sight though, as tomorrow we will have a busload of Germans filling up the patio for a barbecue (I’m not even going to explain this) so the time must come for the snails to be released.

And so it appears to be one of those weekends. Tonight I’ve been invited to attend Display Salon, in the Bargate monument Gallery, Southampton by ARC in Portsmouth, where a group of artists and ordinary people!?! will be mixed together to be part of a discussion group during which some sort of performance/art work will be created. This always has me slightly on edge since a photographer I knew attended a performance where the artist screamed in his face and attempted to rip his clothes off (the photographers that is).

Tomorrow morning we need to be up bright and early as the twins are running the mini marathon, a fiercely competitive (and really tough) annual inter-schools event which attracts huge crowds of wildly screaming parents, press, radio, overexcited compare, the lot ( I must digress here and say that last year in the adults race the highlight was the Grandad who, 10m from the finish line with arms raised in victory, lost his false teeth which flew up into the air and bounced in in front of him to huge cheers from the crowd – seriously). Anyway, once over the finish line I need to grab the inevitably sweaty and dishevelled twins and dash to Salisbury Cathedral for the opening of ‘Made to last’ the show which was the brainchild of curator Pru Maltby and where the video I exerted so much time and heartache over is on display for the Salisbury Festival. I love to work with Pru as she is a hugely sensitive curator , a great ambassador for my work and always fills me with a sense of accomplishment and peace with what I do.

At the moment, following a visit to the Guildhall space for the potential show next year my head is filled with work I want to get started on. My biggest problem continues to be the ideas in my head backing up and overcrowding my ‘mental studio’ as it were, while the one in reality is lagging way behind in the work I can actually make due to tasks such as releasing snails, feeding Germans and all the other things life in a family throws up.

New work on Axis http://www.axisweb.org/seCVWK.aspx?ARTISTID=13808

The Lampshade and the Boy