Do not get me wrong though, I am not an embittered or rejected artist holding a grudge against the art world, nor am I a non-conformist telling you that everything is shit. I have successfully run arts projects and shown work for the past four years, and it is also my main income. What this project has shown me is that the form of a working practice can be incredibly fluid and creative in its own right. One day you might expect to be working towards a major regional exhibition, and then two weeks later you are writing for a publication instead, or creating a different show, or different work in an entirely different way, each outcome either replacing or complimenting the others. This way of working surprised me. It showed that in the past I very often adhere to what I 'said I would do', and perhaps this is an unhealthy hang over from numerous Arts Council England applications, that when granted must be carried out with precision and to a timetable (though in truth none have ever gone completely according to plan). I am a project maker: I imagine, arrange, and undertake projects.
At the beginning of 2007, I began contacting institutions in Leicester. I wanted to create a project that would draw together diverse cultural and academic groups so that they would create a dialogue about something that crossed all of their fields of expertise, but that because of their distinct fields they would each produce a different interpretation upon the same subject. I quickly latched onto the archaeology in Leicester collections that has labels like "unknown artefact" or "bird? ornament", and decided that these fragments were the perfect visual vehicle for multiple interpretations.
Initial contacts went well, and I quickly learned about the points of connection between the arts and the museums within Leicester's cultural sector. The City Gallery off-site team encouraged and aided my contacting several big-wigs who had the power to say yes or no on projects of this type, and the consensus was a 'yes' with all the usual provisional elements around access, health and safety etc.
As my own project manager it fell to me to write applications and go to meetings with potential funders, and it was here that I met the first resistance to the project. In many ways the project would benefit and endorse Leicester archaeology, and in particular encourage new ways for the general public to engage with and relate to their own heritage. It would also provide a broader approach and outlook for visual arts in the region and create an original way for non-art audiences to engage with contemporary visual art.
