Footnotes: the emerging artist
Being Valued
1. This morning five beautiful catalogues arrived for RE:animate, the oriel davies open 2010, and an exhibition I have work in. It’s fantastic to be part of something where the artist really feels valued.
So often, galleries forget, or just don’t bother, to put the artist’s name on the private view card, let alone take the time and trouble (and funding application!) to produce a permanent record of the exhibition, like a catalogue. Even a PV card with, an artist’s name on it, is a great piece of publicity for both parties but a catalogue is wonderful, and being given five copies, some of which one can be used to promote the work, is a great bonus, and very generous. Artists, so often give their time and work free, so it is great to have this appreciated and rewarded. Alex Boyd, curator at Oriel Davies, should be congratulated on the time and effort it must have taken to produce such a great catalogue. We are all winners!
The RE:animate private view at the Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Powys, takes place tomorrow night, 7-9pm.
2. As an artist, one is always so hungry for feedback, and I find, the smallest amount of praise helps me to look at that particular piece of work in a new context. In a recent email from oriel davies, Alex Boyd said: ‘I love your work by the way!’ And, coming at a moment when I was thinking, is it time to move on, set me off making a whole new set of drawings inspired by the original oriel davies piece.
(see drawing)
3. In fact, over the past year, a new body of work has emerged entitled: The Fritzl Drawings, which all stems from one newspaper photograph of the Fritzl family home. By concentrating on one image, and making a whole series of images from it, I found a new freedom, a world within a world.
4. This has been a great couple of weeks, as through a chance encounter of leaving my card at Core Gallery, I am one of three artists who have been invited to lead an experimental drawing workshop in September being organised by Rosalind Davis & Elisabeth Murton.
5. Meanwhile, I have been reading Rosalind Davis’s a-n blog ‘Becoming Part of Something’ recording the setting up of the new Core Gallery at Cor Blimey Arts, Deptford. I have found it inspiring, amusing and, actually, quite moving, in terms of what people, working together, can achieve, and how new blood, and a generous, open spirit can be such a positive new force for an already established organisation.
