The past week has been hectic, which to be honest is the same as most weeks; show installing, teaching, PV visiting, studio time, admin, writing, social engagements, family things etc. These are all great things to be doing – except maybe the admin – but balancing so many activities at once does unfortunately compromise the amount of time there is for focused and sustained periods to reflect on and develop an art practice. Consequently, I often find myself engaged in an enduring dialogue about my work in my own head, more often than not in the least appropriate situations, in an attempt to maintain a continual and unbroken relationship with my practice. I’m not sure how productive these internal conversations are, where ideas are moved back and forth, plans are made and recent sketches are deemed futile, as such one person conversations are often rather exhausting. I was very relieved to recently discover through a conversation with friends that I’m not the only person in a constant, silent cycle of personal artistic interrogation. I was beginning to worry…
I know I’m also not alone in juggling so many responsibilities and projects, it does appear to be the life of most artists. However, attaining more consistent time in a studio environment is one of the luxuries I will be afforded during the forthcoming residency at the Centre for Drawing, and something I feel very lucky to have offered to me. It’s not often that I get successive full days to work and yet I know how important it is to have this time to explore, play, test and evaluate what I make. Although it’s not a long time for a residency, I’m sure the two weeks period will be a productive experience that proves significant in the opportunity it offers for a more contemplative approach to making work, rather than what sometimes feels like a hit and run approach to being in the studio.
The good news about my busy week is that I’ve finished off a number of projects, leaving a few days next week clear to get into the studio and prepare for my move to the project space at the Centre for Drawing. Exciting.
New Year, new projects and a small leap into the unknown…
As 2013 gets underway my forthcoming residency at the Centre for Drawing feels very timely, a short but focused period of activity in which to produce new work that may define a direction for the rest of the year. In order to move forward I’ve been doing a certain amount of reflection, which has allowed me to delineate my starting point for the project. I’ve looked back at recurring themes in my recent work and isolated an ongoing area of investigation that will, I hope, be served well by the opportunity to work in a new physical environment.
I have an interest in questioning and redefining architectural spaces, paying particular attention to the interrogation of an area through the drawn line. I often make drawings in response to material placed within a defined space, for example using ink on paper, tape on walls, stretched yarn or reflected light to mark, traverse or change an environment. My forthcoming residency at the Centre for Drawing will offer the exciting prospect of a new space to react to and work in outside of the familiar flat white walls of my studio.
It’s rather uncharacteristic of me not to plan things exhaustively in advance, but I’m striving to generate an honest response to the studio at the Centre for Drawing. Therefore, I am entering the residency without a specific strategy, proposing only to respond to, test and intervene in the architectural language of the space without imposing an existing aesthetic or methodology onto the work I make. In practice I don’t yet know what this will involve, which at this point is equally exciting and unsettling. I have visited the residency studio a number of times but recently it has been undergoing a period of renovation in preparation for the relaunch of the Centre for Drawing this year. I’ve been told that various new architectural features have been revealed during this process, and I’m willing to rise to the challenge of exploring the environment and developing an individual drawn language through which to approach it – no matter how nerve racking working without a plan may be.
