INTO THE VOID

While very nearly falling off the edge of the planet, I am delighted to report that as of 4pm yesterday I am officially

PAID PROJECT FREE!!!

HURRAH!!! (or is it BOO?!)

Whilst I have enjoyed an sudden and incredibly intensive burst of activity, with actual real life MONEY attached to it, I have badly neglected everything else in my life. I have never had so many all encompassing timeconsuming work heavy jobs to do. Too many for it actually to be healthy.

However I have come to a stage of intense realisation within this frenzy: I really am my own worst enemy. Where there is a simple job I force myself to make it a million and one times more complicated and seem to be unable to stop myself.

Why do something that can take ten minutes when you could do it in 3 (or more) days?

Why pick the easy option when the impossible is just SO much more enticing?

Looking back, I realise that this is not a new way of being, but one that I have been conditioned to as I have grown up. There are several likely sources of this problem…. having a father who daily worked into the night finishing graphics projects and regularly pulling ‘all nighters’ how could I grow up thinking that art meant anything other than a 30 hour day? Doing a degree in Embroidery but wanting to make 3D automated work – yeah that’s sensible. Throw in some perverse desire to make EVERYTHING by hand, myself, with no help.

When I was 12 I wanted to be an ice sculptor – my art teacher told me I should start with clay. But why would you ever want to do that?

Yesterday I was sorting through some family jewels. You may not think of them as such but to me they are hard won and need to be treated with great reverence as they are very rare and have been passed down through family history.

They were found, after MUCH digging, in a mound the size of Olympus; only this was a mound of pure cloth.

Having squirrelled away my cache I spent several hours deliberating on the cutting and setting for each precious piece. Size and proportions are all important to show off depth of quality.

I can’t afford to mess up.

Here is a small glimpse of my haul….

I find myself in a very odd situation in that all of a sudden I have a complete body of work waiting inside my head. all to do now is to get it into a tangible context outside of my mind. Easy Peasy.

It seems that lots of little bits and pieces that have been hanging around as loose ends and trailing thoughts have congealed into a complex yet together plan (yes, I know it is hard to believe I am really saying this)

SO.

The emphasis must be on getting it all out as quickly as possible. Before it gets consumed by something else. Because this time it is real.

So. finally got to the studio for a WHOLE DAY yesterday. (yippeee) A festival of dead flies and neatly arranged nuts and bolts. – LOVELY.

In celebratory (and traditional) fashion I returned to my ongoing work SPECTRUM which could be classified, I have realised, as a durational work. The revelation to my poor long suffering studio partner (my Richard Briers alike father) that I would be working on this particular piece until 2020 did not go down too well. Musing that he would be 86 when it is finally finished, he URGED me to get it done quicker. Surely, he reasoned, I should be spending time on other ideas, as I do have rather a lot, and that continuing on this one piece, committing my already restricted time to something that to his eyes does not need much more work on it, seemed he thought madness.

This, as I explained to him – is largely the point.

Ah!

a sigh of relief as term time begins again.

Hello brain! You’ve been gone so long – good to have you back.

With my consciousness in PARK it is a small miracle that things SEEM to be falling into place and everything is making a lot more sense.

A lot of this has to do with my first two RE:view bursary meetings which have been an amazing clarifier of thoughts. It is funny how it is the stuff that you really do actually know deep down but are subconciously ignoring that is the most important stuff and sometimes it just needs someone else to reveal it. Thankfully I now seem to be existing on a new (higher?) plane of existance in my head at any rate and I am refusing to allow any of the old debris in any more.

I feel a little reticent still to elaborate more on my meetings – perhaps somewhat superstitiously I don’t want to break the spell. I am hoping instead that the spell will permeate into all areas.

Enough of the semaphore and on to sign language.

Here is a link to the work that I am currently showing at Fermynwoods Contemporary Art which is a representation of Tom Phillips’ iconic A Humument translated via the help of the wonderful Amanda Law and amazing Oliver Graham into a series of new book forms.

http://www.fermynwoods.co.uk/current-programme/fre…

Showing as Public.Art until 14th October

This was inspired by one of my first superhero works: SUPERHERO GADGET (self love)

https://vimeo.com/74010031

Armed to the teeth with my new self knowledge and big plans (thank you again REview bursary) I prepare to step into the void…….