Jography

Well Jography is definitly over now. And although I planned it so long ago in the hope that I would get some funding from ACE and in the end didn’t, I don’t regret that. Sometimes the relative failure of an idea is more informative as to the logistics of making a performance than any measure of success.

I have made more art in the year since leaving Chelsea than at any other time so that is great. My enthusiasm is certainly not curbed. It has been difficult to get feedback on Jography via Twitter or Facebook, but I hope that the drawings may form part of an exhibition of drawing that I am planning with two artists I was at college with.

The drawings certainly have some immediacy and energy, I wonder if a viewer might be able to guess at the conditions of their production. Goodnight Jography.

Drawing, something I am ambivalent about. I remember loving it when as a kid my friend Malcolm and I would try to copy all the comic characters we could. The bash street kids and Dennis the Menace. When we found we could do it, it just made us do it more and more. Now I shy away from direct recording of scenes as I just feel that it is outside what i want to do in art. But it can feel very rewarding at the same time. If I draw a river scene, what does it say about me?

My wanting to make original art coupled with a shyness about my skill at drawing is at the base of this. I seem to be able to copy and not able to innovate. But I have, thanks to an exhibition at the V22 Summer Club rediscovered my love of freehand contour drawings. This I intend to pursue further.

But all this aside Jography today was great fun. I revisited the pedestrian bridges at the South Bank, so I can compare today and Monday’s sketches.

A much more singular running and drawing experience today around Southwark Park and along the River. I felt a conflict between wanting to run and sit for an hour and sketch. The outing turned into a couple of hours walk along the river which was great in the sunshine. The river was in full spate and seemed to be flexing it’s muscles.

At last the week of Jography has arrived and I have felt a release to get on with the project. Steve Gorton and I have made a video for YouTube,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxTNcx1bGkQ

And I have blogged

http://jographyproject.blogspot.co.uk/

And tweeted

@Jographyproject

So what is there left to say. Well the most encouraging thing was to be asked what I was doing, by a passer by, who when I explained got it straight away and will I hope look on-line and see the results. If you are out there please comment. The original idea holds up in my head, but the length of time from conception to execution has meant that I have had to let it slip out of my immediate thoughts for too long.

The Olympics are still a long way off and so is the summer weather. I feel a lot more energy about this project, just having made the video and photographs today.

I have been very busy, not least with the London marathon on the 22nd of April. The training was harder than I had remembered and took up a lot of time and energy. Now the dust has settled, I have more time for the various art projects and Jography.

The separation between art and life is something I am always looking at, and it has been a lesson to have been so engrossed in training as to be doing little else. But I have sorted out numerous creative problems whilst running and it is part of my life and an intrinsic part of me.

I managed to get a cold just after the marathon and could not have my cataract operation as a result. This has been frustrating as my eyes are getting markedly worse. I have a date in July so that is OK. I may be able to get a cancellation before then. Hopefully the heyfever will be in abeyance by then.

I have been making photographs under the title ‘Trees control everything we do’ of which this is one. Drawing whilst running will be fun to do, I will keep such images in mind. They encapsulate the juxtaposition of nature and the artificial.