Project Me

At last the studio is feeling like somewhere that I can work

It has taken longer than I expected and it is not yet totally as I want it, it is however much much better and well on the way to being a working space. Unpacking, re-packing and sorting has given me the opportunity to literally and metaphorically go-through things. I am pleased that I have saved not only documentation of realised works but also notes, proposals and sketches for “as yet un-realised” pieces too. Of course some of these are now quite dated, others maintain a certain relevance, and one in particular could be seen to have taken on a new significance since it was first drafted in the late 1990s! In the light of the very positive reactions that I received to the performative aspects of Following Eugène it was interesting to look at some of my earlier performances and live works. Finding notes and photos from the gay performance workshops and show that I and several other men did with Tim Miller at the CCA (Glasgow) in the mid-nineties(!) reminded me of the process that we used to devise a piece that combined autobiographical, cultural and historical content. Our ways of working were not so different from those that shaped Frozen Progress with Nic Sandiland’s Ambler group several years later. I want to develop something else out of the city walk and the subsequent short monologue at Fylkingen (Stockholm). Being unsure of what exactly it is that I want to achieve is exciting and means that the eventual form that the work takes will be shaped by the content and the process. At the same time I getting ahead of myself and am starting to imagine something quite theatrical with a set, props, lights and music. It feels important to allow something to develop between these realms of the unknown and the known – perhaps this is what all artists strive for.

Could it also be that my ‘new’ studio is influencing how I see myself working? After both the studio at Wip and the one in West Norwood it feels very different to be “working at home”. It is easier for me to imagine working on performative content here than it is for me to consider working on sculptural objects or even installations. In the longer term I do want to find a studio that feels more industrial and more suited to physical materials and fabrication, in the meantime perhaps this room in my flat is a good place in which to conjure up ethereal and fleeting scenes. It is not lost on me that I spoke of the significance of the artists’ studio on the Following Eugène walk. I wonder if there are rehearsal rooms to be found in Enköping?

Collage: the collage work of two American artists: Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) and Jess (1923-2004) makes me want to get out my scalpel and glue! Something for long winter evenings?

Do I believe that everything happens for a reason?

My journey back to Sweden has given me much to mull over.  What is essentially a short flight – about two hours fifteen – is of course just one part of the longer trip.  However on Wednesday the whole thing took an exceptionally long time, the total door-to-door time being a little over 12.5 hours!  During this time three particular things happened one of which resulted in nearly three hours sitting in a plane on the tarmac, and all of which would have individually struck me as noteworthy but somehow taken as non-related but sequential events they acquired a greater significance and offered fascinating glimpses in to others’ lives.

On arrival at the airport the man on the check-in desk asked if I would be prepared to take a later flight in return for some vouchers as the plane was potentially over-booked.  It was a good offer so I agreed.  Part of the deal was that I did not go through security until the last minute and in return for losing duty-free shopping time I got a lunch voucher.  I decided to spend this at Carluccio’s and took advantage of the lunch deal.  A nice waitress served me and as I was short of time I asked for my dessert and bill at the same time.  As she put my card in the machine so that I could pay the difference between the voucher and my bill she looked at me and with great serious said

“Now I have a big dilemma.”

There was silence and my mind scrambled to work out what I could possibly have done to have put this young woman in such a position.  Unable to come up with an answer I asked what her dilemma was.  Standing with my credit card in the machine so looked straight at me …

“I am seeing this man and we have not said it to each other yet but I love him and I want to say it to him but in my country it is not the woman who does this but I am ready and want to say it.  The man must say it first and the woman must say it back, that’s the way it is, but he has not said it and I want to say it, I love him.  What should I do?”

Her earnestness and the directness of her question took me by surprise.  I had only a minute or two before I need to be back at the check-in desk and to get to security if I was still booked on the earlier flight and yet here was this stranger asking my advise on what could be of vital importance to the rest of her life.  After a few seconds of waffle and a brief exchange of details about where she and he boyfriend both come from – Poland – I said that she should tell him.  I explained that I thought it better that she be clear and open about her feelings (despite her cultural traditions), that if he did not feel the same or was outraged by her saying it then it was better to know sooner rather than later.  I quickly put my card back in my wallet and grabbed my coat and bags, she started to take the order at the next table.  As I turned to leave I looked over to her and wished her good luck.  She beamed back and said thank you.

It seems very unlikely that I will ever know if Anna tells her boyfriend that she loves him either without waiting for him to say it first or not.  In hoping that she does, and that he not only says the same but respects her courage and honesty, I realised that many of the conversations that I had Kim while I stayed with her were about being true to oneself and taking risks.  It seemed fantastically appropriate that I should be given such an obvious, virtually cinematic, opportunity to give a stranger the advise that I so often need to give myself.

30 minutes later I was boarding the original flight feeling slightly cheated that I got neither ‘bumped’ to the next plane nor the significant amount of vouchers to use on future flights, and yet at the same time it felt good that Anna and I had had our brief but intense encounter.  If I believe in fate I could suppose that I was never meant to get on the later flight, I was supposed meet Anna.

And so we began to taxi towards the runway.  I thought that things were taking longer than normal and as we continued to taxi along turning off the runway approach and on to a remote stretch of tarmac the pilot made an announcement.  A passenger had been taken ill and paramedics would be attending, in the meantime we would be waiting here.  It was the first time that I had heard such an announcement and I found myself wondering what kind of ‘illness’ could come on so suddenly.  As an Archer’s listener I know only too well what happened to Granny Heather on her journey from Prudhoe to Brookfield.  Stroke? Heart attack? Whatever struck my fellow passenger it must have been unexpected and serious.

While waiting I read a little and then decided to take a nap.  I do not think that I was asleep for long (if at all really).  When I opened my eyes I noticed that the man in the seat diagonally in front of me was holding his phone so that I could see the screen.  He looked to be in his thirties, casually but well dressed, good looking in a traditional clean-shaven middle-class kind of way.  He had sent a selfie to someone – for some reason I read the text that he sent with the picture.  In it he referred to the man asleep behind him – and I could see from the photo that that was me!  For a few exchanges he and his friend discussed me!  I was apparently “sleep-neighbouring” him.  Though their conversation moved on I continued to read the texts from over his shoulder.  If I had not seen that I had been mentioned I would have stopped myself from doing this, however I felt as though I was already involved so …  I know that I was being spoken ‘about’ rather than ‘with’ but we were still stuck on the tarmac and I was trying to work out the man’s relationship with his correspondent – the top line of his screen told me that it was “Tracy London”.  Their texts were chatty and a little flirty.  Things became more interesting when he swiped away from Tracy on What’sApp to send a text to Emilie.  He carefully explained to Emilie that he was held up on the plane, said he would be arriving late, and signed off with five x’s.  He returned to his chat with Tracy and asked if there was any chance that she could send him a selfie, before she had time to reply he suggested that hers could be a “cleavage shot”.  She demurred on grounds of what she was wearing.  Suddenly the captain’s voice filled the cabin.  The passenger, their family and luggage were now safely off the plane and we would be taking-off soon.  We were instructed to switch all handheld devices to flight-safe mode.  The man in front of me sent a final message to Tracy and put away his phone.  As he ran his hand through his hair I noticed the wedding ring on his finger.

I had received impressions of three separate and distinct lives, each of which gave me something to think about in relation to my own:

• You cannot expect other people to know what you are thinking if you do not tell them.
• For good or bad the unexpected and uncontrollable happens.
• Life is a simple or as complex as we want to make it.

I can not help myself – when engaging with something new I turn to books. This time I am trying to track down books on creative uses of feathers. As yet there seems to be very little on the subject other than the catalogue that accompanied the Birds of paradise exhibition at the Fashion Museum in Antwerp. (On leafing through the book recently I spotted a consistent mis-naming of a particular feather which made me wonder whether if it was a genuine mistake, an over active auto-correct function, or carelessness.) I treated myself to three books at Foyles though none of them are exactly what I was looking for: one considers the soci-cultural images, myths, and legends of various birds hroughout history; another examines the evolution of the feather from a biologist’s standpoint; the third is “visual guide to the structure and anatomy of birds”. All of these books touch on creative uses of feathers but I thought that I might find a more comprehensive volume looking at feathers in artistic practices.

So on Saturday I took myself off to the National Art Library at the V&A. I have never been there before and I have to say it is quite an experience! I was surprised and delighted at how many people were there on a fine autumn weekend. It is a wonderful place with helpful staff and what must be an incredible stack/store as it takes less than an hour for requested books to be available. I found four books in their catalogue that seemed relevant though I wonder if that has more to do with my abilities to come up with ‘keywords’ for the catalogue’s search facility. In my mind I have images of strange victorian confections of feather flowers presented along with taxidermed birds under glass domes. But how do I search for something like that? What did come up was a book documenting the commercial and industrial aspects of plume-making in France! Published in 1914 the book lists and illustrates the range of feathers available at that time, a list that is certainly not available now! I was interested to see how many terms for the plumes are the same as Tim uses – the language of feathers seems international, or perhaps acknowledges the supremacy of france and french in the fashion industry. Diagrams of various machines for the treating of feathers, and the exprot/import tables, made me realise how large-scale the operations must have been in the past. The book was fascinating and it was a real treat to be able to look at it. As I mentioned I had not been to the library before and the way in which the book was presented by the librarian had perhaps primed my curiosity and wonder. The book was classified in the special collections which meant that I was invited to look at it at particular and considerably smaller group of dark-wood tables, each reader’s place was denoted by a large grey cushion on the table top. The librarian placed the book on the cushion that I quickly understood was there to support its spine when I opened it. I spent a very happy hour leafing through a book in which, despite not speaking french, I found both the familiar and the new.

Last week I saw Prem Sahib’s shows at the ICA and Southard Reid. I didn’t know his work and went along based on a short article in a copy of the Royal Academy magazine. I liked the work and am thinking of going over to the Barbican to see the work of one of his friends and collaborators Eddie Peak. The ICA has re-instated its “day membership” – a brilliant idea that means it costs £1.00 to see the show. The ICA was one of the first, if not THE first, contemporary art venue that I started going to when I was a teenager. I remember seeing a Rosemary Trockle show there – I must have been 17 or 18 which would make it about 30 years ago! It was great to be back there and feel a familiar sense of excitement and curiosity.

On friday evening I was able to accompany Kim to the RA and join her public talk in the Ai WeiWei show. It is amazing how popular the show is. It must surely be the art event of the year. Kim and I have been discussing both the artist and the work over the last few months as she prepared for the show and has been giving tours to both school and public groups. What I really apprecaited was Kim’s skill at presenting the pieces as outcomes of both artistic and activist commitment. The work is wonderfully material, and the materials and forms are beautiful, whereas the popular image of Ai Weiwei seems more concerned with the stories around his detention and treatment by the chinese authorities. The show is impressive not least for the way in which takes on the scale of the RA galleries – it is one of the few one person shows that really sits well in those grand rooms. Kim and I continue to ponder why the show is so very popular – we can’t believe that it’s because of the actual artworks, however if the cult status of Ai Weiwei gets people interested in art and shows them how artists work through personal, political, and philosophical issues then it is all to the good!

I am being over-stimulated by London! After weeks of working full-time with Tim in his rural studio being in London is quite amazing. It is great knowing that I am here for three weeks and that I have time to do things at a leisurely pace. Having said that my day with Francois in which we went to seven (if I remember correctly) exhibitions/events was a good example of how it is possible to get a good impression of things if one trusts one’s instincts and does not feel that every piece has to be studied in minute detail.

Freize felt fresh and vibrant and I was delighted to see several galleries showing artists working with glitter. And even more pleased to see that no-one is doing what I am doing with it! I bumped into Peter Lamb whom I have not seen in many years – we used to both be at Bow Arts in the late 1990s. He is an amazingly energetic and enthusiastic artist, and it was a real pleasure to catch up with him. His passion for art is infectious and after speaking with him I found myself dreaming up international shows and projects … which reminded me that I want to join the artist association in Enköping and get involved in the gallery there. I also want to meet with the head of the re-development of the town’s cultural centre.
It was the ancient and non-european art that interested me most at Frieze Masters. Perhaps because these pieces tended to be objects rather than images. Working with feathers and theatre costumes has taken me back in to looking at form and construction in very material and physical ways. I am looking forward to getting the studio organised and playing with materials over the coming months.
I have those itchy fingers and restless hands again!

I am very excited about the future! I want to move forward on formalising my apprenticeship with Tim, and I also want to spend time on my own work. It is very timely to be reminded that the most important thing is the making and all of its attendent processes. At Foyles I bought books about birds and feathers: one very technical and scientific, one alogorical, one historical. As Kim and I were leaving their café she spotted an announcement that Philip Treacy was speaking there the next evening. It was interesting to hear him speak and I was struck by how much of life is the result of the interplay of commitment and chance – the first being so internal and the second being so external. I know that I get distracted by what I perceive to be the complexities of the world, perhaps it is useful (“strategic”?) to keep those anxieties at arms length and to concentrate instead on something which I have control over – commitment, and to believe that that will put me in the right places for things to happen “by chance” …

Hello art-world!  After a somewhat unintentional “sabbatical” it is nice to be back.  Actually it is a bit daunting!  To avoid ‘giving an account’ of the summer I am simply going to start from here and now.  I will refer to things that happened as they come up and in the context of today.

My fingers are itching to get into the studio and make!  Not that I have not been making – it is just that I have not been making my own work since moving.  A trip to London in July, getting the flat ready for and then welcoming friends and family, and working full-time as the plume-makers assistant has kept me more than busy.  Speaking of which – plume-making – I have been made a very interesting proposition!  Tim has asked if I am interested in formally becoming his apprentice.  Neither of us know exactly what this means and we are too busy with head-pieces and special costumes for the final number of Mamma Mia the Party to spend time finding out right now however we are both keen to see how it could work for us.

The idea of being Tim’s apprentice has given me a lot to think about: it an equally fantastic and frightening possibility, so I guess that the reality will come to lie somewhere on the spectrum between those two extremes.  Or possibly swing between those two extremes!  It is great because it offers the potential to make a living from doing something wonderfully visually creative and fun, it is scary because I will almost certainly have to kiss goodbye to my aspirations of a career in academia.  Having said that I should acknowledge that academia is just “not that in to me” (to borrow a line from Sex in the City).  My overwhelming feeling is that Tim is offering me an incredible life-line and that I would be an absolute fool not to accept.  The question came up after Tim was chatting with a “Master” tailor, she is actually a woman, who could not believe that Tim was not recognised as a Master in his field.  I should point out that in some ways Sweden is quite traditional and apprenticeships, guilds and masters in handwork are still very much alive and respected.  If I understand correctly, and we discussed all this in Swedish so I may have missed a few of the finer points, in order for Tim to be accessed as a Master he needs to have his work examined by a committee of relevant experts AND he needs to have trained an apprentice.

I am very flattered to have been asked.  Tim’s skill and expertise are acknowledged in both the theatre and fashion industries, he is also a guest teacher at one of Stockholm’s best design schools, and counts celebrities and royalty (Swedish) amongst his clients.  Soon after I started working for him he mentioned that it was a shame that I was not at least ten years younger as he should be starting to look for someone to train-up in order to buy the business when he wants to retire.  Tim is only in his early fifties so there is no immediate urgency from his side, however his comment made me very conscious that I am considered old to be making a career change of this type.  Despite Sweden’s more enlightened attitude to second careers for the over forties at my age (forty seven) I would have difficulty getting (and then re-paying) the bank loan necessary to buy the business.  If I was training for a second career where I would be employed in the more traditional sense there would not be such difficulties.  Because of this I had imagined that I would be working with Tim up to and until he found his young apprentice.  Now it seems things have shifted and after working together (successfully!) for a year Tim sees another way of doing things.  I may never be in a position to buy his business but I could become a qualified plume-maker working for him, for his successor, and even on my own.  In the meantime he gains his master title (and status) which increases the businesses value, and we get to keep working together which works well for us both.

As I said we have a lot of work to do to re-establish plume-making (feather work) as the recognised and respected expertise that it once was.  It is a challenge that I think both Tim and I will enjoy – looking back at the historic aspects to when the skill was on a par with other hand-work professions where the term “master” is still used – tailoring and hat-making for example.  It does strike me that “master” here does not denote, or even connote, anything to do with being male – rather it is understood as a level of skill devoid of any gendered prerogative.  Tim, I and the examining committee also need to look at what plume-making can be, and needs to be, today.  Contracts for military plumes and even regular commissions for private customers are not as frequent as they were at the turn of the century, today theatres provide a lot of work and at the moment (evidenced by the fabulous Alexander McQueen show at the V&A) fashion designers are keeping the feather industry going.

For the moment though we have a lot to do in advance of the public previews of Mamma Mia the Party.  If all goes well, and there is no reason that it will not, after the official premier in late January there is the likelihood that the concept will be rolled out internationally!  I do not expect that I will necessarily make pieces if the show is put on in Sydney but it would be amazing if Tim’s interpretations of the designs, and some of my handiwork, become the models for subsequent productions.