Things that I have done:
Watched the clouds
Helped carry the lamp through the city
Forgotten my wallet
Stood close to art four exhibitions
Laughed out loud
Spoken with strangers
Chatted with friends
Been to the sauna
Walked on squeaking sand
Picked up plastic
Listened to the wind
Waded across the lagoon
Found shelter in the reeds
Became nostalgic about going out
Recognised myself in another man’s voice
Stood in yesterday’s footprints
Felt the wind on my skin
Made a pencil sketch
Politely declined the invitation to the party
Riden along cyclepaths in the woods
Met friends of friends
Solved cryptic clues
Heard the rain fall on the tent
Studied my right foot
Seen others come and go
Bought second-hands books
Peered in the paper conservator’s window
Risen early
Fallen asleep quickly
Had nothing to do in the morning
Rested
Rest. I have been in constant motion for the last year – barely a day has passed where I have not had something to do, somewhere to be. Now I am at rest … resting … it feels essential. Returning to a place that I am familiar with grants me peace, no need to dash about to get my bearings, to make sense of somewhere new, to work out how to be … instead a welcome ease and rest.
A two hour walk along the coast yesterday was pleasantly mindless. The passing thought of turning it into an exercise, paying it attention, making it in to something, slipped free and was blown away. It wasn’t something that I actively released, it was just what happened, something that I could not, did not, resist.
A long stretch of the coast is a nature reserve – The Swans’ Reef. Between the reef and the mainland is a shallow lagoon of clear water. The lagoon confounds me … the breadth of it evokes an anxiety that it cannot be transversable yet I know it to be so … I have waded through it previously and encountered water reaching no higher than my knees. The water is warm, the sandbed firm and soft. I walk with a gliding action lifting each foot in turn no more than necessary before pushing my leg smoothly forward. This reduces the disruptive splashing caused by a more common gait, it lowers my centre of gravity and invites me to tense my abdomen. It feels determined and adventurous. I notice first one white speck in the distance … then a couple more … six … eight … nine … eventually eleven by which time I see that they are swans. It is the first time that I have seen swans here. The abundance of large white feathers on the reef evidences their presence … or their passing … even when the creatures themselves are unseen. The last time that I saw swans was in the Latvian countryside, and there were swans printed on the duvet cover that I was given to use on the residency.
Eleven rhymes with seven but does not share its sibilant alliteration with swans … besides seven swans a swimming would be very unseasonal … along with eleven lords a leaping. Swans and lords, sevens and elevens … seven eleven … Lord Swan. A racing detour.
A return to rest, but if my mind races again I shall let it. It is no doubt a good way to use the last of that hectic adrenaline fuelled energy, a stage en route to stillness.
Skanör, Skåne
Skanör, Skåne
Yesterday at the beach I sketched the leaden cloud … clouds … that filled the sky and hung heavily over the sea. Did I sketch because I wanted to or because I felt that I should? Intellectually I understand that sketching is an exercise that trains the eye and that hones the connection between the eye and the hand … it’s just that it feels somehow artificial … as though I am performing … doing what is expected … doing what I expect of myself if I am to be taken seriously as an artist. The blustery conditions meant that the cloudscape was in constant evolution … never static … how to convey that in graphite on paper? I was aware of the difference in scale between the vast and rolling sky, and the small movements of my hand across the A5 page. Sketching … observational sketching is not a regular part of my practice. The last time that I sketched was probably this time last year when I was here with L … what does it mean to be an annual sketcher?
I am thinking about the walk on the beach in Latvia … an exercise in experience rather than image … another way of paying attention. If it hadn’t been for that walk and seeing those tall pines collapsed at the frontline of the beach’s errosion of the forrest I may not have come to the more collapsed positions in subsequent installations.
Writing now I am recalling a series of ink sketches made on the insides of disected manilla envelopes … broad landscapes loosely sketched in fountain-pen ink … each envelope opened up so as to create the widest panorama. I made them when I was on my foundation course. Did I take materials with me to Plumberow Mount and work there … I don’t remember that crucial (?) detail at all. Were there sketches of the Southend seascape … estuaryscape? … too? I do remember keeping some of those sketches for a long time. I liked the dark ink on the unglazed and absorbent light tan paper. I miss manilla envelopes … their colour, their texture, their proportion … their materiality.
Yesterday I laughed out loud, several times, in a gallery … I can’t remember the last time that I did that. The show, a retrospective: Roman Signer at Malmö konsthall.
I ’kind of knew’ his work … from some group/thematic shows … maybe something at the Haywood (London) in the 90s but I could be very wrong about that. I was excited to learn that he had a solo, his first in Sweden, that coincided with my being here in the south. I didn’t just laugh … I smiled, wondered, and even felt an odd little nervous excitement. It was the video/film pieces that made me laugh … and that made me nervous – there is something cartoon-like about several of them: they put me in mind of Tom and Jerry, and Roadrunner or more accurately Wile E Coyote. The static camera records the scene, there is stillness, you know that something is about to happen – that the stillness is about to be shattered … literally exploded … I feel an excited tension build in my body … anticipation … and then in perfect synch with the explosion comes the release – it lasts perhaps a fraction of a second. And that is when I laugh.
To me … for me … the work is elegant, absurd, playful, ingenious, confident, hilarious, intelligent, simple, refined, mature and childish all at the same time. I find myself drawn into a world of curiosity … of asking ’what if …?’ of experiment for experiment’s sake. He is constantly testing things … testing materials … testing energy. When I was at Dartington I was in the 3-4D … 3/4D… department – the fourth dimension being time, which enabled performance, live, and durational practices, having seen … experienced … Roman Signer’s show I wonder if that fourth dimension was misnamed … misunderstood … misattributed … is the fourth dimension energy? Is energy a dimension?
I am inspired by his curiosity, his consistency, his commitment, his craziness. I love it when I leave an exhibition enthused and desperate to get to the studio and to get on!
It’s been two weeks since I worked in Enköping – I have three working days remaining (in the last week of July) before my sabbatical starts. This time away is time-in-lieu for working full-time most of June. Even after the first few days I noticed a huge change in how I feel – everything seemed so much more appealing and far less harduos. I have been at the studio a lot … doing what I think of as settling in … preparing myself for being here full-time after the summer. It’s pretty quiet here – usually just three of four of us around. It’s so nice having time to eat lunch together on the balcony, last week we went for an ’after work’ (veggie) burger and drink at a pop-up summer cafe a short cycle ride away.
Yesterday evening I watched a short YouTube video about the ’signs of burnout’. I immediately recognised my employed self – especially in the emotional exhaustion – the sense that one is very very close to simply not being able to cope or deal with things. I am smart enough to know that self-diagnosis based on one YouTube film is hardly a medical assessment that one can rely one … however it certainly gave me pause … cause … to think. Have/had things gotten so bad at Enköping that I was a hair’s breadth away from burnout … emotional collapse? I think that they have/had. I don’t need to go in to detail here, but I do want to acknowledge to myself that my sabbatical is more than a period in which to focus on my own practice – it is a necessary stage in extraditing myself from an unhealthy situation.
I am slowly slowly and very pleasantly gathering my materials and thoughts in preparation for the two upcoming train station installations. On the way home last night I picked up the parcel of ’flag holders’ that I had ordered. I have to say that they look far better than I had expected. I am always sceptical when ordering something on the internet – especially something from an unknown supplier. Today I am going to the hardware/diy store to get dowelling and paint to make the flag poles. I’m looking forward to getting on with that task … it’s so nice to know that I can spend a couple of days making a good job of it.
The list of things to do … to catch up with … is ever increasing, however it doesn’t seem so daunting as it did when I was working for the council. Then it seemed positively threatening … which in both physical and mental ways it was. Now things such as updating my website, updating my mailinglist, meeting with the new administrator and project leader at the artists’ club, re-writing parts of the club’s operating manual(?), registering my works bought by local authorities and national arts organisations (for which I will receive a small annual ’rights’ payment), and sorting out the materials and tools that I bought here when I left the studio in Enköping in February, seem like natural parts of my working week – things to to be interwoven with the making and playing that takes place at the studio – rather than things that take time from, or even completely prevent, the making and the playing.
Having time to exercise (in the last two weeks) is also having a positive impact on my wellbeing. I am someone who really needs quite demanding physical exercise to feel good. I am very pleased to have time and space for that in my week now … getting fit for my sabbatical!
