I want to get on with … continue with … the things that I was starting at the end of the residency … working with, playing with, materials in space. Things are not working out that way. I wanted to ease back into being here but having to work (for the council), having a cold, and now hanging work for the Uppländska Salong have meant that I have landed with a bump … in regards to being in the group show at the museum a very welcome bump but a bump just the same.
The just being-ness is certainly something that I want to maintain. My days, weeks, months … life! … back here in Sweden are pretty structured. This is something that I want to look at and see if there aren’t other ways of doing things … it’s more than a little bit scary to think about what this might mean in terms of my council job. Perhaps it has had its time, I certainly don’t feel motivated or engaged with it any more. One of the things that the residency showed me was the importance of doing what feels right, and that as artists we have to have our own internal checks and balances as what we do is so different from more prevalent agendas. Perhaps it is authority rather than structure that is troubling me. Too many moments where I do not have authority over my time … where I am not the author of my time. Time, and how I use time, has been a recurring theme. There never seems to be enough of it … I find it unbelievable that the end of the year approaches. What can I do to lessen the sense of time passing … to lessen the frustration of time passing … to increase the joy of time passing?
What if the studio becomes a place for play and experimentation – don’t expect to make anything rather learn and prepare for making installations.
…. several days later … How ironic – or maybe fitting – that I didn’t get around to finishing this post. Three conversations with different artist friends – Kim, Nito, and (a-n blogger) Elena Thomas – have been very good in helping me sort out my feelings about my job. The unsurprising conclusion is that it lacks the flexibility, creativity and spontaneity that I need. What I need now is an exit strategy! Actually the first thing to do is be upfront about my needs with my manager and see if we can reach a compromise – I am doubtful but it would be stupid not to investigate. Monday I will see if there is a reply to my request for a follow-up meeting to discuss the current and future situation at work … there are a number of very practical frustrations that came up in the annual ’development and progress meeting’ last week. Not having received a reply will be a clear sign of where my needs/job sits in the schema of things!
The Uppländska Salong group show at the Uppsala Art Museum opens this evening. I am delighted to be in this selected survey show highlighting 12 contemporary artists in or from Uppsala. I am a little disappointed with where my work has been hung – it feels a little too much like filler in an awkward corner between two very dominant installation pieces. The one distinction that I have is that one piece is in clear view from the preceding room – it is quite elegantly framed by the doorway … which, thinking about it now, I can interpret as a nod to Eugène Jansson’s naked youth (framed in a doorway) that he first showed in a group show in Uppsala in 1907. My work Nocturne was already a homage to Eugène though not a specific work. I very much doubt that this was in the mind of the curator … I shall have to ask! It has been interesting to hear other artist’s thoughts about that piece – most of which include a reference to a wrecking ball. To be honest this is not something that I been conscious of, I am however very open to it and can accept that it enriches the work. So I shall of course be incorporating it in to the piece’s narrative.
