“So what’s important to you? The object or the text? How wedded are you to the combination?’ … or words to that effect … spoken by a fellow student during a self directed seminar.
Damn!
I have to make a decision?
I have to make a decision.
The text of course.
An immediate response easily made because the meaning (meaning? my meaning? the viewers meaning?), resides in the words that were being projected on to and behind the object.
So the object is extraneous?
Maybe.
Yes.
No!
The object is…
something else?
Are there two pieces of work here that I am trying to combine? Like a marriage that should work according to the facts but hasn’t take the individuals feelings into account.
I’m rambling.
I think.
Or maybe I think? Out loud? Out line? On line?
I don’t like lines very much. At least not straight ones, except when…but that’s another story.
Back to this story.
I suspect this is fundamentally about my practise. About what it is, or might become. Am I an installation artist? An artist who works with text? with sculpture?
Am I an artist?
What is an artist?
Does it matter what I call myself? How I am defined?
How I am defined? or how my work is defined? An interesting slip of the pen.
Again, back to the subject. This work. A work that keeps growing and shrinking and gobbling up ideas both serious and whimsical.
It began with the parts of a rocking crib laid out on the floor in my studio space. Moving them around like a jigsaw puzzle I fell in love with the shapes and the texture and the possibilities of shadow.
Then came the phrase. A title. ‘It ‘s not a bit like the Waltons’. A wry comment. Tongue in cheek? It’s not like East Enders either. Family life. Families.
Next came the list. There is almost always a list! Social comment?
At Christmas I projected the list on to the crib.
Maybe something. More work definitely needed.
Arranging and rearranging the seperate parts has been fascinating and intriguing. The way they related to each other. The spaces in and out and in between. How together, they create a brand new whole.
Now, I project the words and I am left with a restless feeling. A split in my intentions.
Social comment?
Pleasure in the …. objectness? … of the sculpture?
Which leads me back to the seminar I mentioned at the beginning. We talked of instructions and leaflets. Of multiples available to be taken away by visitors.
I designed and printed a leaflet.
Next week is our Interim10 exhibition, which is what I have been working towards. Yesterday I brought my leaflet to another seminar.
And the sculpture.
Two pieces
which now need to be intergrated once more….
