Threads

A few posts back, Jean McEwan and I started a discussion that I thought best opened up a little, so I’m posting my over-long comment response here so it perhaps gets a wider reading – I’d like to know what other people think…

We were talking (again) about work that is personal and autobiographical, and validity…

Jean said:

“…I’m fascinated to read your reflections about the autbiographical in your work. I think there’s a general feeling that if work is too directly personal then it somehow has less value? Is there a gender thing in there too do you think? Women artists who make ‘personal’ work being dismissed or perecived negatively? It seems to me a weird thing to judge- for all artists it comes from within, the personal. What happens after, how you desribe it, how it is received, is an external cultural thing .”

My response was:

“….. I think there are all sorts of factors going on here… it is perhaps to do with the intellectualisation of the work. I have “owned up” to what the work is about for me, and where it comes from. Maybe this is a dirty secret I should have kept to myself? Maybe I should detach myself from the work and choose to hang it intellectually on some far-removed French philosopher in order to present it to the viewer? I could do that… I have the technology as they say… I am always very concerned that I exclude much of my audience by spouting arty bollocks, and am very reluctant to do so. Also…. there is the order in which things happen… I cannot wait for the intellectual to attach itself, or for me to find that link, before I make or show the work in order to validate it. I am just compelled to make it…to express it. In my working process this happens after, or during, I’ve often said here that the thought happens during the long processes. Sometimes I make a piece of work that feels right, but don’t see the connections myself, but trust that they are there. If I don’t see them others will. They may be their connections rather than mine, but they are valid nonetheless. When people tell me my work is too personal, or autobiographical, my response/excuse whether voiced or otherwise, is quite often “Louise Bourgeois”. I can do what I want. And more… (maybe this should have been another post rather than comment) I don’t know that I am best placed to judge the gender issue. It is my issue, and I am female… and the work I produce is undoubtedly feminine. Don’t think there is a truly objective answer to that one! Working in collaboration with a man, as I am currently, shows difference in working style/attitudes, but they might be Elena/Bo differences not feminine/masculine differences.”

(both comments have been very slightly edited)

Maybe it is a gender issue? The people I talk to about this are so far, exclusively women…

I have heard accusations to artists doing personal/autobiographical work that it is self-indulgent occupational therapy. I am incensed by this… for a variety of reasons…

Hmmmm……

Still drawing bras, still stamping and embroidering words on bits of muslin. Still playing pick ‘n’ mix with patches and pieces for the joint show with Bo.

I’ve now finished teaching for the year and can really focus on these things. I have decided, other than today when I have decided to draw bras all afternoon, I shall have to spend the six weeks ahead working with Bo, and the work for our event. A priority. I don’t usually like deadlines and setting priorities, but it has to be done.

Except… I have booked a day of songwriting next week. My friend Dan Whitehouse is leading a day for songwriters using the Immersion technique… I will do nothing but write songs all day… bang them out is apparently the thing to be done. Not worry about how they sound, quality, whether they are “right”, just get down as much as you can in the time available. Then look at it all at the end. This will do me good, as I spend a lot of time worrying about the words, and then worrying about whether it is a poem or a song, or whether it has a chorus, or if I can write a chorus or if it just looks stupid on paper. I worry that I can’t play an instrument. I shall do hideously self-aware noises into GarageBand and hope for the best. I shall suspend self-consciousness for the day hopefully, and by the end of it, even if I don’t end up with anything useful, I hope to have broken the bad habits and feel freer about the whole process.

I would quite like to have a sound element to my show with Bo, but I’m trying not to force the issue, just hoping that something appropriate lands on the page, and that I can make something of it.

I have shied away from doing anything musical since my MA final show… but feel if I’m going to keep myself challenged, this has to be done. I’ve gone back to listen again at what I did. Dan had so much input to both of the songs I wrote. I would quite like to get something further along the process on my own before I plead with him for help this time. It is far to easy to rely on someone that you know will do a great job, but I’d like to learn to rely on myself, to find out what I can do by myself first. To become more confident and comfortable with my own processes….

Time will tell.

I post here links to soundcloud as a reminder of what went before… so that if I manage to post up some new sounds, the comparison is easier to make.

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/elena-lullabymp-05-10-11

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/keep-calm-loop-elena-thomas

I’ve been ignoring the flashback I talked about in the previous post – or at least I have been trying to. Some things are best left to the depths of my brain to sort out, while the rest of it gets on with life. Occasionally it forces its way forwards and I find myself pondering on it. Sometimes it comes forward in that weird time between sleep and wakefulness. I am aware of it now, and am not afraid to nod at it in acknowledgement. I can see threads of it in my work, and even in my life.

I got told off for saying I was turning into my Mum… obviously I’m not, she had such different influences on her life than I do on mine. But she is with me at every turn and in the mirror more and more as I age. I know that other women will recognise this as both a comfort and a curse. My Mum was great. I hold so much of her in me. But I rebel against her too. And it really annoys me that it is in this very rebellion that I probably resemble her most. No escape.

So this work, and the memories that have surfaced should be acknowledged and respected. But I need them to calm down a bit, so that I feel able to rip them up and throw them into the air. Not think of them as sacrosanct, but able to make use of them in my own way.

A while back, I was making a group of pieces that had the working title “Respectable”. These held echoes of the generation above; my Mum and my Mother-in-Law too. It was as if I was creating a balance, having worked with ideas of childhood, it was the follow-through. I’ve probably abandoned this work, half way through one of the pieces, at some point I may go back in and finish it. I don’t feel the need though now. The thing I was looking for has been answered, so it doesn’t hold my interest any more.

Which also brings me back to the discussion on art work as autobiography…

I am hoping that this current state of affairs hasn’t made me too self-aware about the work I make. I don’t want to consciously be autobiographical… I think I would alter the path if I felt that… maybe… but… I am fascinated by the function in my brain that keeps me in the dark throughout the making, but then suddenly reveals itself to me.

It makes me feel as if I have some sort of multiple personality disorder.

There are always connections. It all comes from me, so there must be.

Sometimes they are obvious to me. Sometimes not for ages, sometimes never… or at least, not yet.

I have conversations with people… friends and family… and this weekend during the LOAF event with complete strangers. It was while replaying one of these stranger-encounters in my head that a blinding flash of childhood came to me, and I had to sit down to deal with it. Such a vivid memory it took my breath away.

I have 3 bits of work attached to my studio wall. I felt I was feeling around for something, the connection. This flashback has linked them. They don’t quite say it, but they hold the clues.

I am shocked and stunned by the way my brain does this to me, tries to make sense of my life, episodes I thought long forgotten. It can be a bit like a dream… the sort that goes:

“we were in our house, but although it was our house it was really my childhood home, you were there, but it wasn’t you, it was someone different, but I thought of them like I do you, so it was you…”

This memory involves my Mum. My work and my dreams often involve my Mum, who I seem to have become. She died 18 years ago… I know this because my youngest son has just turned 18 yrs old. She died when he was 3 months old. I see our relationship over the years, and how it becomes more understandable as I get older, and see the reasons. I suddenly understand something I saw 40 years ago, because suddenly it has happened to me.

There have been conversations here about work being TOO personal and autobiographical. I don’t understand. I have no choice. The work that comes out of me just happens. Whether it is autobiographical or not is often invisible to me until it is too late, a done deal.

The work settles.

There is usually with me, a period of frantic activity on the edge of the new idea. I must get it done as quickly as possible, I must rush through that first stage to see if it works. Obsessive constant drawing/sewing or whatever. When I get to the point where I know that it works, I can stop, breathe, wait, look. My hands might shake a bit while I decide. The bra drawings had to be done. I did two or three a day until I had enough. I didn’t know how many enough was… more than five…. more than six…. Now I know it works I can stop for a while and review the situation.

While I’m stopped I can look back at something else too. Work with muslin, dismantled clothing and dismantled patchwork. Work with words. The words are becoming important again. I have written quite a lot lately… even these words hint at the archaeology i mentioned in the previous post:

Secret Drawer

I tucked it away in a drawer, among world war string and batteries

I thought it would be forgotten, among the falsehoods and the flatteries

I pushed it right against the back, covered it with precious rubbish

Never to see the light of day, unremembered, lonely, punished

The secret’s shut inside my head, it’s mostly disregarded

But I trip up on it now and then when moments are unguarded

I’m also not sure of connections between the made and the written. They must be there, because they both came from me. Bo and I have talked about making connections recently. Does the work we are now doing for our joint show have to be connected with each other, does it have to connect with what has gone before?

Part of me – the very small intellectual I keep above my left ear – says there must be, and insists upon me finding it to justify my work. Another part of me – a gobby student with authority issues and a flaunted cleavage – tells me to sod ‘em and get on with it.

I know which I prefer.