Threads

While I was making the work for Five, Six, Pick up Sticks, it was very important to me to collect real twigs, pick them up from the ground, consider them carefully for wrapping. I still have all these wrapped twigs, and I am using them in all sorts of other contexts, making them work in different ways, say different things.

But also, I have recently been making twigs out of recycled packaging paper. I think this is a continuation of the residency with Stuart: considering materials and playing with their inherent properties… seeing what I can make them do. I know they are not real twigs, and when you handle them you know they are not real, but they do have enough twiggishness about them for me to continue the experiments. They are waste materials, bound tightly from the huge reel of linen thread I bought in the second hand warehouse in Örebro. The scrunching and binding is different every time, so the individuality can continue. By tearing the paper differently I can get different shapes, sizes and forking arrangements. It is another quiet and meditative activity, that at the moment has no real end-game. Another one of those activities where the multiples play a key role. I haven’t got enough yet to know what they can do.

I am usually a bit of a stickler for authenticity, a twig should be a twig… and then I make that twig signify something. So why can’t I take it back another step and make the materials signify a twig?

Thank you again Stuart for pushing my thinking in a different direction by allowing the time and space to play.

Those who read this blog, or who follow me on social media when they meet me they say “You’re SO busy aren’t you?” And yes, it does appear so, and I am tired so it must be true! Some of that is the pressure to produce “content” which I outwardly abhor, but inwardly I still feel the need to succumb to. But I am attempting to slow myself a little. For one thing, this Busy-ness is unsustainable. Also I find myself stepping back to analyse my need for it. Is there a need to be SEEN to be busy, as well as a need to FEEL busy, that one is producing work?

Good Question…

I am making arrangements for the RBSA’s Professor of Painting, John Devane, also of Coventry University, to visit me in my studio, to talk about all this activity, product, content… and cast a fresh pair of eyes over it and take stock a little. 

Just as I am thinking about this, I have started reading a new book, lent to me by my son, called “The Disappearance of Rituals”. I am still only in the first chapter, but I am gratified to read something that chimes with my own thinking, at just the right time. Author Byung-Chul Han talks of rituals being the means humans take to make themselves at home in the world. We need around us familiarity, repetition, recognition. “Recognition elicits the permanent from the transient” (Han quotes this from Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful p47).

Instagram “content” is the most transient of media. Instead of scrolling endlessly for the new and fresh, what I want actually, is something familiar that I can ponder. Something to ponder is reliable. The act of pondering is comforting. One should linger, tarry and dawdle.

One can watch the cycle of annual feast days and seasons and hold the rituals they are tied to. These mark out the year and give it structure, stability and meaning. They slow things down so we can appreciate the year and the seasons, and repeat the same old rituals, be they religious, or social, or familial. These things endure. 

While creating content, for others to consume, our communication becomes meaningless, it passes, does not endure, we don’t linger over it, we don’t ponder the existence of it. Our connections are EXTENSIVE but not INTENSIVE.

So, while I tarry a-while and contemplate… linger… ponder… maybe I can appreciate more the things I have achieved while I have been “SOOOO busy!” And actually take the time to review what they mean.

This has been illustrated perfectly by the time spent with Stuart in Sweden. Instead of the emails, collected and read when convenient, and the photo on Insta, that we click “like” and move on, we had the opportunity to take our time with each other, and each other’s thoughts. 

In the five days, we established a few rituals: rising early; eating breakfast together; discussing the day ahead; me washing up while Stuart gets ready; Stuart preparing food while I sit and watch him… hahaha!; small seemingly insignificant habits that soon become fixed and speak of home, settledness, comfort. These things are INTENSIVE.

Our working together in the project room was also intensive: establishing a common language and pattern of working, a repetitiveness derived from the need to sit back and ponder, and drink tea. 

We talked a lot, and as Stuart said in his post, not always about the work, but often about these things that make our lives what they are, the rituals with friends, with our work colleagues, our families.

So, yes, I agree, going to Sweden for a residency does seem “busy” … but actually, once there, there was plenty of time for pondering, and lingering, and establishing small rituals to add meaning to it all.

Thinking about my own work in relation to what I am reading, I look at the repetition in the way I work; the cyclical nature of it; the pattern that my studio days always follow.

I am always looking at relationships: what is it that we do that creates and upholds them? How can this be fostered when it starts to break down? What do we do to recognise and appreciate the ones that endure? 

So I am going to let this writing stand, as it is, no pictures of work in progress, no fleeting Content… just words to linger over, and reflect upon.

Back in the studio, the effects of Sweden are still swimming around in me. I’m hoping that it lasts.

I have taken down all the large drawings of sticks and stones, feeling that they have done as much as I needed them to do. They might return, once I’ve taken another turn around the mountain.

The things on the wall facing me now are the pods and the aprons, waiting for Helen and I to configure them, and still the wrapped twigs. I have on my table a pile of textiles, including the sheet and pillow case given to me by Stuart, and the vintage cot sheet and baby pillow case I bought at the huge second hand shop in Örebro (amongst many other items ). Following on from the residency I am carrying on with the arranging and rearranging. I find it fascinating how a pile of twigs in one formation doesn’t work, but when I shuffle them round into a different configuration, they work. I suppose it is a matter of language, of semiotics… pile them up on a tablecloth, no, line them along the floor, no, arranged like a nest in a baking tin? No, but nearly… Cram as many as I can into a pillow case… yes. The pillowcase does it. These symbols work. I am thinking I might submit this piece to the RBSA Prize show. It speaks to me, it’s now just a matter of whether it speaks to the selectors. These twigs are still standing as signifiers for the children living in poverty. The wrapping and the pillow case is an attempt by me to give them comfort. I think the title will be “How Do They Sleep at Night?” Which works for me, in the week before the election… I’m full of hope, somewhat desperate hope, that there will be change soon.

I’ve come away from Sweden with a profound sense of clarity about who I am and what I should be doing, and feeling grateful that I can do it.

It wasn’t without its difficulties and obstacles. I must say up front though that it would not have been possible without the amazing phenomenon known as Assisted Travel. If you have mobility problems and they are preventing you from getting out into the world, book yourself some assistance. It makes the totally impossible completely achievable. My time while there was also eased by the care and concern of my kind friend and host, who made things as easy as he could for me, without making me feel like a burdensome old baggage.

And I am resting now. A bit of gentle physio and a bit of stretching… in a couple of days I should be back to my normal level of mobility. At the moment I am in quite a bit of pain, I’m stiff, and not very mobile at all. Don’t attempt any meaningful conversation before I’ve had tea and medication.

I am hoping by the next time I go over, I will have a new knee… two would be good, but you have start somewhere right?

Anyway… considering all that, we did quite a lot!

Two very full-on days in the studio/project space; an artist talk; a day in Örebro for an arts festival; a day in Stockholm in galleries and shopping… and eating cinnamon buns of course. (Definitely worth falling off the gluten free wagon)

The whole trip was a good balance I think between looking inwards and looking out. The days in the studio helped me think through a few things, gave me some ideas about the work I’m doing at home. The days out, particularly in Örebro showed me options I might never have considered.

Last night over dinner, my son asked me about my trip, and I got a bit emotional. It was fun, intense, exciting, creatively and intellectually stimulating and challenging. It is still with me, I’m thinking about doing all sorts of things in a different way. It has opened my eyes to new possibilities. Part of me wishes I was still there… and that the things I’ve imagined doing would be easier in Sweden, in that I think they would be received more openly and with more appreciation. One of the things I have in my head would not find an easy audience here. But maybe it doesn’t need to.

Maybe I just need to do it?

Kanske jag bara behöver göra något?

Remember the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when they rig up a helicopter with banks of lights and speakers and send it up to communicate with the mother ship?

Bah bah bah baaah BAAAAH! KABOOOM!!

That’s what we do… that’s what we did… Day one of Correspondence sees Elena and Stuart in their helicopters, sending out signals. We are trying to find a useful common language. I bring my twigs, Stuart brings his ties, and we see if they can communicate. We try various arrangements, (like building a hill in furniture or mashed potato) just to see if we can find something in common as a starting point. We have loads of “stuff” so we keep trying, adding, connecting, with string, wool, little clips, tying things together. We wrap things and we stitch. We draw lines on the wall, write words, ideas, and we set down traces on the surfaces from one item to another. We arrange similar items in groups, and we start to classify… we start to draw similarities.

Sometimes while we are doing all of this we are talking, commentating as we go, about what we are aiming for, and what we hope it will achieve. Sometimes we are working silently because we have an idea that doesn’t have words. In retrospect now I think about that process, it did have a cadence… an ebb and flow. And that cadence was mutual, because I can’t think of a time when I thought “I wish he’d stop talking, I’m trying to think over here!” I must ask Stuart if he thought the same? Maybe I was not so perceptive?

I think by the end of day one we had established the rules of engagement, and we had a basic vocabulary.

(No KABOOOM here!)

Overnight something changed. By the morning we had both come up with things we wanted to try, so when we got to the project room the first part of the day we spent dismantling, in order to give ourselves space. Interestingly we were both happy to remove, to take it back a step, more than a step in fact. Almost all of the arrangements of the previous day were taken down. Neither of us felt the need to cling to much, it had done its job and so NOW we were ready to start.

Given the empty space, we were now able to put together phrases, spare and eloquent, in contrast to the excited jabbering of the day before. Day two’s Correspondence was about light and form… and of course materials, and the appreciation of folds, holes, texture, shadow.

We both wondered what would happen if we had another day… or two… or a week… and I now wonder if any of what we learned about each other would change if we decided that we would open this conversation to the public at any point? Would the prospect of outside scrutiny have changed the way we worked?

What I have learned about myself is that to fire on all the artistic cylinders, I need to feel that the room is a safe place, there’s respect and trust. But there is also a light touch, humour, a finely honed Sense of Daft. I find, in working with Helen and Bill, as well as Stuart, that the Sense of Daft is serious business. If you are willing to let things go, without fear of ridicule, if you are happy to be truly playful, and not worry about how other people see you, then you can find something really rich.