Project Me

Juxtapose

I need this energy … this input … this connection … THIS!

I need the give and take … the exchange … the space for new thought … for re-imagining and re-positioning of ideas and knowledge … I need this stimulation

This is genuine artistic research. Here are artists challenging themselves to push the boundaries of knowledge … knowledges. Here the methodology is juxtaposition – placing different things beside each other in order to better understand them.

Juxtapose

It all came together! Our presentation is up and open. It was a wonderful day!

From the ’reverse Q&A’ in the morning, to the forrest walk and waterside meditation in the afternoon, through the opening and after party in the evening, it was a truly wonderful day … I mean a day full of wonder … that gentle, supportive, generous, kind of wonder that excited the senses and the mind.

More time spend with my art .. second(?) … family. My mother was right – this is exactly where I need to be – this is my place of love and care.

I cannot, and do not want to, imagine my life without the artist-run. This is where things make sense. Here are my kinfolk. Here are we who are making sense of things beyond the conventions and outside of so many systems that encourage us to produce and consume what is an inherently limiting and divisive understanding of capital.

Juxtapose 1

I thoroughly enjoy seeing Glitter Ball take form. Coming here is a significant step in my re-engaging with … re-activating … re-imagining … Glitter Ball. I see the presentation come together – with familiar visual identifiers from the Enköping showroom days. And I hear myself introducing Glitter Ball to my fellow exhibitors and the fair guests.

It is also very exciting for familiar professional colleagues to see me as an artist – several have mentioned this. To many I am the (Supermarket) Meetings coordinator, and they imagine that I my world is one of discussion, management, and curation. Now they are seeing me with materials, objects, and forms – the world that I would call my first world.

Roberto asked my why I do this … not just Juxtapose but my involvement … commitment … to the artist-run. It was/is a good question. What I find so appealing about the artist-run is its incongruity in an increasingly capital-driven and individualistic world. There seems to be in integral politic that I feel very comfortable with. We are doing this because it needs to be done. We are interested in where it (whatever this that we do is) touches other spheres … where it is in relations to other spheres, what opportunities it offers – not only to those of us directly engaged in it but also in wider contexts … what ripples can we make … what ideas can we test … what edges can we push … what spaces can we create …

There is a generosity that I do not recognise elsewhere.

For me the artist-run is not just familiar – it is family.
And it is so very very right that I am here now

Juxtapose 0, set-up 1

Hopefully our thorough if slow set-up yesterday means that we can really crack on today. It was a nice easing into the space and to our presentation. It was of course lovely to see some familiar faces and so meet some new folk too.

A gentle pace throughout the exhibition hall – no doubt in large part to Pam’s and Cecilie’s calm friendly professionalism – made it such a welcoming and easy space to be in. Lydia and I painted boards, played with the ’modules’ spoke with our ’neighbours’, remembered our time studying together at Dartington. Roberto arrived and soon after we joined Cecilie and several other exhibitors to head out to the suburbs were Kubus Alba artist-run studio and gallery had invited us for a Danish mid-summer celebration.

I am aware that I have a lot to do. I think that it is achievable if I stay focussed and am good at delegating – not always one of my strong points, so a good learning opportunity. Lydia and Roberto have the finishing touches to put to their pieces … and so do I! … then we can work together to install the work of our colleagues who aren’t able to be with us.

Of course I want to presentation to look good, but it’s most important that it works – that is that it awakens curiosity and facilitates discussion. I don’t think that I am saying anything unusual when I say that all of ’team Glitter Ball’ are interested in making new connections and investigating new opportunities. I am certainly interested in that both as an mutli-artist ’artist-run’ project and as an individual artist.

And the weather is beautiful … things feel good

Juxtapose -1, arriving in Aarhus

The trip to Aarhus and participating in Juxtapose has new significance. Some … many … people are denied opportunity. Taking part in Juxtapose is an amazing opportunity and I am fortunate that I am able to do it. And now I do it knowing that someone who was, due to no fault of their own, unable to be who they could have been very much wanted me to be here doing this.

Things are simultaneously familiar and new – my first time working with so many artists at the same time, my first time presenting Glitter Ball at an event. It is, especially under the circumstances, so very comforting to be among people who know, love, and care for me – not just the artists that I have invited, but also Pam and Cecilie who I have gotten to know over the past four or five years through the relationship between Supermarket and Juxtapose. I know that over the coming week I am going to meet more wonderfully caring, passionate, creative, complex soles – people with whom I felt an immediate and genuine connection when our paths crossed at other fairs.

I really could not be in a better place right now. How I could not have imagined that those words would come forth. Strange as it seems to me there is lightness and there is brilliance. And I know who I have to thank for that, and with all my heart I thank them.