I have 10 days to make an installation work for the ‘Home from Home’ show in Leeds, opening 11th March. This is my first attempt at blogging to document the process of making a particular piece of work before, and want to try it out to see how useful it is. The nature of the work is that is process based and provisional – so and every day it changes. For this reason I thought it would be useful to document it in words and photographs. I am also interested in the thoughts and view of other artists in discussing it, so another reason for embarking on the blog
The piece is/will be
A pasting table, covered with a sheet of lining paper. Completely covering the table is a collage of photographs, text, images, drawings and tracings. (please see image for a view of this work in progress). These elements suggest stories, images from childhood and memory past and present, as well as text and image fragments of fanstastical and imaginative childhood adventures. None of the elements are ‘stuck down’ or affixed, inviting the viewer to contemplate the work as ‘in progress’, provisional. The work aims to explore the ‘unfixed’, continually revised nature of memory, particularly in relation to the family. The work also aims to function as a meditation on imaginative escape from the mundane and painful aspects of domestic family life through the creation of imaginary fictive worlds.The work is informed by both Jo Spence’s work on representation of the family and by ‘In The Realms of the Unreal’ by outsider artist Henry Darger. I am also really digging John Stezaker’s collage works – and desperately want to go see his show at the Whitechapel before it closes next month.
At this stage in the process (Day 2) the pasting table is a confused mess of materials – not much of it is really working yet, though there are passages I like. I heap a load of miscellaneous materials – found images, family photographs, tracings form childrens illustration books, text – and I arrange, re- arrange, arrange, re-arrange, and by a slow process of deletion, a narrative begins to emerge – and I get something I can work with.
Early days yet….
