On Saturday I discovered that my blog has been second on a-n’s list of Top Ten Artists talking blogs for two months running. Couldn’t believe my eyes. I’m not going to be coy about it (although I fully intended to when I thought about posting here today) – I’m chuffed. Quickly grabbed a screen-pic, no: two… Lalala lala lala. I’ve got readers! It seems I’m not holding monologues!
It can appear that way when you don’t much get out, meet other artists and art professionals face to face. These last few years my work travelled to exhibitions (2011: to Brighton, Leeds, Cambridge, Lithuania, and several venues in London) and usually I could not follow suit, which can mean not-much-to-no input in how the work is presented; no idea how it looks in its new environment; how it communicates with the work around it; how it is perceived by the audience; even if it’s an interesting exhibition altogether… Nor do you meet the curators, the other artists, any of the audience, and you crave crave crave feedback which is routinely promised but in the end not forthcoming and you don’t want to keep begging. (When I don’t hear anything I have this nagging, unshakable worry that maybe my work wasn’t put up after all, that it’s invisible too…)
It’s not that people are not well-intentioned – they tend to have too much on and do not really have a sense, cannot have a sense of what it means to be so fully outside. Well, if I wasn’t living it, I wouldn’t either, it’s not much talked about, is it?
There have been positive experiences (actually 2011 was a good year in that respect), where people committed, buoyed up by the quality of the art, took into account my specifications regarding presentation of the individual pieces, documented the work in situ and passed on feedback. And once or twice I was able to go and see for myself, talk to people, which is just the best feeling.
Even better: Over the last two years I’ve forged invaluable, consistent, sustaining and mutually beneficial (I hope) virtual and real links with the Arthouse in Wakefield, where I had my first solo-show (2010), and the former Core Gallery (now Zeitgeist Art Projects) where I exhibited with Aly Helyer and Tom Butler in Extra-Ordinary (2011), which I consider the best and most exciting show I’ve been in. I couldn’t do the physical things, like putting up the work, but my trust was well justified in both cases, and I learned so much as otherwise I was involved all round, from home – starting with selection of work to input into press-releases, interviews, artists’ talks… I felt like a professional artist. I was a professional artist. Repeat after me (says self to self): I am a professional artist, even if my work is made on my living room floor.
Now that my initial excitement about being second to one on the a-n list has calmed a bit (still doesn’t feel quite real, just checked if it was, lest the basis for this post was a conceit) I wonder what it really means. Although I’ve had some very interesting comments, which always make my heart swoop, I had no idea how many people do read my blog. If it isn’t a monologue, is it a conversation? Or about to become one? Talk to me!
