Things have calmed down somewhat, I am still more tired than a bear can possibly be before his big sleep in winter, but the inner equilibrium is already making it’s re-appearance.
On wednesday the 23rd will be the performance at the Anglican Cathedral, of Steve Boyland and his two fellow musicians: Jonathan Raisin and Ray I think it’s Ray Dexter. They are responding to my work, and they are fantastically talented and very accomplished. There is nobody better or more suitable than these 3. Anywhere. (And they are equal in rank and status, it’s just that Steve Boyland has been my friend for so long that I tend to call them the Boyland trio… Don’t tell or I will get into trouble with the others..)
This evening I went to the ‘View Two Gallery’ here in Liverpool to the the first of a series of evenings, ‘Lost Voices’ organised by the three above. An evening of songs and musical performance of a quality I rarely get the pleasure to hear. Inspirational.
Brian Biggs (from the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool) was there, too. It’s good to see him around, I like his style. Other gallery running men look distressed too often, dishevelled and even unwashed sometimes, but he always looks collected and well presented… It’s important. And I approve. (Yes, we wonder here what makes me think my approval might count for anything, but here it is anyway..)
Tomorrow I am back in the cathedral to fix my un-ruly projectors who are very hungry and chew and gnaw and tear to shredds my films. If anybody happens to want to donate another £1000 or any fraction or even multiple of this, well, then I could get more copies of the films printed, which would really help, and I could get some decent, serviced, warrantied projectors which would be 100% relieable rather than only 25%..
Today my muse called and it all made me think how the last Biennial in Liverpool completely turned my life and fortunes around. I couldn’t live without my art work again. How I got through the ‘time of art-abstinence’ I wonder… Now my ambitions are staked as high as they can be; my input and commitment to my work is equal to that of a person to breath, who has been underwater for too frighteningly long…
I just struggle to clearly define what exactly I am aiming for. Success obviously, but what exactly constitues this ambiguous term success? I see artists of all types in all sorts of carreer incarnations.. Some are stationery, some travel like an eternally migrating bird, this premanent necessity for movement concerns me, I am not sure that I am cut out for it; for the consequences this has on friendships, relationships and personal roots of any kind.
But I don’t want to be a single-city-artist either. Absolutely not. But how do we effect and manage a balance? What does that even look like? I want to one day feature in Art Forum, October and Routledge publications and some of Phaidon’s finer ones, too.. I want to be written about in these publications and I actually want to write within them, too. And not just with biro after I purchase one, as I do already…
I want to have a choice within quality academic institutions, teach a little, receive international invitations to quality shows and quality dialogues. I want to take part in what defines art ‘now’. In the meantime I am struggling to articulate my current understanding, in fact I am struggling to understand.. Art is so busy, there are too many variables. Globalism is killing us all..
(Sweeping grand statement…)
Anyway, in case you are looking for me, then you can find me on: myspace.com/papersculptures
