I have lost my sense of time. Days and particularly weeks are not making any sense to me. This is most likely the result of the ‘sudden’ change in my routine. Most of my weekdays are now spent at Mejan rather than being divided up between three schools with no two consecutive days in the same place. It is great being able to focus more on what I am doing there, and I have also noticed that I am starting to have an even better working relationship with the tutors and other students. The stress and urgency that I felt, and no doubt exuded, last term is no longer there and this I am sure makes for easier and more productive working days – for everyone! Being present is a sign of my interest and it makes it easier for others to be interested too. I also have time to be more interested in what other people are doing which is doubly rewarding as our discussions are most often in Swedish.
On two occasions this week I have explained my work in Swedish! At least I think I have explained my work!! Once to some visiting tutors at college, and also to two new staff at the Andersson Sandström gallery where I returned to buy catalogues of Riitta Paivalainen whom they are showing at the moment. It is somehow both wonderful and worrying to discover a successful artist whose work is related/parallel/similar to one’s own. Paivalainen’s works with second-hand clothes and mentions that she is interested in their unknown histories. There is a picture of a piece in which she uses shirts that could easily have come from my collection.
Not only does her content give me things to think about but her form does too. She produces large-scale photographs of garments and fabric in specific conditions and locations. She states that she is a photographer rather than an installation artist. Her interest is in the image rather than the encounter with the real objects. Reading this led me to think about two things; firstly that there is a saleable (re-exhibitable!) product (artwork), and secondly that as she sets up her photographs in isolated landscapes she most likely avoids problems of permissions and public accessibility. Producing an image affords her a level of control and possibility that would be hard to achieve if the site-specific installations were the artwork. This has certainly given me something to think about!
Where might the objects I produce and collect be located if I were to place them somewhere to be photographed? Not in the natural landscape (as Paivalainen’s are) … I think I see them being somewhere more architectural. Architectural and yet at odds with them, the polished cake tins of Glory do not belong in a kitchen – I would like to see them re-placing classical busts somewhere … Sir John Soane’s house? … in the V&A Museum?
