Every couple of years I think up a good-sounding show, gather together my best slides, cobble together an artist's statement (still a bit of a mystery, that one) and CV, and send the collection off to a variety of galleries.
Some well-wisher once told me to "start at the top, not at the bottom", so each time I go through the tounge-in-cheek ritual of phoning the ICA, Serpentine, Whitechapel, Ikon, Arnolfini and others to garner the names of the current curatorial or selection team. Well, the manual says to speak to them, but it's hard to get through to these busy folks, so they usually just get the package on their desks, 'cold'.
The big galleries are really good at returning slides, as are the small local ones … it's the middle-sized ones that hang on to them for up to 2 years, and then grudgingly return them in the sae (by now, the postage is out-of-date) after lots of follow-up calls.
I've never had any success at all in getting shows. Maybe I could have got something at the Banbury Mill, but they were so scornful of my painting that I never applied again. Everything I've done has been self-organised (with 1 exception, I might come back to that later).
And then, 2 years ago, Wolfson College, Oxford, emailed me to say that my work looked interesting, could I come and meet them. I did, and the 2 year lead time seemed like utter luxury.
Now though, I'm panicking … getting all the publicity out, writing stuff, designing invites, posters, just 4 weeks to ago, and if I'm lucky, 8 hours a week.
But the biggest panic of all is this: what happens next? and that's what I want to explore in this blog.
