I have been completely inactive on this blog since returning to the studio after the Aarhus exhibition. This is down to a couple of things: first a holiday with the family after the show, then after returning to the studio, my working as hard as possible to complete work before starting ‘maternity leave’. In inverted commas because no-one is paying for it! This time the studio has been sublet for a year, to Rasmus Sigvaldi, son of two Copenhagen institutions, Otto Sigvaldi (recently deceased) who would wheel a pram down the main pedestrian street (Strøget) in the 70s selling his illustrated children’s books clad in fantastical costumes made by his then wife, the theatre director Kirsten Dehlholm:
I had high ambitions to make two large drawings before our baby arrives (due 17 November), but as always the process has taken longer than anticipated, particularly since it had been a break of almost two years since the last drawing of this series. So it ended up being only one drawing, the next will have to wait until I return to the studio again. Far from being Out and About in Copenhagen and London, for much of the next year, six months at least, I will mostly be Wheeling a Pram in Virum (the village suburb of Copenhagen where we actually live). Suburb makes it sound far worse than it is..it’s actually a wonderful green, area with forests and Denmark’s second largest lake, Furesø, at the end of the road, but it feels far from Hackney and Shoreditch which used to be my haunts.
I was glad to finish the drawing, though not entirely satisfied. Unlike my earlier efforts in the series ‘What is not Told,’ the new work is far more organic:
For earlier works see:
I had intended to make the soft velvety core organic surrounded by a protective (spiky) shield that would be more geometric and more built up with Frisk film. But when it came to it, I couldn’t bring myself to use straight lines on this piece. I think I should have made it more tentacular, so that the surrounding shield is less ‘square’, but it is as it is now. The drawing is designed to be one of a pair, this drawing depicting withdrawal, sheltering oneself within oneself, the second one depicting an opening out, in which the core will become more prominent and the shield fading away. But as in so many aspects of parenthood, I must once more summon patience, the patience to wait to continue with the work, while my attention and care is directed towards the little child we are about to bring into the world.
I hope to get to a couple of exhibitions this week in Copenhagen, before the baby arrives. One (of up and coming new graduates at Gammel Strand) features Amalie Smith, whose video work I featured in this blog back in July.
Meanwhile, I leave you with invitations to two London shows, both featuring Katrine Roberts, a recent graduate of the RCA, and fellow graduate from City and Guilds of London Art School. She’s been shortlisted for the Griffin Art Prize this year and is also taking part in a two man show in the West London gallery Lacey Contemporary.
I can’t upload the pdfs for ‘security reasons’, but include a link to a video about Katrine’s work:
