Refining ideas
The other week I presented my plan for the installation to a large-ish group of staff at NPG and a rep from Paiwand (reps from the other two groups weren’t available) at a meeting facilitated by Louise. I was impressed how much listening, input and communication there is around specific projects within the NPG and saw how important it is that there is face-to-face contact between my ideas and the staff running various departments , to get them engaged in the project and understanding it in a deeper way than just from a written proposal or a second -hand account. This culture of listening is refreshing and motivating. They are also not dumbing down my ideas or the writing about them which is even more encouraging.
I’ve posted up my sketches and it’s all focus now on refining the texts to be used in Gallery 1, as the sculptures for Gallery 2 are relatively straightforward in terms of knowing how the production process will go. I have been sourcing objects to match Paiwand’s written objects – nearly all of them by trawling through junk shops in Bexhill on the way to the De La Warr the other day to meet my mentor Janis Jefferies. Some of them I have put in from my own life for personal reasons of resonance with the group’s experiences – you can work these out when you see the work!
It will take me a week in September with an assistant to do a test-hang of the three sculptures that are modelled on The Gifts (1-99) and from that to create three maps that will enable the fabricators to prepare the mirrored discs from which the objects will hang, in the right places and with the right length monofilament. Now I am working with the designer Nicky Doyle who is a very experienced and reassuring presence and very upbeat in what can be done. I haven’t yet encountered anyone shaking their head and telling me things cant be done despite the fact that I know this is an unusual project to install for this gallery.
Re Gallery 1, we have decided to return to my original idea of using the participants’ hand drawn names in Arabic to get them cut directly into mirrored acrylic to form a panel running around the room, referencing the borders on walls in Mosques and Shrines that are seen as the symbolic ‘place of transition’ and often contain or delineate areas of sacred texts. I’m still considering exactly what texts to use in the two alcoves in that Gallery,(and I don’t want to give too much away) but am referencing here the Mihrab (which indicates the direction of Mecca) and literally means the ‘place of struggle’. I’m pulling our sections of the UNHCR report I have mentioned before on Afghan minors as well as poetry chosen and discussed by the young people in playful bibliomancy sessions, songs gifted to the project and other texts too. It’s like laying out the threads and it isn’t quite clear, along with the final colour scheme for that room, what it will be. But I am spending quite a lot of time in the studio over the next few days with aim of clarifying this and sending Nicky material to start doing layouts with. There is a big project design meeting next week which Louise, the project manager will present at, and the sign -off for all this is a not far -off now. I’m leaning towards less in more and a more minimal approach than I had first thought, since Gallery 2 will be full of colour and texts related to the hanging objects.
Deadlines are very focusing for the mind , and I am enjoying reaching the other side of all these choices so that I can begin logging and hanging objects.
