On returning home:
My first week has been largely occupied by language studies and settling in. The downside to residencies in unfamiliar places is the time spent lost, seeking that which would be easily to hand at home. The upside to residencies in unfamiliar places is the time spent happily lost (re)discovering that which might be overlooked, through (over)familiarity at home.
I have spent much of my life travelling. When I stopped travelling I seemed to replace an outer physical motion in geographical spaces with an inner exploratory motion through psychological spaces – which restlessness has lead me to explore art, singing, dancing, writing, meditation, religion, relationships and other things.
I don’t have a good track record for staying long in one place, though very recently (last month in fact) I had finally surrendered to the possibility of adopting Newcastle as my ‘home’ – to make it a choice as opposed to it being a place where I found myself when my studies ended.
I don’t have a good track record for remaining in any one job either, though thankfully my commitment to a creative path seems to remain pretty stable, even if my relationship with the wider art world at times feels strained: I often find myself choosing other activities (e.g. dancing, singing or the theatre) over art activities (e.g. an opening), leaving me occasionally confused as to where my real ‘loyalties’ lie.
The above rambling introduction leads me back though to place where eventually, I do always seem to return – my artwork.
Before departing Newcastle, I had been buying fresh, unprepared game – gutting, plucking or skinning it at home (and cooking and eating it) taking video and digital stills along the way. My journey to this particular work has also been rather long –
- 15 years of (almost) vegetarianism
- Eating rabbit stew with a wonderful, generous Polish family, whilst said white fluffy bunnies skipped around my feet (the ‘almost’)
- Working in conservation in the Lake District, with rare breed and organic farmers
- A sudden dramatic (one third of my body) weight loss leading to an intense carnivorous phase to reverse my impending departure
- Watching my stepmother pluck a duck
…And finally the disappearance from my local market in Newcastle of hanging game in 2003. I have since learnt from ‘Bob’ the game stall manager that he stopped selling unprepared game partly because his customers no longer knew what to do with it; but mainly because the health and safety executive said that ‘dripping fluids’ posed a health risk to customers, so the practice was no longer allowed.
Looking at the above journey I realise how long it can take to sink into and finally make a piece of work.
When I surrendered to calling Newcastle my home earlier this year, I had felt that the short burn cycles of residencies (of which I had undertaken several from 2002 till 2005) were no longer serving my needs. I had thought I should balance a part time job with commissions and a studio practice, and develop further some of the projects I had initiated in the NE region – namely the artists network newcastleGRAFT, more about that perhaps later.
Like I said though, I don’t have a good track record for staying put, so here I am in Berlin, exploring things to do with the home in a temporary live / work space far from the place I had begun to call home,
Feeling now in fact that I might rather like to call this my home…
