On relationship:
My new German friend when he came to my studio looked for a few seconds at my work and said "it is all about relationship".
The works I have pinned up span the last 12 months and so far I have been unable to see in them a satisfactory unifying theme, not that there need be one, but I sensed that there was and somehow I was missing it.
Of course there are the themes that I expressed in my proposal for this residency –
my current work explores a collective forgetfulness, a subtle evolutionary shift from feathers, fur and dirt to shrink-wrap plastic
and whilst these remain valid, I had often felt that there was something else going on under the surface of my work that I was failing to see.
Apart from my artwork, I have in recent years been undertaking a thorough and unrelenting investigation of both my own personal psychology and wider family history. In the process I have uncovered 'artefacts' which give pattern and shape to aspects of my character that had previously seemed like 'random aberrations' from the normal course of my behaviour.
My ancestors have a wonderful (hidden)history including affairs, elopements, 'illegitimate' children (I hate that term), bunny boiling stalkers (love in a hall of mirrors bent to insanity) and bigamy. One day when it is safe (and considerate) to do so, I shall write it all down.
And just as these hidden artefacts were shaping my approach to family and home, so I now see their undercurrent tugging at the feet of the work I have been making:
birth, life, death, love(fear) as experienced inside(outside) of the frame of relationship and home.
Some flowers to my new German friend for his clarity of insight.
