More Gathering:
My language course finished last week.
I am now gathering momentum in my studio, beginning with buying and setting up necessary equipment (printer, scanner etc) – punctuated by trips around pound shops purchasing the 'stuff' that always seems to accompany my investigations as an artist.
I have brought home postcards, plastic flowers, cushions and several metres of lino with horses on – ostensibly to be used as a floor covering for a 'messy space', but really because the horses seemed to say something about my enquiry, though I am not sure what yet.
I notice how residencies commence this way, with an instinctive gathering together of a great mass of images, information, snippets of conversation, text, sensations, hunches and imaginings. All act as way markers to the work yet to be made, to the destination as yet unseen.
The sun has come out again too, last weekend I went out to Gruneweld, a very large woodland and lakes in the west of Berlin. There was some really interesting signage showing what animals are in the forest – majestic owls swooping across indigo skies, poised pensively against half moon backdrop, tenderly feeding their young – all adding to the strange wilderness/theme park feel of the place.
Whilst sunbathing there I saw a young girl walking her pet rabbit, and a panicked duck crashed into my knees attempting take off.
The woodlands and lakes within Berlin are astonishing for their scale and proximity to the centre – they warrant further exploration.
