It is nearing the end of May and I am currently taking stock for a short time on the month as it is shaping up. The good news is that I have a mentor interested in developing my practice! The mentor is none other than Sylvia Rimat. Sylvia is a supported artist of The Basement in Brighton and Director and Co-Producer of You & Your Work Festival in Bristol, which looks like well worth seeing. (I am listenting to the sound of ideas forming, thanks Alan Dunn). The plan is for Sylvia to guide the progress of one of my performances which will be shown somewhere, although I have yet to find the venue or the funding. This will hopefully become clearer after a talk with Fiona Baxter from Farnham Maltings. I am obviously very excited. I am also interested in involving some form of digital interactivity in the work. But this might or might not happen.
Last thursday I went to a crit outside the uni as one of the Q-art seminars. Annabel Tilly was there. And presenting. I went first, showed my video An Anthology over a hastily put together PA which distorted on the lower frequencies. Everyone seemed to think the bad sound was part of the work. Thing is I had the perfect set of speakers/projector combo lent to me short notice. Oh well. The speakers I did use belonged to a very interesting Goldsmiths grad named Rachel who calmly talked through her piece (using my speakers of course) and her upcoming show. Unfortunately I had spent so much time packing away all my equipment and swallowing my pride that everyone had bolted by the time I was ready to leave. No business cards handed out there. But I did go away with some ideas of how to get people to participate in other works. I am eager to try these ideas out in future projects.
I was dicussing this with a uni friend and she told me that I was too selfless. However I am not sure that the cut throat competitive first-come-first-serve method of organising is that effective overall. I have been in exhibition scenarios like that before, my third year studio spaces were chosen like that and to be honest it left me feeling a little cold. Not enjoyable at all. I would rather assist. I think there is this drive in some people to strive and make work and get very worked up about ideas and values along the way. I have met ‘artists’ clearly in it for the fashion with nothing much to give except attitude and they spread this pressure of appearance over the whole experience which no one benefits from. Surely artists face enough pressure from people in our society who see little value in our life choices no?
We also discussed the idea of charging people for tutorials with more successful artists. We came to the thought that those who are in need of advice are not usually in the position to afford these sessions. It is a productive idea of course and worthy of merit. However it still propagates the idea that art is a game for people who have money to spare. It also sends out perhaps unrealistic expectations on the session and the artist resquested to offer advice. I can imagine the worst case scenario of ‘I just spent x amount of money on that and wanted more’ occuring in these situations. Perhaps the answer to this is to offer bursary schemes for those in financial difficulty so that those people less inclined to attend from lack of funds will be able to go. I know that a-n does this with a number of events, perhaps institutions could also provide this. It might be difficult in terms of funding of course, but it could have a other benefits like higher attendance and incusion of groups not usually exposed to the arts which would assist with future funding applications.
Okay we are getting into May now well and truly, my birthday – the big 25 is around the corner and as I am looking to grow my creative enterprise following my residency at New Ferry Butterfly Park things are starting to look up. I have approached an artist who I am very fond of to mentor me in the run up to a project, and last week they emailed me back to confirm their interest. I am very excited, this is topped off by a conversation between myself and Fiona Baxter from Farham Maltings about my funding for the mentorship. I also have another avenue in the form of the the RC Sherriff Trust. These guys do great work in Surrey, founded by the famous playwright who gave us the eponymous World War One epic Journey’s End.
In the meantime my friend and author, performer and general collaborator Will Kherbeck has roped me into perform on a couple of dates in his various projects. These include: a current group show at The Hardy Tree Gallery just off Kings Cross and a future show of the work by expert painter Paul Desborough. The first will be a collaborative between myself and a writer who goes by the name of Golosh The Fox. Former writing group compadre.
Also I am hopefully contributing as part of Sarah Bowler’s incredibly successful project Q-Art at their last convenor of this year. I will keep the work I want to show underwraps for now but I will say that it will be shown in a different form for the first time as intended.
Also in the works is another opportunity for a Hatch event in the mid June weekend. Lots to be getting on with! I also want to design a way of bringing foot fall to Hatch. Some sort of trail is in the air – or hanging sulpture. Everything has to be collaborative. Everything has to be interactive. Everything is about this need for people to form communities in objects, on the net, over space and through involvement. Everything is about reaching out. Together we are stronger: lets get together.
Oh! I have also just found out about the Camden Roundhouse’s Emerging Artists scheme.
http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/
If you are 11-25 its £15 for membership and then pounds to rent out equipment, £2 per hour for the editing suite! Cheap! Good news :)
Yesterday we took down Hatch[ED]. Before we took it down I gave a personal tour to Fion Gunn who is curator of City and the City at APT currently:
http://www.aptstudios.org/gallery/
The great thing about having a studio in Creekside is that you are in such a close vicinity to other artist spaces. This makes it easier to network and promote gallery spaces.
Before we took the show down we had a meeting about what else we could do later in the year including Deptford X. Some ideas we thrown around including an exhibition of trophies (already being done), a VJ night put together by ex-studio member and DJ Alex Tuckwood and a giant podium in the central space with a build in cine projector for people to climb up and use. Oh and an exhibition where the works are different periscopes and visitors use them to look into other people’s studio spaces.
I also talked briefly about connections between myself and Liverpool. We event thought of bussing it up to the Biennale later this year together! That would be fun. When someone in the studio does a residency and gains contacts for another art scene, another environment with its own community of artists, why not use those connections to open up new spaces and possibities for others?
Before I went away I had an interview with the wonderful Cat Harrison at Artsadmin about my performance practice. Seeing as performance is different to disciplines with say, more material outcomes, I have been asking myself how do I navigate the art scene as a performance artist? How does it differ? How do I apply for funding and what does the difference in the permanence of work mean for competitions and applications? Mentorship is the answer to help me we decided. I have sent an email to my mentor of choice and I await a reply. I am looking forward to my future.
Okay, I have started this blog to document my experiences post NFBP (New Ferry Butterfly Park) which will act as a useful aid to keep me motivated and working as part of that young-white-middle-class-overworked-underpaid group.
I want to start by talking about my show at Hatch Space – Hatch[ED] is up and kicking. It is a well presented, well put together show with work that showcases what Hatch Space in Deptford is all about. There is a range of different work: print, painting, sculpture and drawing.I have attached a photo of my work set up by Jack Brown, fellow collaborator and long time friend/advisor.
To my dismay, seeing it on Monday meant encountering it in a semi delapidated state: the walls of the gallery weren’t washed down and the cards had started to fall off! Alas dust is the adversary of sticky dots. So, paintsakingly, I re-sorted the stack of cards piled up on the shelf of Jack’s print nearby and peeled the dots off each one before applying tiny bits of blue tac and re-sticking them in sequence to the gallery walls. This took a while. I am pleased with the work though, it looks remarkably friendly and approachable for a work that uses a minimal sequencing system for presentation.
Other news, I am meeting with the people involved on the closing day of Hatch[ED] to talk about the show, most likely how to draw more people to Hatch Space and what to do for Deptford X. We have missed the deadline for Deptford Fringe while I was away in New Ferry and we have till next Tuesday to give information to Paul for the website programme. I have no idea what is going on. Rachel of SLAM fame has asked me to be an admin for SLAM to profile Hatch and put up events. This means I have to contact our studio manager who works full time and rarely has the time to communicate. So it is a bit of an empty role at the moment because I cannot really arrange anything without the consent of our studio manager.
Also, a friend is selecting work for a couple of poetry mags – I’m producing a number of poems for this. I got off to a good start today, even though I use writing a lot in my work it comes to me quite slowly and poetry takes time. Hopefully I will be in a couple of collections over the next few months though.
Bad news on the part-time job front – my cinema post is in jeopardy. My hours have been trailing off steadily over the past few months and I received a polite but slighlty scary email shaking the foundations of my rent-payment-safety-net job dream. EEEK!
