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!
