Brook and I have had several interesting conversations during the past few days – I’m finding it hard to make time to edit them, but have uploaded the second today on Vimeo (Vimeo.com/patwilsonsmith Conversation#2:Self, Feminism & the Anthropocene)
Negotiating this collaboration has been extremely interesting, because it’s deliberately open-ended. The implicit ‘brief’ to ourselves was to each produce a self-portrait during the three-week period, as well as talk with visitors about self-portraiture: sculpture (on Brook’s part) and identity and selfhood (my interest). As it is I’ve found myself playing more of a curatorial role, as I record various conversations between us and with visitors, and write notes for the blog. Having made work prior to the ‘residency’ I’ve not made anything much at all – a few drawings…it’s all been feeling a little ‘unsatisfactory’ and as the end draws close, I wonder what it’s all been about. I feel I want to make something surprising for the closing event on Sunday – but there’s very little time, and I’ve two more interesting conversations to edit and upload.
Brook also feels slightly dis-satisfied – having nearly completed the self-portrait, there’s something else she’d like to do…will she have time?
Our life drawing day was productive: four women acquaintances were invited to a day of drawing, with myself as (unclothed) & Brook as clothed models. I haven’t modelled for about ten years, and was reminded quickly of how important strength and stamina are. I felt uncomfortable too, about being naked in front of not-quite–strangers in a rather intimate situation – somehow the anonymity of a life class always protected me from self-consciousness before. During the class we hoped to explore other people’s ideas about the role of the model – I’m not sure if we achieved that, but interesting talk developed.
Brook had agreed to take a ‘male role’, as it happened, and I found this suddenly discomforting. I had to find out why I did. Somehow the clothes she’d chosen made her look vulnerable, and I realised that I had to adjust my internal perception of who she is. This has given us plenty of thought for our final conversation on Self and Sexuality, to be uploaded later this week.
While this has been a slightly unstructured event, we’ve had plenty of feedback from visitors who are fascinated by the work and the project. This is socially-engaged practice that doesn’t measure and isn’t dictated by category boxes: it’s instinctive and exploratory, and humble – sometimes people don’t want to walk into a show and see objects on plinths and pix on walls. Sometimes they prefer to find out how and why it’s all being done, and that has been a very worthwhile discovery.
It’s our second week in the tiny gallery space now known as Gallery7 in Margate, next to the Pie Factory Gallery. We’ve talked with loads of visitors, about sculpture, identity, the arts in general, artists’ selves, life in general! It can be quite exhausting, and not so easy to work in as we’d thought, though it’s quieter in the week.
Today we’re running a small life drawing group.
Brook and I will both model for our guests, and we’ll record the session, because we want to have a conversation with women artists about the things we’re interested in.
I’m finding it especially difficult to produce a prolonged piece of work in that space. As an artist who uses all kinds of media, I find I don’t have all the things to hand that allow me to work spontaneously, in contrast to Brook, whose process is the making of a sculpture head -of herself as a young woman.
But this is a discovery that tells me a lot about my self and my practice. While I look forward to the solitude and convenience of my own small studio, I try to make full use of this temporary space to explore the things we discuss. It’s a period of learning and getting to know each other a little more, which will probably, for me, feed into work later on, and which, as a rather solitary artist, I should fully appreciate.
I’ve uploaded our first conversation to vimeo, the second is to be edited and uploaded later this week, and we hope for a very interesting chat today!
I need to think how I might construct a final ‘Self’ for this three-week period.
I’m conscious of the physicality of ‘Me’. I reflect that I’m privileged to have the time to think about these things. I’m looking through the window onto a green field, daffodils, birds singing. Here is the Self I wish I could have more of…but there are all the other aspects of self: relationships, obligations, drives…
We experience the glide from one role to another as somehow natural, most of the time, if we lead ‘ordinary’ lives.
For many people, especially the vulnerable, the demands of role-change are more traumatic. An extreme example would be a child prostitute.
What does that do to one’s sense of Self?
Our sense of self is intimately bound up with our roles. I define myself as an artist, but I am a mother, sister, grandmother…And getting older, when we begin to see ourselves through our growing childrens eyes, our grandchildrens eyes,it’s hard to hang on to the belief that we are still the same person. Once the centre of someone’s world, we become peripheral. An identity is essential – something independent of familial ties is more solid, for me.
Sometimes I wish we did not have the ability to reflect on ourselves. It’s tedious, self indulgent, and boring.
Perhaps most people are not like me? Perhaps they’re more in touch with what’s going on around them; more generous, more imaginative, less Self-involved?
Perhaps it will be better to stick to what I can see of Me – the physical reality. Appearance. It’s hard enough to get a likeness, let alone try to visualise the psychological complexity of a person. And we can never disentangle our knowledge of a person, from the person herself. We can never know another person completely, or know them as they know themselves.
So when it comes to self-portrayal, we have to decide which aspects we’ll reveal. I keep thinking of Graham Sutherland’s small self portrait in the show at Turner Contemporary. It’s Green! It’s a warm, knowing and perspicacious selfportrait that reveals age kindly. A frank portrait, one assumes, in great contrast to contemporary artists in the exhibition, who are notable by their absence from themselves. Jeremy Miller’s selfportrait of the artist as a drowned man – an idea borrowed from one of the inventors of photographic printmaking who had so much more of a point to make. Damien Hirst – a self portrait without the self. Very revealing. But not in the way he might wish.Tracey Emin, typically self-involved, exorcising demons that really aren’t unique to her.
What have we actually got to say about our Selves today that isn’t self-promotion?
I haven’t come to any conclusions about how my selfportrait will develop during this short period of time at the gallery/ studio. I don’t know my Self any better.
