I'm suffering from extreme physical inertia at the moment. I've spent a good proportion of today pricking holes in 16mm film so I think I need to get out. Surface Gallery have invited me to a closing party for the show which is now their last. As I missed the opening due to malaise I might give this one a go. Hayley (www.hayleylock.com), also in the show, might be going too so I won't have to hire an escort. Both of the readers of this blog will have already noticed, because of my constant moaning, that I am uncomfortable at openings (& closings). Apart from free drink and company I usually turn up at private views hoping to be struck by lightning. It does happen, but I always feel stupid standing there waiting waving my umbrella in the air.
The show at Studio Voltaire got a review in Time Out. Reviews are something else that I also crave. Something to do with lack of confidence or megalomania or both. Here's an excerpt:
Elisabeth Lecourt’s painting of a greyish, blank-faced female head reverberates, in its inhumanity, with Alex Pearl’s economically unnerving, half-comic DVD of what appears to be a backlit effervescing tablet in water, the holes in it representing malevolent eyes and mouth, disintegrating and ascending.
Break such works down and their tension dissipates. In the moment of reception, though, they cast small but effective spells.
By Martin Herbert
I was pleased to be mentioned alongside Lecourt's painting and that they used a photo of my favourite piece in the article (Reflect, 2008 by Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth). Most of all I liked what I take to be mild criticism in the penultimate line. When I dream about eating; as I bite into the apple, donut, whatever, there is always nothing there. I've always wanted to make art like that.
I've had a break which seems to have involved marathon scrabble playing, I blame the weather. I came back to forty plus emails including many e-alerts, e-bulletins, e-updates and an e-vite or two. I'm not complaining. All these things make me feel like I am at the centre of something without requiring I get off the sofa. However, at the end of last term, at college, we had a staff development day which made me wary of being over e-nthusiastic. A highly paid woman in a suit spent an hour telling us repeatedly that we had to become e-mature. I'm afraid I walked out.
One of the emails did contain some bad news (actually more than one, as there were also a couple of rejections). Apparently the Surface Gallery is about to be evicted so there will be no prize winners' show next year. I wasn't expecting to win but it seems a shame for whoever the winners would have been.
I've been visiting artists in their studios. It is really interesting seeing how other people live and work. It's nice to see that they are scatty or uncertain or amusingly neurotic. In both cases we have been discussing putting together some sort of show. Things seem very vague at the moment which I think I shouldn't admit I find a little unnerving. I've always been given the impression that artists are supposed to thrive on organic situations and I do try to pretend that I have appropriate levels of artistic nonchalance.
Anyway yesterday I spent some time in a converted shed playing and passing ideas around, it was a slightly awkward situation as we were trying to find new ways of working together while doggedly (too doggedly?) hanging on to what we do. I did manage to find a use for some pictures of aeroplanes that have been kicking around for a while.
Today I visited an artist who lives just down the road in an unconverted Victorian school house. She is trying to pull together a show based around personal and local history and I think wants me to be involved somehow. I'm afraid I just listened and didn't spit out lots of ideas, but secretly I thought it was really exciting. Hopefully it will develop into something.
I need an entourage. There's nothing worse than doing your third solo lap of an exhibition clutching your drink with increasing desperation. Usually looking round a group show its interesting to see how the works vie for attention. In the show at Studio Voltaire all the works were rather quiet, reticent even. I really enjoyed Coleman and Hogarth's rebus like video projection and a spooky portrait by Elisabeth Lecourt.
Back in my tiny hotel room I sheltered under the leaning wardrobe and watched the Olympic opening ceremony while reviewing the footage from my morning's filming outside a pub in Stratford.
I am journeying again tomorrow. I'm going to the private view at Studio Voltaire and on the way I will try to make a protest film in Stratford. Yet again I managed to find a cheap hotel in Clapham and yet again I didn't think to check the reviews until I had booked it online. Every time I check a new complaint has gone up, and I keep going back. It's like the lure of a grisly corpse. The latest reads
Stay away, stay away, stay away!!!!!!
I got a single room and it was disgusting. I might as well of slept outside on a park bench or in nearby Tesco's car park. The duvet was dirty and had holes in it. The bathroom (I am not sure I would call it a bathroom, and the washbasin (what washbasin?!) were pretty vile. The woodwork was rotten and in desperate need of replacing. The TV did not work as the aerial was broken.
I can't cancel it now but you never know it could be ok and if I drink enough at the pv I probably won't notice. I also got an email from Joe at Studio Voltaire asking me to burn a new dvd for the opening as the selectors had forgotten to bring it with them. I'm all ready to go now bag packed, map marked, escape planned.
