I am recovering from a curatorial visit. Lotte Juul Petersen came round to the studio to select work for a show she is curating at Wysing in January. I had had a bit of a tidy up and set up a few video screens which created a pleasing cacophony (to my mind). Upon her arrival I proceeded to bombard her with stuff until she had seen everything I had ever made including photos of my dog, although that last one was an accident. She wanted a range of things old and new, broken objects and films and I found myself mentally balancing all the things I would need to reserve for San Francisco and Bedford and another little show I'm organising in Ipswich, and actually having to say no (rather inneffectually it turns out). I'm still making stuff for my transatlantic jaunt: TRYING TO COPE WITH THINGS THAT AREN'T HUMAN and I've bought a massive suitcase to cram it all into. I'm thinking about American films, making tiny giant alien machine creatures and buying up old matchbox track on ebay so I can race cars through the gallery in a sort of SciFi car chase movie. When I dropped Lotte off at the station for her three hour (sixty mile) train journey we were both a bit hollow eyed.
I've been collecting arctic/antarctic 'souvenirs'. Although strictly they are not and could never really have acted as souvenirs as I am sure they were not made for or sold to real ant/arctic visitors. Anyway this is the first, a delightful glass paperweight containing what I assume are a pair of seals (possibly)
I am returned once again from two days of London visits, meetings and strong coffee. On Tuesday I visited the Free Art Fair at Marble Arch. Hampered, as usual by my Gallery finding skills, it took two laps of the area to find all six of the converted shops hosting some lovely little shows. I must admit I didn't know much about the ethos of the Free Art Fair, although the clue is in the title, on the free catalogues, posters etc. When one of the invigilators asked me if I would be camping on Sunday I became quite flustered thinking it was some sort of urban code. This occurred in the 'Gallery' I enjoyed the most, it hosted a lot of painting and two conjoined plastic cups containing Bob & Roberta Smith's toenail clippings. It was the paintings I liked best especially Alex Gene Morrison's Erupting Head and Geraldine Brigid Swayne's Ancestor from Hell. Both left me with the feeling that I needed an extra name. Later, though I love painting (mostly I think for the reason that I've never made a good one myself) I felt a bit overloaded and guiltily walked straight past Sam Dargan's show at Rokeby. The purpose of my Tuesday jaunt was a meeting with Mark and Lindsay who are the young artists behind Refutation http://www.refutation.net/ I showed them the videos I had made with great trepidation (as usual). They seemed to like Small Stargazer a new film made by pointing the video camera straight into the lens of a 16mm projector. I've used this method once before but this version was sufficiently different to fit their requirements for previously unseen work. Needless to say unlike the rest of my stuff which I tend to bung up online willy nilly this one will remain secret until the grand opening event in November. On the train home an elderly man asked me to make sure he was awake when we arrived at Ipswich, the responsibility kept me tensely alert until he had left the train.
Wednesday was more of the same including a visit to The Future Can Wait at the Truman Brewery. The artists there seem fascinated by exoticism, sensuousness and pornography in equal measure – best group show I've seen this year.
I went with Hayley who was meeting Larry Achiampong to discuss some collaboration they are cooking up. Hayley is becoming some sort of Facebook arttart at the moment making friends with lots of Bigwigs – I am, of course, highly jealous.
I'm reading two books at the moment Susan Stewart's "On Longing" picked mainly for its title and E.E. 'Doc' Smith's "Masters of the Vortex" picked mainly for its cover. Flitting between "Neal Cloud… extrapolating his sigma curve by the sheer power of his mathematical prodigy's mind, sat appalled" and " …the realization of re-union imagined by the nostalgic is a narrative utopia that works only by virtue of its partiality…" I feel completely lost.
