I've been to BCA gallery three times in the last month now. Just popping backwards and forwards dropping work off and talking to Eva about how to hang the show. Its quite odd looking back through work made last year (although I have added the odd bit since) I've designed the invite card (twenty two versions) and agonised over the merits of correct grammar vs the poetic (in my mind). I've given Eva a list of galleries to schmooze, which she has started to do already. Eva is very tenacious and not willing to be put off by aloof British ways. I feel sorry for them. I've had things framed and stressed about the relative merits of reflective and non reflective glass. I've thought about shelves and relationships between different works. Luckily I will run out of time soon and just bung everything up. At the same time I'm about to set up a very local show with a friend of mine (Andrew Vass). It has no title now because the gallery owner didn't understand the one we proposed, and a bizarrely secret opening party. Anyway, I've designed the invite card. I've had things framed and stressed about the relative merits of reflective and non reflective glass. I've thought about shelves and relationships between different works. Luckily I will run out of time soon and just bung everything up. The next post will be more interesting I promise.
Three of my friends dragged me out of my pit last night to go and see a drawing show in London. A sort of invitational melange at Crimestown called Drawing with Dolphins curated by Marcus Cope and Stephanie Moran. It was fabulous and so packed that we had to conga our way twisting like olympic limboers around the curatorial dolphins that hung from the ceiling. Drawings were everywhere including the ceiling. We even snaked our way into the toilets to find some lovely little snowman photocopies, though I felt people were looking at us strangely when we emerged together after 5 minutes. I'm really enjoying this jumble sale approach to hanging shows, I've seen a few recently and was wondering if it was some sort of new credit crunch aesthetic. There is certainly a sense of getting your money's worth (not that it cost me anything).
Recently I have been doing quite well at private views but I did manage one moment of mild humiliation. I wanted to look at a lovely pencil drawing of a woman with no eyes situated behind the buttocks of a chatting clique. I saw my chance when a small space was made by a more confident viewer. Just as she moved away I swooped in for a look. Simultaneously the clique, carrying out some sort of balletic plot, stepped backwards closing the space and I was forced to pull out of my dive pirouetting away with hunched shoulders and bowed head. Three people were watching laughing hysterically.
This is late in coming but I thought I ought to write an 'aftermath post' The main reason I'm doing this is to distract myself from writing my evaluation for my Arts Council Grant. Its been a valuable exercise by which I mean a complete pain in the bum (not the Grant, the evaluation). If only I'd kept my Arts Council spending figures separate from the rest of my accounts. Its a tangled web which I am trying to unweave. Still I've worked out that although I haven't achieved everything I had promised I've managed to spend an absolute fortune on other areas. Either I will be praised for my zeal or sued for financial mismanagement. I just have to work out which column to put a cheese and chutney sandwich I had in Stoke on Trent…
San Francisco was fun, showing my work, rubbing shoulders and heaving fish tanks with people I've heard of.
http://www.thingsthatarenthuman.com/
I forgot to mention there is also a book of writing to go along with the exhibition which has excerpts from this blog nestling amongst some much better writing.
