I think the meeting went ok although I made the mistake of arriving too early and filling the gap with beer. The appointed location was the Commercial Tavern in Shoreditch. Admittedly I manage to feel out of place in most places but this highly mannered dark rococo hostelry, although very friendly, tested my chameleonic abilities to their limits. I might as well have been wearing a sign sayin "old, ugly, untrendy and awkward." Mark and Lesley arrived before I got too incoherent and we went over the magazine's aims and the stuff I had sent them. I don't think they were too impressed by my writing but they did like the film and my very vague ideas about developing some sort of text based computer game. I shouldn't suggest things when I am drunk, I have no idea how to make a text based computer game.
I'm traveling again tomorrow, heading off for a meeting about this new online magazine Refutation. The launch date has been put back a bit which I'm not too upset about as I'd only just begun to cobble together something approaching ok. I'm meeting Mark in a pub in Shoreditch although we haven't decided on how to recognise each other; maybe looking lost and hesitant will be enough. So far I've come up with a sort of rambling text about the technological devices I own which lead up to one of my filmic attempts to recreate the universe. I suppose they deal with connections between: technology and human experience and the world which almost responds to the brief I was given. As usual I feel stupidly nervous about the whole thing.
Alex!! felt so slow in the head today that I forgot to ask if you were still up to Nottingham? If so, then I think I am going for it, stay the night in that hotel you mentioned and head back on the saturday….do you want to come along? and yes I can be your escort………….Hx
So hotel and escort booked I headed north on Friday. Hayley was driving using her newly borrowed satnav. I loved it, or her, a slightly condescending lady of indeterminate age (the sat nav, not Hayley) who kept us almost entertained for the whole journey. She beeped repeatedly if we went too fast and was extremely calm when we appeared to leave the road entirely. I'd sworn blind that I had stayed at the Nottingham Ibis before but I clearly hadn't, it wasn't where I remembered and it looked completely different. Still once we had staggered down the inexplicably swaying corridors and I had prised our twin beds the regulation six inches apart the room seemed very nice indeed.
We found the gallery easily and spent the first few minutes eavesdropping conversations about untimely evictions and vol au vents while manoeuvring ourselves in front of the fan. There was drink; lager, cava and wine, much drink, too much drink. The show itself was friendly, it had similarities to the Studio Voltaire show but was not as cool, more humour, variety, colour and frivolity. There was a bizarre sequinned toy tigerskin rug which would have sneaked into a school craft fayre and a rather magnificent injured giant rabbit slumped on the floor. My favourite things were Bruce Ingram's two fabulous mythological assemblages made out of paint trays and magazine cutouts.
After a while we introduced ourselves (well Hayley did) chatted, got directions to a show at the Fame Factory, drank more drink and took Hayley's drawings off the wall before beating a hasty retreat into the night.
Later we finished off a bottle of wine while watching a serial killer film. We never found the Fame Factory, probably because Hayley insisted on calling it the foam factory.
I'm not going to write about the next day, as I'd prefer to forget all about it.
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.
