Armley Mill Leeds residency

Just under a couple of weeks to go and email invitations have gone out so I’m feeling kind of excitedly anxiously strange! I have spent the week working on the crane print negatives, which I’m replicating. I’m not copying them fastidiously because I’m not that kind of artist and also I think when I was trying to contextualise the show, I’d been writing about how museums shape our how the past is presented. Museums do their best to be as true as possible but can’t really show an absolute replication, this threads into my replication and personal response to the crane drawings.

This also got me thinking about how much information to give the audience when in the gallery. As I’m making a statement about how museums construct ideologies, should I do this in the gallery? Should each piece of work have an explanation like they do have in a museum or should the work be able to hold it’s own? It’s also in interesting to think about how you would present this information. Should it be on little signs next to the work? Or as a printed handout with a map? There are a lot of subtle interactions going on and I don’t want the work to be seen as difficult but I’m still thinking about this one. This actually could be a separate piece of work but not sure if I’ve got the time to do it, and there will be deadlines to getting things printed so I probably haven’t got long to decide.

I’ve also been spending the week editing the videos I’ve been filming and like most things in my practice, the initial idea doesn’t end up working and something better comes along. At the moment the initial ideas isn’t working but I’m still kind of processing what the better thing is! I had spent at least a day editing an experimental video, which was to be played in the cinema. This was of shots that I’d taken around outside the mill and I had been intersecting the images with still frames of distorted images which was meant to be about perception and memory. But I’m not that happy with them, maybe I’ll leave them and work on them at a later date. The thing which has interested me was revisiting the animations I had started on in about week 2, I’ve got shots of wheels moving and things and I just like the simpleness of it, but I’m not sure if they should be in the gallery or in the cinema so that’s another thing to sort out. I’ve got a few days planned for editing this week so fingers crossed I can get a move on with that.

I’ve been a bit full steam ahead with my head down concentrating on work and now I’ve got a deadline in a few days to name the show and come up with some text for the info board. It’s got to be a bit about me and a bit about the show approx 250-350 words. I find being objective about my work quite difficult and steer away from any sort of curating myself but now I’ve got to pull all my work together into a cohesive show. Blimey.

Another thing I’m working on at the moment is copying some printing negatives from the archives, which were used to print up a commemorative brochure for a company. The brochure called ‘Cranes a Sequence of Progress’ and was printed in the early 1970’s uses archaic techniques for the process. The actual negatives are very low tech, handmade with a sheet of tracing paper of each page with loose felt tip drawings of the shape of the images and also blocking out the text. As I’m unable to use the originals in the space, I’ve decided to re-make the full set of 10 which will give me something ‘hands on’ to make. I’m going to try and make them as near as possible to the originals, including the handwritten printing instructions on the edge of the cards. So currently I’m having thoughts on how I can make new sellotape look 40 years old!

So after much deliberation (and reading lots of Wikipedia!) I’ve decided to call the show Transience. I always shy away from ‘properly’ naming work, I’m not brainy enough to come up with something clever, usually it’s a literal title or recently for the animations ‘Work no. 17’ etc so having to come up with something collective has been a bit odd. Luckily is something that has been at the back of my mind when making work and I feel like it all fits in with the theme really well.

The theme is more about being sensitive to the passing of time, a slight leaning towards lamenting about it but also being objective enough to see it as being inevitable. Which is quite relevant in a museum of obsolete objects. I’m also interested in how some items will always be in the archives as they are not deemed interesting enough to be put onto display. There’s also a question of how museums document history and how they can construct ideologies and identities by the way that they put things onto public display. The boxes and cabinets fit well in this as they are part of the archiving and display process.

I also had one of the other artists, Simon Whetham coming in last Friday. Simon’s a sound artist and his residency is in July, part of his work is to record the other residency artists working. I was a bit pessimistic about this at first, especially as I know I talk to myself when I’m working (!). I was worried that I’d be a bit more self conscious when being recorded but it went well. I thought that the sounds produced by me drawing on the window were quite amazing, lots of very subtle squeaks and other indescribable noises. Of course it was half term and Max & Tom, my kids, were supposed to be drawing at the other side of the MillSpace but ended up arguing and stomping about. I quite like that though, a very true representation of my practice! I look forward to hearing what Simon comes up with.

I’ve been thinking today how much I’ve started to enjoy coming into the mill and getting on with things. It’s also a bit weird to be classed as an artist, having spent so long as an art student (7 years), I’ve always had a bit of a problem with defining myself as an artist, I’ve always been a bit ‘Oh, I’m not one of those yet…!’ but to be in a professional situation, getting paid and doing artist talks, must make me one? Musn’t it?

After a frantic few weeks on not being able to get to the Mill (going away and pesky half term!) I’ve been thrown right back into it by having to do a talk for Leeds Met first year BA art & design students and also having to come up with the name of the show and write a short bit of text for the info board which will be up inside the gallery whilst the show is up. Crikey.

As well as having a head full of unfinished work I’ve got to come to some decisions…Planning the talk really helped me to appreciate what work I’d been doing. And also made me appreciate what great work I’d done in the past! As my practice is all over the place I don’t tend to stick with one way of working i.e. sculpture. I tend to move on from things and I don’t tend to revisit old work and forget what I’ve actually done so it was nice to be able to do this. There always something interesting happens too when you look at something old and maybe see another point of reference.

I divided my hour long talk into two sessions, one part about my practice and the other about the work in the residency. I’m sure you can’t help but bore some of them, and God knows I’ve been to some artists talks where the only thing that I’ve been concerned with was to how to fall asleep but still look like you’re listening! I have been to many good ones though and it’s the ones who are passionate and articulate and who actually care about the audience seem to be the best ones. I tried to incorporate some of that into my talk…of course the work has to be interesting too! I also decided to give them lots to look at and gave them loads of slides in the presentation!

The students are using the mill as a place to work for a few weeks and they have to submit a proposal by next week and then install the work for their opening on the 7^th December. Judith Tucker, the course leader asked if I could stay and do some mini-tutorials and I was really pleased to be asked, although my ability to recall artists was really tested, and as I had no internet connection to hand (oh please can I get an iphone?) I was blabbing on about artists thinking that some of the names could have been past Coronation Street characters or something. Anyway I think I got away with it!

The poor things were mainly worried about: a), if they were doing enough work or b) having grand unworkable ideas. Some had fantastic things going on and some erm, didn’t. They’d had a bit of a rollicking last week and they’d all started to make efforts in coming up with things but they did seem a bit baffled with what was expected of them as they were so used to formal education and being told exactly what was required. Ah you guys, you’re in the big bad world of art education, better get used to feeling confused!

Good luck to them all though and I look forward to seeing their finished work.