Had a great day in Dunkerque on Saturday mixing DAD (www.dadonline.eu) business with pleasure! Lunch was with Jean-Luc Du Val who heads up the library over there and who is finding imaginative ways of taking the library out to other venues; e.g. his pop up library in the Musee des Beaux Arts which is part of an exhibition about the sea starting in October. Managed to get a look at the installation so far as the museum was open for Heritage open days in France. The exhibition is well worth a visit by the way.
The afternoon was for shopping – wine and food – some of it for hospitality for upcoming DAD events and some as part of an early Christmas shopping drive!
In the evening we went to see a performance by Nicolette Picheral (writer, story teller and narrator) and Colin Hinds (electric guitar) in the Dunkerque lighthouse called Entre Phare et Shaft/Between Beacon and Shaft. The piece is coming to Dover at the end of the month and will be in English. Colin was amazing – I’ve never heard the elecric guitar played quite like that before; he managed some really subtle and quite sounds.
oof and I am busy leading on a project called nautical threads with Dover District schools. I have to say at times I get quite anxious as I am not that great at organisational detail and this project is not the way I normally work as although I am leading, many of the key people have been chosen by my lead school partner. So far so good though, and it will be a great exercise in partnership working. And Saturday’s visit to Dunkerque has prompted me to contact the library here about setting up a Nautical Threads corner. Just shows how important it is to get out and about.
I went to see Limber: spatial painting practices at in the Herbert Read Gallery at UCA Canterbury yesterday. There was a real sense that each piece had be keenly noticed and selected. According to the Cherry Smith’s catalogue essay “One of the significant critical components of the selected artists is how they have problematized the relationship between support and content, blurring the distinction between surface and surround, with content often being equated with matter – either using the support as an extension of content …. or s content itself.”
I still have to digest the other essays – I am still catching up when it comes to the discourse around painting; it can still feel like a “forbidden” thing to do at times.
In response to the show, I had a bit of a play in the studio this morning.
Had a fantastic day in the studio yesterday. Cathy and Ruth from Making Art Work, joined by Joanna and Rosie, came to visit the three of us in the studio. The visitors brought some work along and we spent the day looking and talking about each other’s work over a lovely lunch and plentiful mugs of tea and coffee.
We talked about process, distilled time, experience, sight, touch, limitations (money, time, physical …)
Interesting question, in relation to my patched grids, was whether the work was primarily something to look at or experience.
This could be the start of a series of show and tell days. Must think of a title for them.
I have managed to squeeze in some studio time, some of it spent making it a little bit cleaner/tidier as on Saturday four members of the Making Art Work cooperative are visiting. It’s going to be a kind of ‘studio meet’ where we get together and talk about work. There’ll be about 8 of us altogether. Should be fun.
In the process I dug out an old piece of work and did some more to it and have decided to re-work some more earlier pieces. I am not sure if the attached is “finished”.
I’m also looking at work which examines “removal” or “subtraction” and “absence”, starting with Rauschenberg’s White Paintings and his Erased De Kooning drawing.
Very pleasant surprise – having decided to post off my small paintings rather than send by courier, I was pretty stunned to hear that the parcel had arrived the very next day with all the work intact!
Less surprising was the “sorry not this time”notice for Art in Romney Marsh. A shame as I would have liked to experiment with a site-specific paper piece.
I have been having a bit of a break: traditional bank holiday visit to the in-laws. I tried a few more butterfly photos just for the fun of it and played with my camera. I’m trying to learn which buttons to press ….
