Deep breath – think my G4A application is ready to submit.
I am trying to think how best to present my work on paper. I like it just pinned to the wall but when it comes to submitting the work for shows it is so fragile like that – which is of course the whole point – but I just wonder if there is a way I could make it easier to handle. I was thinking of pinning it to foamboard, and maybe sticking the foamboard to wooden batons to stop it bending. A bit like a stretcher for canvas.
I am busy writing an G4A application for a personal project. Fingers crossed and more here if I am successful.
I am leading on a mapping project for Dover inspired by Mapping Manhattan, which I stumbled across the other day http://mapyourmemories.tumblr.com/tagged/Manhattan
The Dover project will be about mapping one’s dreams for Dover as part of the Dover Big Local initiative. Will be interesting to see what people come up with. The hard bit will be persuading people it is worth it – so many initiatives have been and gone in the town leaving very little trace of their existence that many people are cynical and fed up; they just don’t believe their voice will be heard. The arts are good at engaging people, but engagement has to lead somewhere or make some kind of a difference, or else it will just feel like a pointless exercise.
Oh, and I made it to the studio this afternoon. When it was time to leave, I found a police car blocking the gates. Fortunately I surmised that the silhouette in a window of one of the nearby houses was the driver …. apparently attending an emergency!
“Back in the land of the living”, so said Joanna on hearing that I’d just finished a marathon translation. My head is only just starting to clear. Being stuck behind the computer means that my displacement activity consists in researching other artists and also going through my photos.
The one here, which is not a great photo, actually reminds me of my own work. I took it in 2010 in Beijing. I had dismissed it as a rubbish photo but am now resurrecting it as research. I like the dark colours and the repeated structural forms as well as the huge empty space through the centre.
Woohoo – in the Top Ten blogs for the first time since I started blogging. And in such good company too.
I’ve just bought a new lens for my camera so have been refreshing my very rusty knowledge of speed and aperture settings. Sometimes I just get fed up and put them back to auto.
I am stuck behind the computer again for the next few days doing a big and rather difficult translation job. A colleague of mine who I’d only ever met virtually and don’t even know what he looked like has just passed away. Pneumonia complicated by Parkinsons. I didn’t really know him but he was a good friend to me at one point in my life and also passed on a lot of work, which though I often didn’t really want to do it, has been good for the mortgage repayments. His last gesture, which was to pass on a client was very generous of him. He could have just told the client to put the work out to tender.
I just realise I had to change some of the tenses in the above paragraph to reflect the fact that he has gone.
The exhibition at Crate was well attended – both the preview yesterday and the show today – and was the occasion for many interesting conversations – e.g. about chance and accident and my approach to materials. Also an interesting talk with fellow a-n blogger Ruth Geldard about the difference in one’s state of mind when “making” compared to “painting.” The drawings saw quite a lot of “action”, floating away from the wall as people passed by, so have a few small tears that need patching.
This morning Bob and Roberta Smith’s mirrors came to Dover and I accompanied the film crew who were after people’s reflections (literally) on East Kent – except that the spoken reflections were scripted one-liners. Unfortunately the crew were on such a tight schedule they didn’t have time to go into Dover and get an impression of the footfall in the busier part of town. Still they got all the “iconic” shots – the castle, the esplanade and the Shakespeare cliffs. I was really pleased that they took shots of Alma Tischler Woods Start/Finish line for the North Downs Way trail.
http://www.dadonline.eu/node/478
The shoot is for a film to be used in the East Kent City of Culture campaign:
I’ve also been busy making another video. It is much longer than the other two and so needs some patience to watch.
Clare Smith's mixed English/Chinese heritage informs her perspective on issues of identity and categorisation. Her nomadic childhood and early adulthood have meant a somewhat ambivalent relationship to place, reinforced by the sense of ambiguity that comes from her mixed identity. Smith works with drawing, print media, collage and moving image to investigate this ambivalence, with references to craft, the importance of labour and the handmade. Through her choice of materials and approaches, she creates work which attempts to create a sense of unity, an interpretation of Homi Bhabha's "Third Space" - seen as a space in which different parts can come together to challenge dominant ideas of wholeness. Collaboration is part of Smith’s practice and she is also co-founder of Dover Arts Development (DAD) together with painter, Joanna Jones. This involves working with many different artists, curation, organisation, event management, creating networks across East Kent and influencing the public realm in Dover. Clare works from a studio in Dover. She has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
