So, the Whitstable Satellite event is over. I mainly had passers by and children making the boats – no-one seems to have read the booklet. I let the children keep their boats but did managed to get a few more for my fleet to accompany Dover’s Bronze Age Boat.
Philippe Bazin seems happy with the idea of his film being shown on a screen placed on top of the boat case. Phew! I wanted to use the little cinema in the museum and thought the curator was just being awkward. As it turns out, the technology is so old that messing with it creates complete mayhem – the lights come on when they shouldn’t and everything gets out of sync. Lesson learned – get hold of the tech guy much earlier and hear it from him; it is easier to understand things if you are told direct.
I have been panicking ever so slightly about the boat cloth but it is beginning to look a bit more convincing now. Not having worked with textiles much or at all, this project is a huge leap into the unknown and I am on a very steep learning curve. However, I am loving using the museum as my studio. It is quiet; I have the occasional conversation with visitors but the rest of the time I can think and make it up as I go along. Making the boat cloth is another way of drawing really.
Went to the AIR event in Whitstable yesterday and met lots of new people, something I enjoy doing.
Am hatching a project around the idea of studio/creative space in Dover …. more on this later if it goes any further.
Looking forward to getting well and truly started on The Voyagers project, even as I am already working out how to install the as yet unmade work. Exhibition info here http://www.studio308ltd.co.uk/News/Entries/2012/9/… and also on interface. I’ll be in the Age Concern centre tomorrow and in the Cultural Baton in Whitstable on Sunday making boats and in between will make a start on the textile piece with Rosie James on Saturday. The installation of Philippe Bazin’s video is proving tricky and I am having to negotiate firmly with the museum curator to get it set up how I want. Still in the middle of negotiations.
Spent most of yesterday morning taking down my photos and removing the vinyl lettering from the windows of a space we have been able to use for showing work here in Dover to make way for work by Rosie James. It was so hot and I was boiling and we were all hungry by the time we finished and too late for the local pizza place opposite and for the Chinese take away. Ended up with a baked potato.
Rosie James’ stitched crowds will be in the space until mid October or so. Rosie is leading on 2 stitching workshops as part of The Voyagers project. The dates are fast approaching so I am on a drive to recruit participants – I’ll be lurking at a local quilting fair this Sunday and have been round to a couple of local knit and natter groups! Also dropped into the Age Concern centre this morning and think some of the members may be interested in the paper boats. A class of primary school children are also pencilled in. Fingers crossed it will go well and hopefully I will get a few participants at the Whitstable Satellite on 16th too.
Managed to catch 2 things on the radio that I enjoyed today; John Gray on Radio 4’s A point of view, talking about J G Ballard and memory and Tacita Dean on Radio 3’s Private Passions; John Gray was before taking the dogs out and Tacita Dean was on the way back! I don’t normally have dogs – usually just one, but it’s my turn to return a favour.
Spent most of yesterday in Whitstable for the launch of Nicole Mollet’s Atlas of Kent – an alternative map of Kent produced as a result of travelling around Kent with the Kent Cultural Baton http://www.kentculturalbaton.com/ – followed by the launch of the Whitstable Biennale http://www.whitstablebiennale.com/ Also took part in Jane Pitt’s Sonic Flash Mob project, which is part of the Satellite programme. Had, of course several conversations but one thing that sticks in my mind was the discussion around the often underestimated fact that one’s audience includes to a large part other artists. Yes we make work for “the general public”, include the public in our projects and talk alot about increasing access and opening up opportunities, but the public is not just some amorphous mass , it includes friends – artist friends and non-artists friends and other artists and arts professionals who may or may not become friends.
My recent work has been selected for “The Meeting Room” at the Kaleidoscope Gallery, Sevenoaks from 27 September to 17 November. Really pleased and quite excited too as I will be in a show with fellow DAD director, Joanna Jones, whose work i really like. The brief for the show was to consider the relationship between the mind and body, between consciousness and the physicality of the human brain. I ummed and ahed for a bit as to whether my work fitted the brief and then decided that actually it could. When I draw I might be thinking consciously about something I’ve read or what someone has said – but what comes out in the work are marks, a record of how I as subject touch the world back, after it has touched me.
The drawings start with a sort of hunch, an impulse that “this might work”. Each mark gives rise to another mark in response. It is as if the drawings create space for the ebb and flow of sensations and impulses, for memory to do its work: the past inserting itself into the present.[1]
[1] cf. Bergson, H. Matter and Memory, Dover Philosophical classics, 2004 (originally published London: G Allen & Co. 1912)
I have just emerged from several days stuck behind the computer doing a huge translation job. It always puts me in a bad mood – as soon as I start I immediately wish I hadn’t, even though I know that some of what I earn can help towards the mortgage. Still, I did manage to sneak some time off to take the dog to the park and also earlier had a lovely evening at Crate space in Margate meeting their two French artists in residence.
It has been an interesting time this summer – working with my mother on the DAD celebration arch which went above the underpass for the Olympic Torch Relay event. Lots of the pom poms got nicked, so we took it down and by invitation transferred it to a corridor in the local library. Not only did it then change in nature from being an outdoor installation to an indoor one, it also became a wall hanging and suddenly needed a whole load more work, which thank goodness my mother took on. One can never just transfer something. Working with my mother brought back some of my best memories of when we used to do batik together.
Lots of art events coming up: Whitstable Biennale opening and Cultural Baton event plust of course the whole Biennale and Satellite programme over the next two weeks. I will be doing a one-day intervention in the Cultural Baton as part of the Satellite on 16 September see http://www.whitstablesatellite.com/ and also my website for details. http://www.studio308ltd.co.uk/News/Entries/2012/8/…
I have been doing quite a bit of work on my website recently and was interested to see how much traffic I get from this blog! Thanks everyone for reading.
