I finally managed to see Tracy Emin’s She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea at Turner Contemporary, earlier this week. It’s such a beautiful title for a show apart from anything else. I took my parents with me as they wanted to visit Margate and were curious. While I was parking the car, they helped some elderly – probably same age as them but more infirm – women down the stairs and received a “warning” about what they were about to see!
Once in the gallery I left them to make of it what they would. I personally particularly wondered about the translation into embroidery and tapestry of her drawings; partly because of the gendered associations of that work and also because there was a sense of the gesture being slowed down: just think of the labour involved in hand dying the wool, before you even get to stitch it.
I will be making paper boats for The Voyagers http://www.studio308ltd.co.uk/Projects/Entries/201… in the Kent Cultural Baton on 16 September as part of the Whitstable Satellite http://www.whitstablesatellite.com/#
I have posted the project here on a-n and if you can’t join me in Whitstable or Dover then you can take part from a distance. There is a video of me making the boat here http://www.studio308ltd.co.uk/Projects/Entries/201… aand you can either photograph it when you’ve done it or send it to me by post. Please contact me if you’d like to do that [email protected]
Well the day started with me getting to the doctor’s late for my blood test without the appropriate papers; so had to rush home and get them with the result that my veins decided to be very generous with blood for a change. Maybe that is what I need to do for every blood test – rush around first. Check up with the oncologist coming up soon, hence the focus on medical matters.
I have just finished two small paintings on wooden panels – first paintings in years, though they are extended drawings really.
Had a lovely day on the LV21 Lightship on Gillingham pier making paper boats with visitors. Mostly people I know and haven’t seen for ages so it was a day of conversation and making.
i was listening to Radio 4 on the way back, writers talking about what questions they hated/liked and how to answer them. One writer said that what he most wanted people to ask were questions triggered by what he’d written but not about the book or writing it per se, e.g. what political views he had and how that linked to his work. I think this applies to visual art too – the conversations that arise in response can be so exciting, moving, inspiring, thought-provoking.
I have become more interested in process again recently and am enjoying this series of drawings in the studio. The drawings are a way of slowing down, they act as a curb on the urge to “do something” and take away the anxiety of not knowing what to draw. The formal ready-made grid restricts the gestural and demands slow, deliberate marks, though my hand wobbles and the mark cannot be fully controlled.
