I wouldn’t be here normally other than the fact that the lie-in didn’t quite go as planned. Three things conferred to sabotage it. Firstly, the duck next door which thinks it’s a cockeral, quacked in bursts relentlously like a machine gun from dawn, the new alarm clock which projects on the ceiling went off without my husband having read the intructions as to how to stop it and, while this was happening, the timed coffee machine which my husband had bought me, started to bubble in the kitchen and sent the dog into paroxysms of barking as he thought it had sprung to life.
I dragged myself downstairs to deal with the dog and thought I would look into the banking situation to see if we could avoid bankruptcy after the Christmas excess and then thought, sod that, I’ll look at the blogs instead.
Christmas pressies. I got a beautiful, fat little copy of ‘One Thousand Drawings’ by Tracey Emin. It is chunky, off white with delicate, tissue like pages, filled with her spidery little drawings that speak of fragile and personal experiences. I’ve always liked her drawing, although I think, content wise, it will stay out of younger children’s reach. I like the fact that she can’t spell for toffee in her comments.
This morning I remembered while looking at it, a forgotten memory. When we lived in East Kent and my husband worked at the Pfizer giant when viagra was discovered (yep, we were there, when the rats went a bit funny and they advertised in the local rag for volunteers to come and watch dodgy movies to test it out). New found success led to a sweeping out of old ways and with it many of the pre -mac graphic designers lost their jobs. One such man was a good friend, Alan, Tracey Emins half brother. For a while he came and sat on our sofa with his quiet partner and shared a bottle of red wine to mull over his no longer needed fifteen years of service. A really, gentle, funny man with Tracy’s face plus a long, distinctively impressive moustache, more suited to a slightly dishevelled, retired sergeant major. I’d forgotten Alan, he was quite close to Tracey, I guess time moved on and so did he. But looking at her book I just remembered him, and that difficult time we shared.
I would like to nominate myself for the most rediculously overstretched ACE funded R&D project embarked on as far as time goes. My original and neatly formed plan of nine months work has again been extended to now become a nineteen month project. The picture in my head of myself swooning about the studio producing swathes of work, travelling across the globe talking to curators and running engaging work within the community in nine months proved way too ambitious. In reality, newly gained diabetes (endless doctors appointments), a crazy, needy puppy foisted on me, an aging father getting up to all sorts of mischief and four children with their run of sleepovers, school fairs and roman toga days etc., made a bit of a dent in my time plan.
In my defence, I have more or less achieved these things, just not in the time anticipated. Juggling quite so many balls as it were, I am convinced, is not good for my brain. Yesterday I took an alzheimers test, and failed miserably. I am now, as my mother would have said – up to high dough worrying about it (Belfast people will understand me), although my husband assures me I have always been like this.
I note Rachel Howfield and I followed similar timescales in our R&D work but in slightly different directions.Where Rachel has combined her R&D work with exhibiting, I have intentionally pulled out of exhibiting this year to concentrate on other aspects of development within my practice. In reality I think we’ve both been running round like headless chickens. Either way, I’m sure Rachel will agree, the year has had a huge impact on our work and a bit of dog walking in the snow and Christmas relaxation by the fire can’t come soon enough!
‘It is with very deep regret that the Trustees announce that KUBE will close from 31st January 2010 and Abi Kremer’s exhibition, ‘Colour & Inspiration: Paintings 1979 – 2009′, will be the last in this building’
This is the email, entitled ‘Sad News’ that dropped in my hotmail earlier today from Kube gallery (formerly known as The Study Gallery, Poole). It is not the first gallery to close in and around this area of the SouthWest but is probably the most significant. Kube has a strong reputation for involving the general public from an innovative interactive exhibiting programme to participatory opportunities both within the gallery and reaching out to the wider community.
Kube has shown work by established names such as Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin, Micheal Kenny, Mark Wallinger, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas whilst also providing one of the painfully few platforms in the area for local and regional artists to share work. Among it’s other accomplishments literally thousands of schools, pupils and young people have visited the Gallery over the years, not to mention the college students that have rubbed shoulders with the Henry Moores, Barbara Hepworths and Jacob Epsteins of the college art collection which they housed and cared for. Rosalind was right, I do have fire in my belly when it comes to losses such as this. My work has brought me into all areas of participatory work, and I’m quite happy to defend the role of ‘the dreaded community artist‘ as one curator referred to it in a previous a-n article because I have seen first hand how, when we get it right, peoples lives are enriched and invigorated when they are brought together in this way.
Kube assures us they will find an alternative way to move forward. Hopefully this squeeze will only serve to produce some truly innovative and exciting initiatives to emerge. It is only, after all, what the community and the children of this community deserve.
It’s never good to start a blog entry with 10 minutes to go till school pick up but here goes with an attempt to fill in the gaps on my last day in Glasgow. This turned out to be Edinburgh really as on a few peoples recommendation I hot footed it to the Botanic Gardens there where Karla Black had a show. It wasn’t so much hot footed as numb footed by the time I got there. The streets in Edinburgh are sooooo much further apart than Glasgow so what I thought would just be a short hike from the station turned out to be a rather long (and bitterly cold one).
When I got there though I planted my bum on a radiator and just sat there, breathing in the quietness of the room, the stillness of the work and the frozen gardens outside, all bathed in sunshine. It should have been – and was actually – a lovely moment, althought the museum staff clearly didn’t trust me not to scuff the delicately placed powder on the floor and kept popping in and out or hovering in the corner to remind me I was being watched. I felt I was not safe to be left alone with the work and that wasn’t nice.
On the way back I spoke to a curator at another gallery, something I hate doing but I did have a mutual contact with them so I thought I’d give it a go. Everyone in Scotland has been so welcoming and interested in discussing my work with me I have really enjoyed the visit. All these initial contacts will need following up but so far it’s been encouraging and not at all the ordeal I thought it would be.
Once back we had the first meeting of our fledgling crit group in a little tea room equidistant from everyone , just to voice where we are in our work and what a group could offer. After taking literally months to come to an agreed date it was such a treat to finally meet and chat with other artists in the area. As soon as the new year starts we’ll look into taking it further but I’m just so pleased it has finally happened.
Right, just made it, off to school pick up.
Another slightly out of date post, written on the 1st Dec.
For the first time I was free from cleaning up a messy kitchen and had the time in my hotel room to watch the Satchi reality show. The much aligned reality TV format spans a vast expanse from downright criminal at times to tender and inspirational. Perhaps it is because we are artists but this to me was just tediously boring. Were there some canvases in sight it would have been preferable to watch the paint dry on them than sit through that again.
It reminded me of an episode in college when a tutor had set up a fake comission with a local business where we had to create a scaled maquette of a proposed public sculpture. We would then be paid for our proposal ( a few pounds out of the tutors own pocket) and present at a formal meeting with the company. Now it was always my routine to add 2 days either end of the end of term hoildays – (I felt it only right due to the time lost travelling back to Belfast) although this would mean, in this case, I couldn’t make the presentation.
I felt it would have been thoughtless to add to the tutors inevitable stress by telling him this in advance so I waited till the end of the day before. In the end I didn’t think such language was possible from such a reserved man. It reminded me of an ‘o’ level domestic science teacher who threatened to leave teaching rather than have me for another year after it took me three terms to remeber to bring the zip in to finish my ‘A’ line skirt. The French teacher, the Maths and the games teacher could also be added to the list I have frustrated and infuriated. As far as the commission maquettes went, the money found it’s way quickly to the pub and the maquettes, as we discovered, just as quickly to the skip at the back of college.
Returning to the programme, Satchi, who doesn’t appear in person but speaks through a royal messenger, after demanding in the brief that the piece engaged the general public, chose the one which had the least public support. If anything though the show encouraged me to have faith in what I do and don’t pay too much attention to the, at times, totally questionable, critical input around you.
