I just didn't really see it coming – which was stupid of me, I guess. Now and then I surprise myself by my foolishness. I got rejected, nothing new really and not even a good reason to go to bed early in a sulk – but I did. Earlier last year I had a proposal shortlisted down to 20 for a solo show in a gallery which I felt was just right for me. I couldn't fit the time slot they wanted but, being very interested in my work which they claimed they were, they urged me to keep them informed in order to be considered for their 2010 programme. I thought I had it in the bag – ever done that? And finally, after long and drawn out consideration they, decided no. ouch!
I've had a lot of nice acceptances and felt a lot of good, excited feelings, I've had a few rejections that have smarted, but worse, worse even than the out and out rejection – the shortlisted rejection, boy does that sting.
Anyway, that was the weekend and I've gone through the – what on earth am I doing this for in the first place, what can I possibly be contributing to society, I could be earning megabucks (comparatively speaking) on a GTP- and came out the other side somewhat steadier on my feet again. Revisiting some of the more positive experiences and comments helped me get things in perspective and I feel focused again.
The doorbell has just gone and interrupted my work. I dealt with the solar panel salesman, (endearingly unpushy) and sat back down to my sewing. I realised then, that a slight sense of panic had welled in me when the doorbell went and the only explanation was that I was afraid I would have to bring someone in – a villager, someone to whom I would have to explain what I was up to.
Andrew Bryant asked what has blogging brought to my work. It's a precious connection for me, a thread to a world which I fit comfortably in. My village friends, I'm pretty sure, would recoil in horror at the current subject matter I'm dealing with and, worse still perhaps, they would find little value in it.
Like Rachel Howfield and other artists on this site, I have a never ending urge to reveal the hidden in my work, to celebrate the forgotten and the concealed, the quoitidian and mundane. At the moment I am removing and stitching around the stains from the duvets and bedding donated by villagers and left anonymously in my porch. Normally covered and hidden by expensive, floral duvet covers, the stains beneath have blossomed into delicate flowers, just visible in the worn cotton.
Having children was an epiphany for me in many ways. Mostly because life returns to the physical in a full on way. It is not clean, it is not sterile, it oozes and stains and seeps out at every opportunity. And for a while we are reminded of what we are. In the interviews I conducted over the last few months one woman spoke of her dreams as a young mother of overflowing toilets and the panic she felt in her lack of control. Humanity stains.
I thought a bit about this, about artists collecting dust, unpicking old clothes, creating work which carries the traces of human engagement. Perhaps it's a yearning to reconnect again with the untidy, the unclean and the wonderfully complex physicality of our existence. The age old relationship between the physical and the spiritual is often explored through philosophy but human contact nowadays is rarely physical or spiritual and mostly conducted through the plastic keys of a laptop and the chopped up sound bites on Twitter.
I'm actually finding working within the proposal I originally created for the Ace funding a real battle at times. The very process of developing an idea immediately sparks off further possibilities and I instantly lose focus on the one I'm trying to see through.
Out of my four children, Erin, the tiny twin, is the one whose relationship with drawing brings me back to my own childhood. She needs a nice fresh page, she then proceeds to draw and within three minutes has thrown in the towel as it's just never quite good enough. Her drawing is much more advanced than the other children but all she sees are the 'mistakes'. As a child I was exactly the same although we didn't have the luxury of cheap, endless printing paper from Tescos. Every Christmas I would recieve a pile of plain white paper from Aunt Doreen who worked in a typing pool in Belfast. It was my favourite present but as January moved on the pile disintegrated as each drawing was rejected and a fresh page needed.
I'm feeling the same way about work at the moment, constantly looking to the next page. My biggest problem , as a rural artist with a busy family is lack of critical input and I really need to invest some time in seeking some out.
Bit the bullet and decided to request an extension from ACE on the period of R&D, mostly due to the fact that my proposed timetable was ludicrously back to front, a fact which only became apparent from actually becoming immersed in the process. I had originally planned to visit and research galleries while gathering research for the proposed body of work. What I quickly realised was that it should have been work first, galleries later, when I actually had something tangible to show them. Lis Spenser fired me a quick email back to say that an extension would be fine and all's well again.
The trouble with gathering research, making work, learning new skills, juggling community projects, managing four kids etc. is the home tends to degenerate over time into utter chaos, which is OK because I don't really give a stuff about housework, but not OK when it has just taken me two days of searching to unearth documents for the car tax. I feel trapped in a circle of no time for housework because of work, cant find important things because of mess because of lack of housework, cant find time for work cause am spending my time looking for stuff because of the mess, because of the lack of housework because of work. Anybody got any answers?
Not much work going on at the moment – but a lot of thinking, collecting materials and planning. I've taken a step back a bit to examine more objectively what it is I do, to be more transparent, to be more authentic in my approach – that's the tricky bit, to not fall into the trap of producing work within an acceptable range/subject matter/criteria that is seen as acceptable and 'now'. Retracing my steps to a portfolio crit with a well respected gallery, the conversation ran something like this.
Me – my work is a response to my experience and that of the women I have interviewed, to the quotidial, the insignificant, the worn and the less than perfect, the profound found in the minutiae of family life, the poetry glimpsed through the mundane.
Gallery people – I like your materials, I like the beef gelatine, how you draw on the repulsive, contrasted in butterfly forms. Can't you do more of that, more icky stuff, more yucky things? But you need to add a new angle, what about starving people, what about food issues across the globe, yeh, you need to be global – and more yucky stuff.
Not to be unfair, they gave me some really concrete good critical advice but I wonder – do they really just want more of the same? At a talk recently at Artsway, film maker Alistair Gentry said the further away from the traditional you go, the more avante garde the circles you move in, the more tight and restricted the work becomes until only a handful of artwork fits the grade. In attempting to be more liberal the galleries become more trapped in their own narrow constraints of what they expect artists to produce.
I'd be interested in others comments and to what extent this influences the work we produce.
