I’ve been making a work that will constitute a baffle on the stairwell. I mean something more than baffle really, in that it will both disguise the utter drop at the centre of the stairwell and reveal it as well. So I have this idea of transparent polythene that will create either a curtain or a layer that will move. I shall have to use a fan if the air movement caused by people isn’t enough to move it. If it works then I will make lines on the polythene so that a line can be constantly redrawn by the movement of people going past, sort of as an allegory of the function of the building I suppose.
It’s three weeks after my last stint on the stairs and I’ve spent that time thinking abut what I learnt and deciding what I want to take forward. Work (the paying kind) has taken over for a while but I’m able to get back to the art now. I’ve also made a good start on the essay and have around 1200 words buttoned down and I know where I’m going, so all’s good with that.
I’ve got three days booked on a different stairwell at Margaret St so I’ve been prepping work to install there, though I’m pretty sure I’ll abandon plans and start something else when I get in the space. It’s meant to be like that though, so it feels fine – it almost feels like a waste of time to be making stuff for it because I know it’ll change when I apply it. I’ve yet to figure out if that flexibility is a good thing or not, it doesn’t seem like a practice many artists follow and I stuggle with the fact that I don’t think its sustainable as a practice – I mean, how am I going to persuade someone in a place other than an art establishment to let me loose in space with a bunch of materials and the idea that I will ‘do ‘something’ that establishes the relationship of a person to the space and a tangible sense that others have come to this space before’. There is a specific tradition associated with art buildings like this that is really special and unlike other buildings. One day I’d like to try a similar process in a different building, particularly an office building.
I’ve already started to plum the opportunities that Margaret Street has to offer. It has 3 beautiful wooden stairwells and I spent last week trying out ideas and making sketches in tape in the only one that has a new extension at the top. I chose this because the new architecture of glass and steel contrasts finely with the old iron and varnished wood. I needed to begin to understand the building and work out my relationship with it. I guess I felt a bit like the new stairs, dropped into this solid resisting history and I had to work out place to exist in it. I feel the nurturing force of this place, just about every nook and cranny has been mined by artists, it’s a protective place where acceptance of new ideas is the norm instead but it is also very dominating physically. It has an aura of expectation and there have been only a few peices that I’ve seen here in the last two final year shows that have negated that domination and said something for themselves. Yet I am really glad not to be working against a blank canvas. Last year’s studio was a white cube and I felt it’s fakery – I ended up making an obvious fake wall.
In this new/old space I got tangible ideas but the most valuable thing was realising that the greatest impact I made as an artist on people in this space and was by being physically there. I was aware of a performative element to my work but always regarded the remainder; the physical result of the work, as being the work. But it’s the making that has the greater impact.
By Wednesday I realised that and began to think of material ways of expressing this. Perhaps I could leave more of an essence? My work with tape can be straight lines or messy but both result in something quite clinical, and optical but to me has always lacked the ludicrous random muckiness of life.
Anyway, I had to wrap the bannisters in clingfilm to protect them from the tape so I ended up creating sealed spaced within the clingfilm and filling them with my breath. It sort of worked; there was more of me left there at least. But I know its the performative and involvement of the audience that are the most interesting aspects. This is my new point of departure and I can’t wait until I can get back into college to pick it up again. But, before that, there’s another day in Madrid, bored, a flight and a whole lot of prep to do for the essay. I’m not worried about the essay but I want to do well in it and that’s all about the preparation and the reading…
I’m looking forward to this year being finished because I don’t know where my work will be when it is and that’s a very interesting position. I almost don’t want to achieve terminally ‘resolved’ work. I’m not keen on the idea of ‘finished’ when applied to sculpture and I like the idea that objects always have a potential to become something else. Methodically perhaps the way I make art can be called Process because I set myself rules or parameters involving material and actions I apply to it. I make these rules up in accordance to an emotional response to the place I’m working in. Perhaps I will try to combine this process with potentiallity and make work that is able to evolve; where it’s future is somehow obvious in it’s present. Dont know. It’s a movable feast!
I’m expecting my work to change this year because I’m in a different building now and perhaps some of the work I do will be to find new places in which to work. Just like taking exercise the most difficult thing to do is to start – it takes nerve – yet once I’ve started everything makes sense and more possibilities are born. Perhaps this is where potentiallity can come in, I don’t know?
