Roz and I have been working on our articles for Breaking Ground over the past few weeks. We presented our work (past and present), to each other. Then we went our separate ways to write up our first drafts. Those have now been refined and we're ready to upload them to Projects Unedited. It has been a useful process, making us review our practice and establish areas of common ground which we can build upon during the rest of our collaboration. Reading what Roz has written about my practice has been interesting. She has examined my work from a fresh perspective, putting a different emphasis on certain areas of it and articulating some things which I could not.
We've decided that the best way to publish the articles is in small portions, a little each day for the next few days, and I'm going to start later today by publishing the introduction to the article which I've written entitled "Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes of The Other".
We have spent a day each interviewing our collaborator about their work.
I started by showing Judith the framed pictures I have up on my walls – a safe place to keep them – and gave her a pile of black photo books to look through. These contain images from the 3 years I spent at Brighton University. Next I took her through a powerpoint presentation titled ‘Seven years: a journey through art education’. We finished by examining the zigzag books I have made for each body of work, the final one being ‘animals, vegetable, mineral’ a set of 5 zigzags in a slipcase produced using duotone lithography at the Royal College of Art last year.
Judith showed me her work in the Blue Monkey studio surrounded by the paper trees she is making presently. She explained how she is mapping and documenting her journey from home to the studio. She took me through her website and talked about the various residencies and projects and the changes in perspective they have involved. After lunch I asked a set of prepared questions and recorded her answers on my new voice recorder.
Both of us are writing and shaping our notes into draft articles for the other’s consideration and comments.
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Visited TATE Modern last week to see, among other things, the Gilbert & George exhibition and to see G & G themselves in conversation with Michael Bracewell in the Starr Auditorium.
I was keen to see the show and to hear the pair talk about their enduring collaboration. I hoped I might gain an insight into the way the collaborative relationship worked for G & G, and although they did briefly talk about the strength which came from being a partnership, I came away with the feeling that there was little to be said about how collaboration works for them, because, after 40 years, it is so entirely a way of life.
They talk only of “we” and “our”, never “me” or “mine”. There is no evidence of a division of labour or of defined roles or responsibilities. It appears that they think and work as one.
Judith visited the allotment for the first time. It was covered in cowslips, forgetmenots, tulips.
We planted a flag Breaking Ground to launch the project.
Judith brought a bag of homemade compost for the allotment. She took home a bunch of spinach from the allotment. A useful exchange – a kind of beauty.
I'm really interested in how other people's blogs are developing and keep telling myself that I must give myself a bit more time to really delve into them, rather than dipping in and out as I do at the moment and just picking up snippets here and there.
I have got quite caught up in the nervous energy of larisa blazic's: 205A Morning Lane and have also become quite involved in the trials and tribulations of Gabrielle Hoad's: Exeter Studios Project – I hope it all eventually gets off the ground, and if it does, it would be great to try to arrange to go and visit – how about it Gabrielle?
I loved "Little Death 2, A little Death film of a dissolving Alka Seltzer tablet" (see Alex Pearl's: Foundling Museum Commission) and I'm also enjoying following Jane Ponsford's: Papertrails Residency, especially since meeting her at the AIR event a couple of weeks ago. I was interested in Jane's comments on 1st April, following that event, about her frustrations on hearing discussions about how artists need a forum to be in touch with other artists because, as Jane says, "…the forum is there. It's where the discussion is being held." I have to agree, and not only on the issue of a forum, but also many of the other things which artists say they need, which, I'm beginning to discover, are already in existence. The issue is, perhaps, knowing how to access them.
I was amazed yet again yesterday about the way opportunities multiply when you start looking for them. All of a sudden, collaborations are everywhere! An invitation arrived from Phoenix Arts in Brighton to the opening celebration of their next show, curated by Sally Lai, curatorial fellow at Phoenix, entitled "Double Acts". Any guesses as to the theme? Another event to add to my list of things to see and do! The exhibition, which opens on the 28th April, is "a celebration and mini-survey of collaborative practice in the UK today" and features work and new commissions by Ayling & Conroy, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Library of Unwritten Books, The Owl Project, Semiconductor and Jonathon Gilhooly & Stig Evans. http://www.phoenixarts.org
