Continuing Conversations

I’m really not sure where to begin with this post. There’s so much going through my head at the moment that I’m finding it even more difficult than usual to keep track of everything. The main thing is that I’ll be showing during the MFA exhibition at the end of August, so working towards this is occupying my thoughts through all of my waking hours, and if last night’s dreams were anything to go by, into my sleeping hours too. What I’m doing is making sense at the moment, and I really love intense, crazy work – but I’m also looking forward to the reflective bit once the exhibition is up, so I can clearly see where to go next, rather purely planning the most appropriate order in which to ‘finish’ the work I need to. See www.newcastlemfashow.co.uk for more details about the exhibition (preview August 21^st, runs for two weeks after that).

The weekend has been spent making mould parts for a cast of a cut-glass jar and lid that I’m intending to make from slip-cast porcelain, whilst also working out a way to use cheap art-school temporary walls in a way that doesn’t disguise what they are (as that could be a bit fake and theatrical) but at the same time pushes them beyond this base. At the moment, the idea is lining paper, so I can reference a domestic interior, without being overt about, but paint the paper brilliant white, so I’ve still got a gallery reference.

I’m splitting the space up into an entrance or ‘ante’ space, which feels pristine and clean. Maybe like a porch. This leads into a space which suggests a wider, more spacious space, but still something to travel through. I’m planning on printing the photograph of the library window onto a personal and handwritten letter from the market, which appears to be in the wall. (I need to learn how to plaster quite quickly). The porcelain jar will probably be here somewhere. The next space will imply a living area, which is where I’ll put the drawer and the tin with its dirt (see the attached photos). I’m going to add some sliver-leaf to the dirt as a reference to the found photographs which I’ll no longer be using. I think the absence of them is stronger than them being there is reference absence. Around the corner (an incomplete wall which suggests that it may have been longer at one point) will be the plaster pillow. The pristine-ness of the space won’t quite be there by this point – it won’t be obvious, but it won’t quite be as clean, as sharp, there’ll be something different.

So that’s the plan. Or at least the idea as it is at the moment. I’m still trying not to over-plan, but work through each making process.

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I made the plaster pillow by literally filling a pillow case with casting plaster, then resting my head on it which it hardened. (I also tried mixing some of my hair into the plaster, but I need to work on the technique here – my friend Jennie who was helping me just ending up with plastery-hairy hands). It seemed to have the potential to be such a personal and potentially private experience, that something was maybe missing by doing this act in the studio space. So I’m intending to make another one, but doing it at home, by myself, in my bed. The plaster would then take up the shape of the mattress, as well as my head – it also seems to make sense to do this whilst wearing one of the négligé-dresses. It would effectively be a private performance, but I don’t think I want to record it – that would make it a performance for the camera, rather than for how wearing that clothing, in that environment would affect the end result.

I haven’t had time to read much recently, as I’m been making a concerted effort to think-make rather than read-think which is what I can so easily get caught up in. We did just have a short break in the Lake District, during which I got to finish W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. It’s written without any paragraphs or speech-marks to indicate which character is speaking, the result being that you sort of flow along this continuous narrative, one section blending seamlessly into the next… I’d like this installation I’m working on to flow like that.