Continuing Conversations

Finally back in studio to actually make stuff, rather than rushing in to print off a couple of things, grab some books and get back home to continue writing. The MA dissertation is finally finished, and although it’s nearly killed me to get it in, I’m actually pretty proud of myself. I have posted previously about what I was aiming to do with the text, but I thought it might make a little more sense if I quote from the writing directly:

“The critical essay positioned on the left side of the page, draws upon anthropological, geographical and aesthetical sources to place the ideas of trace and absence in a domestic environment into a visual arts context. The accompanying text and images on the right side of the page are a series of reflective writings and photographs related to my personal experience of the issues raised in the main essay. The symbiotic relationship between the two sections contextualises the main essay, whilst creating a piece of work which can be understood as a manifestation of my artistic practice. The sections of each chapter have been ordered to create a sense of overarching narrative, while the language used has been chosen to imbue a sense of these works and ideas in the reader’s mind.”

I’m seeing this writing as a piece of work itself – the design, paper stock, typesetting etc were all carefully considered, and were in fact integral to the understanding of the piece. I’m intending to put a low-res version of it up on my website for download, just as soon as I’ve had chance to make it web-ready.

I’ve also been buzzing with ideas about new work today – I want to incorporate the more conceptual ideas I’ve had as a result of the writing into the sculptures / installations I make. Firstly, this is going to involve thinking of the traces left in our house in terms of layers of semi-factitious narrative. There are various indents in the carpet from both our furniture and the previous occupier’s furniture – whilst I know the narrative, the stories associated with our own furniture, I only have vague memories of the previous furniture. These memories are intangible, fragile things, subject to erosion by time. So, any traces I associate memories to in relation to this pre-existing furniture, while based on fact, gradually loose this ‘factual’ content, become embroiled with imagined ideas, and hence the coined word ‘factitious’.

Buildings don’t exist is a set time periods of ‘then’ and ‘now’ (see http://www.glimmersinlimbo.co.uk/) – there is a fluidity in how they would have existed at different points. So the other area I want to incorporate in this new work is a way of suggesting the gradual build-up and erasure of these traces over a period of time.

What I’m intending to start with is a cast of the carpet in our living room – the carpet is cut to the walls, so the size and shape of the room, plus an idea of the type of building is implicit in the work. The cast will include indents from various items of furniture – ours, theirs, other furniture which isn’t theirs, but is similar to what I remember it being like.

So it looks like I’ll be making something pretty big. Yeay!

My shortest post ever:

Writing this dissertation is beginning to feel pretty much like curating an exhibition – I know there’s a way that all the ideas will work together on the page, but it’s taking a ludicrous amount to time to figure out exactly which way that is.

Just realised this’ll be the first post of the New Year. I’ve spent most of it so far wrapped up in blankets and a shawl, admiring the beauty of the snow, before turning back to my computer to continue writing my MA dissertation. As I’ve mentioned before, this is about trace and absence in relation to the domestic environment, in particular to the house myself and my partner have just purchased. The idea is that there are effectively two sections to the text, having a symbiotic relationship with each other. The more formal, academic side is the critique of ideas and artwork in this area, whist the opposing side is a personal account of how the various ideas / points are related to the experience of creating a home in our new house. So, while yesterday was the bodily traces in art objects day (think hair, dust, blood etc), today has been about Boltanski’s Missing House from 1990. (If you don’t know it, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/niah84/2842382429/). There seems to be a bit of contradiction going on as to whether Boltanski saw this piece in the same vein as his post-memory Holocaust work – one critic quotes him as saying that the installation is about “‘the finger of God’; that is, the absurd and arbitrary contingency that determined that the residents on one stairway would be blown to bits, whilst those on the other might escape unscathed”, where as another writes: “He … discovered the names of the previous Jewish inhabitants, which he then used as the basis for the memorial content of the work”. I’ve always liked Boltanski’s work, the tricky bit is referring to artists who are so well written about in this field – it’s really easy to go off on perhaps a really interesting tangent, but a tangent nonetheless.

The snow’s pretty much all melted here now. Give the metro’s headline of ‘Briton’s heaving a sigh of relief’ as the forecast heavy snow failed to materialise, it seems I’m one of the few people in the country who would prefer that it had stayed. Okay, so the trains were crowed, the death-ice wasn’t much fun and I really didn’t like it when my boots leaked, but my god, wasn’t it beautiful?

Cold and misty yesterday. My parents live in the middle of nowhere, which whilst very isolated, can be quite beautiful. I took these photographs when we were walked their dog in the Malverns – the mist reminded me of Dylan Trigg’s photographs on his blog: http://side-effects.blogspot.com/ It’s a little like the snow, everything is detached, separated from what’s usually seen around it.

Re: work – just thinking about ways to combine a more delicate approach to the casts I’ve been making. The dresses were fragile, ephemeral; can this be furthered in relation to domestic objects, parts of homes?

I finished a commission for Enchanted Parks in Gateshead a couple of weeks ago, which went well I think – a local photographic group very kindly sent me links to images they’d taken (see accompanying photographs). It turned out to be a bit of departure from the muted, quiet and contemplative sort of work I normally make, but I think it was really good thing to work in different way, and produce pieces for an exterior location, something I haven’t done before.

Just arrived down in Herefordshire to spend Christmas with my family. We inadvertently benefited from other trains being delayed after ours was cancelled, but it’s still a 6 hour journey from Newcastle. Still, the county seems to be catching up with the rest of the country thanks to the copious amounts of snow currently falling. Looking out of the window just now where the snow was falling under a streetlight, the flakes were so big that they made spinning shadows on the white blanket underneath. I love the smell too – really fresh and clean, gorgeous.