I’ve been taking an inadvertent break from blogging over the last couple of months. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing (I’m in the middle of writing my MA dissertation) and it felt like my head’s been full of so many things, that to try and surmise them for this blog wouldn’t work. The writing itself is becoming a piece in its own right, beyond the remit of an academic text. It’s about trace and absence with the home and it rather apt, as we’ve just moved house – I’m therefore using our house as a basis to discuss these ideas.
The move was pretty hectic (to put it mildly) and as a result of not having a kitchen for about 6 weeks, we’ve been living with my in-laws. The previous owners of our new house were rather attached to their plants – so much so, that a massive ivy was growing up the front and partially covering the bedroom window. It was really sunny on our first morning there, so I photographed the resulting shadows on the curtain from our bed. I think it was the shadows which made me think of Anthony Boswell’s work (he’s got a couple of blogs on this site).
I’ve been flicking though The Comfort of Things by Daniel Miller recently (Amazon’s ‘other people who bought this book also bought these’ proving very useful these days). It’s basically an anthropological look the interior of people’s homes, specifically the objects and things they surround themselves with. The first ‘portrait’ is about a pensioner called George whose flat is empty – he doesn’t have any things. Miller describes that ‘there is a violence to such emptiness’. It’s really sad because the empty flat effectively reflects the person who occupies it – ‘this was a man… waiting for his time on earth to be over, but who at the age of seventy-six had never yet seen his life actually begin. And, worse still, he knew it’.
Reading back through my text documentation, it still seems to be making sense. Only thing is, I’m not quite sure how to share it – I think the best thing will be to post it up here once I’ve got the professional photographs back, so that the images put the text in context and vice versa.
The other thing I’ve been thinking about over the last few days is social networking / blogging and the arts (or more accurately, my practice as an artist and how social networks can show my work to more people). This basically came about from opening a Twitter account a couple of days ago, as it seemed a good idea at the time. Interestingly enough, I then came across some musing along related lines on Fabrica Gallery’s blog: http://www.thetangledhedgerow.blogspot.com/ (see the September 8th and August 19th posts), which I got to via Twitter. What he says about the ‘behind the scenes’ bit seems to make sense, I think that’s pretty much how most people view their blogs – a more casual, social approach to discussing their practice.
What I have found quite tricky is transferring this more laid-back manner to my website – some things make sense to be formal (statement, cv etc) but I’m attempting to make the commentary about the works a little more informal, as I think it can be more interesting to read then.
Just updated it today, so have a look if you fancy it: www.laurenhealey.co.uk
I spent Friday and Saturday at the NOTES on a Return symposium at the Laing Gallery. This two-day event rounded off a series of artist talks and new commissions in relation a number of artist performances which took place at the Laing during the mid-eighties. Whilst I’ve not worked with performance, what interested me about this event was the discussion surrounding documentation, memory and the archive in this case related to performance-based practice.
The conversations and presentations were pretty wide ranging, but what struck me most was how a lot of the issues raised could be applied beyond live art – the most relevant area to my work being issues surrounding the affective documentation of a work which relies heavily on the moment and the atmosphere of that particular time and space. This conversation can easily be applied to installation work, and some of the problems I’m encountering at the moment.
Several of us clubbed together to get professional photography of our work, but I’m not sure that in my case it’ll be enough. In order to view my work, you need to physically move into, then through and around the space. There’s no one place that you can view all the pieces, or indeed see the entirety of the space. So is a series of photographs the best way to explain the piece? All documentation risks become something in its own right – a really good photograph can make something look more interesting than it actually is in reality – but is there a way of enriching / adding to this type of documentation to create a more rounding understanding of an installation?
I thought about videoing the space, but it seemed a little odd to use a time-based medium to record static works. One of the speakers at the symposium mentioned something quite interesting though – they’d had access to three different accounts of the same performance. Obviously the accounts themselves differed quite considerably in their descriptions and experiences of the event, but they nevertheless added a further depth to the documentation.
Owing to a lack of time (the exhibition has closed now, and I need to de-install in the next couple of days) I’m not going to be able to get three people to write accounts for me, but I thought it would still be something useful that I could do myself. I want to write something using language / in a style that reflects the feeling and content of the work – I’ll have a go and post here as regards the success or otherwise.
So here are some initial installation shots from my interim exhibition. I hadn’t though in terms of a title for it before now, but retrospectively it makes sense to call it Shift. It’s pretty difficult to document due to the shape and size of the space, but also due to the subtly of colour and the manner in which is changes depending on the time of day and the amount of sun shining through the glass panels in the ceiling.
The colour for the floor became a bit of a mission in the end. I went with grey-shift idea, but the colour I chose turned out to have a lot more pink in than I was expecting. That, combined with the different shades of white on the walls gave quite a head-f**k in early morning light. Okay, so this was interesting, but it was taking the installation somewhere else, which I wasn’t sure about. It also seemed to make the floor-based work less substantial, less there somehow. It was only after a day of debating this, and also trying out a much more grey-grey, that I saw how it worked in evening light. The pinkness became a more subtle grey-brownness which shifted the space in a softer way, and worked with the floor pieces.
I think the photograph piece needs some more work. It feels a little unrefined now, in comparison with the other pieces. The wallpaper covering rips away a bit too easily, so it reveals the image too easily and too much of it. I’m also wondering if a letter is the best support – it’s beginning to feel a bit too literal; not just in the sense that there’s writing involved (it’s a personal letter written in the 1930’s I picked up at a market) but perhaps there might be softer ways to make the references? I went on a tour of Tyne and Wear Museum’s archives a few months back, and got rather fascinated with how the conservators repair velum manuscripts with sausage skin and a starch glue, so I’ve been thinking about how this might work with a photograph printed on it. I’m also beginning to do some research about making my own photographic emulation, or at least using a silver based powder or solution to take some more control over this process. Or perhaps I could print onto silver leaf, or imbed the support with it somehow, so the image doesn’t appear too fixed, so static?
So, should the floor be painted another colour or not? It’s the standard art-school-grey at the moment, but is to paint it a completely different colour going to be taking the entire installation down the theatrical route? If the colour is referencing a floor colour which could / has been used in a domestic environment going to be not so much shifting the space, as attempting to make it into something else? So a different shade of grey?
I’m a little concerned that the shades of white that I’m using might be so, well, white, that there won’t be much of a distinguishable difference between them. And it’s also been brought to my attention that the photograph printed on the reclaimed letter is a little too black and white, where perhaps a bit more subtlety involving grey might have been preferable. It’s also going to be a bit tricky trying to make this appear as if it’s in the wall in a gentle way – I’ve had to bench the plaster idea, as I realised that I really wouldn’t have time to learn how to plaster properly, and the finished result would most likely look like I hadn’t had much time to learn how to plaster properly. So the photograph is behind the lining paper, and idea is to rub / sand the paper away, and perhaps involve a little silver-leaf somewhere along the lines.
I’ve also realised that I’m thinking of these ideas in terms of something ‘finished’ again – an easy trap to fall into I think, when preparing for a public exhibition. However, part of my original philosophy in approaching this particular exhibition was to try and think of the work / works in terms of ideas in progress, thoughts and suggestions. Perhaps I need to be thinking in terms of this again….
I’m going to find out about different shades of grey paint tomorrow.
