At last, time in the studio. I smuggled the dog in as the dogsitter didn't turn up, though it was probably because of poor communication on my part. He tried to munch the walls but luckily not too persistently.
Tutorials are strange things. For me they can be about having a useful conversation but can also send me off on completely the wrong track, but in doing so, in a round about way having been thrown off track I get back to somewhere that feels more productive.
I felt as if I was hitting a wall after my last tutorial and spent days flailing about and wondering what the hell I was doing.
There are times when I wonder what the point is. Why be an artist? There are lots of ways to be part of the "art world" which don't involve struggling against a sense of the futility of one's own practice.
I have at last though started some new work based on noodles and eating – hospitality, shared conversations, nourishment, relations between women, between mother and daughter – all of this seems to be part of what these drawings are about.
This blog isn't meant to be just about going to openings but anyhow I went to the opening of the new Towner gallery in Eastbourne on Friday night. Fellow DAD co-director Joanna and I had been invited by Jane Lyster, who had worked with DAD on the photography commissions. The ground floor gallery downstairs, where she had several pieces, had a real buzz about it and Jane's work was very subtle.
The People's Choice section on the first floor was very odd: The "contemporary section" was squeezed into a tiny amount of space, almost as if the work was there because it had to be, and the headings overall were very weird. Why would Seascapes not include Contemporary for example? And why "Abstract"?
Anyhow, the gallery itself is a great building and hopefully will house some exciting shows.
I went to Joanna Jones' opening on 13 March at the old synagogue in Canterbury, now the recital room. The exhibition title was 'Make a friend of doubt', a title that questions the certainty of belief and acknowledges the importance of doubt and uncertainty when making work. The 3 large, tempera paintings hanging from the ceiling beams show the artist's ongoing concerns with colour – explorations of purple and orange: the colours of the robes of Catholic popes, Church of England bishops and Buddhist monks. The only other colours used in these paintings are black and white. It is as if the colours themselves ask the questions.
Incidentally, the opening had a party-like atmosphere and the music added an extra sensory experience to the whole evening: reducing the primacy of sight as a sense – you can tell I am reading Irigaray at the moment.
I haven't done much of my own work recently for the usual reasons. Too much other work. However, following a recent tutorial, I'm experimenting with drawing on white melamine as a way of exploring the everyday through materials as well as through the drawings themselves. It is actually really easy to draw on. Just by changing material I find I am working differently already.
I went to the Byzantium exhibition at the RA today. It is a show of beautiful objects, collectors' items, carefully labelled to show provenance and ownership; and that is its problem. Its all about ownership, collecting and curating as the ability to bring together objects from prestigious museums as if this was some heroic feat. There are some explanatory, didactic texts on the walls but the labelling of the objects is unilluminating, as if the scholars and researchers want to keep all the knowledge to themselves. Basically it is just a show as catalogue, but a catalogue that does little more than list the items and display them as objects of aesthetic pleasure alone. Its almost as if the curators were so dazzled by the all the gold and enamel that they could not see the need to set the individual items into their artistic or even social context. So while there is a text relating to the general history of the period, there is no attempt to relate the objects to the history or subsequent development of Italian or Russian art or even the art of the Middle East.
Clare Smith's mixed English/Chinese heritage informs her perspective on issues of identity and categorisation. Her nomadic childhood and early adulthood have meant a somewhat ambivalent relationship to place, reinforced by the sense of ambiguity that comes from her mixed identity. Smith works with drawing, print media, collage and moving image to investigate this ambivalence, with references to craft, the importance of labour and the handmade. Through her choice of materials and approaches, she creates work which attempts to create a sense of unity, an interpretation of Homi Bhabha's "Third Space" - seen as a space in which different parts can come together to challenge dominant ideas of wholeness. Collaboration is part of Smith’s practice and she is also co-founder of Dover Arts Development (DAD) together with painter, Joanna Jones. This involves working with many different artists, curation, organisation, event management, creating networks across East Kent and influencing the public realm in Dover. Clare works from a studio in Dover. She has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
