Festial

On Saturday it was Palm Sunday. Well, Julian calendar style, that is. For a change, I'd had a chance to get some ideas together beforehand, but still on the day wanted to spend some time up at the church alone 'seeing what happened'.

It was a beautiful morning, which made me far too blase about getting up to the church while the sun was still shining. By the time I got up there with my camera it was nearly lunchtime and the sun wasn't quite what it had been a few hours before. Still, I had a wander and a think and took some photographs. It was getting colder by the minute, so I photographed the raucous rooks circling their nests and went home.

Shortly afterwards, I returned to St Andrew's with Trevor who had agreed to act as documentary-maker and camera man. Among other things, we bore with us a video camera on a very long stick. Quick, get round the side of the church before anyone thinks we're doing something weird, I said, before realising that this wasn't exactly in the spirit of inclusive artistic performance.

By now, the wind was pretty strong, and buffeted the camera as I 'processed' three times around the churchyard with it. There was no way of telling what was being captured, but the lack of control was intentional. Then I processed again inside the church with my camera-on-a-stick, covering the nave and aisles in both directions. This time I didn't have the excuse that the wind was nearly blowing me over, but things were still quite wobbly, and again, I didn't know what I was getting. I hoped there would be a closer view of the strange stone creatures, but unfortunately my stick wasn't long enough.

Then, I did a performance, filmed by Trevor, in which I made an equal-armed cross of willow, and wound wool around to make an amulet during three repetitions of a piece of music on a flute of willow wood. It was an incredibly meditative undertaking, and meditative was also the word Trevor used to describe how it felt to video the performance.

What was it all about? It's always difficult to know how much to explain! But it was all based on research into the ways that medieval people may well have marked Palm Sunday in that very space. A meditation on that.

I got the residency I applied for!

Three weeks in the art department of a renowned public school about 12 miles away (unlike the pupils I won't be 'living in') followed by a solo exhibition in the school's gallery, 'The Nicholson Gallery'.

I visited the department today, and it's a real art department, messy and smelling of oil paint. Daunting but I'm up for it, definitely. And won't the mentors be pleased! I've said I'd like to spend time experimenting with printmaking using ideas and imagery generated by my Festial project, and specifically the twelve issues (if all goes to plan) of Kalender.

The students' work around the place was truly impressive, but based mainly around traditional painting and drawing. Before I left, having been offered the post, I felt I needed to confirm with the Head of Art that it was OK that painting and drawing are hardly strengths of mine. It's ideas that I get excited by. Luckily, he reassured me that it would be counterproductive if the artist in residence was just like the other art staff there.

So that's all right, then.

Two unrelated developments: Firstly, last week I went to Cambridge for a meeting with my case officer at the Arts Council, and afterwards had a brief catching-up session with my mentor Jo, who happened to be due at the Arts Council offices for a meeting herself.

The meeting went really well and I came away with more ambitious plans for 'work arising' from Festial than I went in with! It was good to see Jo, too, who has strongly encouraged me to put all my strength(!) into contacting galleries and persuading them that they really need to show my work after the end of the residency year.

Hmm, well, I've put together a rough proposal and have been contacting people like mad in the last few days so we'll see whether it leads anywhere…

The second development has been some feedback from two of the newest recipients of my Kalender mailout, the esoteric writer/researcher Nigel Pennick and historian/expert in paganism and folklore of the British Isles Ronald Hutton. They both responded positively and seemed delighted with their free gifts! A boost at this stage of the project and much appreciated.

Meanwhile, I'm researching Palm Sunday for the next festival and wondering how cold and damp St Andrew's is at the moment ….

And I'm thinking about Anselm Kiefer's Palm Sunday installation at White Cube a year ago.

A few random thoughts, subtitled 'areas of discussion over the lunchtime washing-up'.

I have moments of worry over Festial. Over the things I'm interested in. Even wondering how interested I actually am in the things I say I'm interested in.

In particular, in worrying over Festial I wonder whether I'm coming across as someone with a religious agenda (I'm not), and how relevant to contemporary life my preoccupations are. I mean, I can counter any accusations of this nature with the assertion that I'm living here in this moment with these thoughts and images running around in my head and as a contemporary artist I can choose to use anything as subject matter and it will, without any further need for justification, be contemporary art.

I think I believe this.

But the next moment I'm wondering whether photographs of Starbucks frontages projected onto the walls of St Andrew's would say 'contemporary' more persuasively than anything I'm minded to do. How far can I say 'But I'm not that kind of artist?' Is it limiting to decide what kind of artist you are without trying things you wouldn't have imagined as part of your practice? Is it possible to have conviction in this area, and to do stuff within your self-defined limitations and use those limitations creatively? I think I'm sure about something, but then I wonder how I can be so sure that I'm right. I might just be being blinkered.

I think this would all be easier to fathom if I'd received more critical feedback during the project. Without that you have to be your own critic, which inevitably has its own limitations. Trevor and I talk about Festial and he comes up with some very useful input, but of course we're both quite close to it. I know that I'm happy with some of the imagery that's emerged so far, so does it matter whether it satisfies my peers as relevant or worthy of review?

Meanwhile, I posted out 32 copies of the Candlemas Kalender this morning.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial

imogenashwin[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk