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This week I’m getting my head down trying to attend to some of the ‘audience development’ issues that Jo and Katie were keen that I should address. Of course, it’s taking much longer than I imagined and the new Kalender, which is also crying out for attention, is so far no more than a (faint) glimmer in the background.

Anyway, I’ve written to three local history societies (emphasising that this is contemporary art with a historical slant rather than history per se: I’m sure they’d have something to say about my accuracy if I presented my work as ‘fact’!). Also, I’ve written a ‘half-way through the residency’ press release which seems a bit thin on substance to me, but you never know I suppose if real news is thin on the ground right now. I seem to remember that, for this reason, the Arts Council guidance booklet advises artists to issue frequent press releases and resist the feeling that their story is not newsworthy just because there’s little take-up the first time round – or perhaps I’m just imagining this!

Putting Kalender together feels much more creative than what I’m doing right now, but I recognise the necessity of reaching out to a grass-roots audience if my ambition is to be taken on by publicly-funded galleries.

Yesterday I received an email from OUTPOST – the Norwich-based artist-run organisation I belong to – advertising a performance this evening: my friend Anna and her husband Laurence (Townley & Bradby) will be scooping up stray strands of tobacco from a computer keyboard, making them into a roll-up and smoking it. I’m always interested to hear what Anna and Laurence are up to and I know I’d enjoy the performance, but I find myself wondering how far out of step with cool contemporary practice my own concerns/issues/passions/obsessions may be, and whether this matters or not. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter whether it matters – it’s just what I do and I’m going to keep doing it.

On the other side of things, I’ve also received an email from an MA student in the Department of World Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia. Amandine is researching ‘Art and Religion in Norfolk’ and is looking to interview contemporary practitioners working within this area with a view to an exhibition next year as the outcome of a partnership between her Department and Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service. This could be interesting and I’m hoping to meet her sometime next week.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial

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


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This is the longest gap in my blog since I started it in April. It’s not that nothing has been happening. Far from it. But the run up to the wedding and then a few glorious days in Venice (with nightmarish journeys, but we’ll gloss over that!) and then 101 other things-that-needed-attending-to got in the way (including that inconvenient thing: paid work!).

Anyway, I’ve been given a window of opportunity to write about Festial while Trevor valiantly tackles a pile of pages from the encyclopaedia of economics that I’m supposed to be proof-reading, so ….

It’s hard to judge the success of the Dragon Hall installation, although I think it was probably the best I could make it, given the resources at my disposal. Ideally I’d have projected the DVD, but in practice I would probably have needed a white surface or screen, as I don’t think it would have been visible enough on the rough brick walls of the Undercroft. So, the television monitor was a reasonable compromise. Two small prints on plinths stood in another alcove, and elsewhere was a lectern with the A4 comb-bound book containing all five issues (so far) of Kalender, and a whole heap of copies of the current Kalender, of which I reckon at least 90 have been taken away by visitors.

Going back last week to dismantle it all, I’d been looking forward to seeing comments in the book, good or bad, as I had no idea how the installation had been received. It was therefore disappointing to discover that the only ‘real’ comment was that of my lovely friend Hilde, who came up to Norwich for the wedding and had been along to the exhibition during the morning beforehand. It was a really nice comment, but I have to admit a certain possibility of bias!

Observant readers may remember the last entry where I was looking forward to the first performance evening slash ‘sponsor’s party’ at Dragon Hall which, I assumed, would serve as a private view for the four exhibitors at the venue. Well, I was wrong! It was a perfectly pleasant event and I enjoyed the talk by Susie Hanna on her current animation about Sylvia Plath, but the speech by the Fringe Festival organiser made no mention of the art to be seen there at all. As some of the work was quite subtly located and mine was in the Undercroft with no signage exhorting people to go take a look, I’m not at all sure that everyone present was aware that Dragon Hall was more than just an atmospheric venue for the party and performances! It’s true that in quiet moments during the speeches, strange sounds could be heard emanating from the Undercroft (thanks again for the soundtrack, Trevor!) but I’ve certainly learned a few lessons from the experience. Firstly, don’t take anything for granted but actually speak to the speech-maker(s) beforehand and check that the work is going to be promoted. And provide clear signage to lead people to the work: don’t assume they’ll find it by themselves! As this was a Fringe Festival run by volunteers, it was really nobody’s job but my own.

On, then, to Michaelmas in the Festial year. I’ll post a bit more about this festival as I do more work on Kalender – just need to finish that proof-reading first! – but I have had to compromise on the date that I visited the church this time, as Michaelmas using the Julian calendar actually fell while I was away in Venice. So, I went up there on the first possible day afterwards, to find that a few changes had taken place in my absence. The most instantly noticeable of these was that scaffolding has now been erected outside and inside the north side of the church. I did know that quite major work was going to take place during the course of the year to replace the north aisle roof and windows, but it was still quite a shock. There were no builders anywhere to be seen on that occasion (well, they are notorious for starting a job and then trying to keep lots of people happy at once!) but I think that, for this shy and retiring artist, the presence of the builders is likely to be an inhibiting factor while the work goes on. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, though.

Then, on Monday, I went to Ely for a meeting with my mentors Katie from BCA and Jo from the Babylon Gallery. It was quite a tough, but stimulating, meeting. Half-way through the project seemed a good time to take stock and maybe tweak things a little if necessary. Most importantly, Jo and Katie gave me advice which will help me find the motivation to push forward on that thing called ‘audience development’ through the barrier of feeling that I’ve received little or no audience feedback during the time the project has been in progress. So, now I have a checklist of ‘things to do’ (as if there weren’t enough already!) and I’m actually really excited about it.

Among these, I’m planning to hold an Open Day in Wood Dalling to talk about the stage that Festial has reached and to show some of the work. Maybe there’ll be some hands-on activities, too – but I’d better not get carried away with all this until I’ve done some thinking about it. My first thought is that, as the church is named for St Andrew, St Andrew’s Day (13 December, Julian calendar style) would be a good choice. Another thing I’ll be doing is contacting some local heritage societies to see if they would be interested in hearing about the project. This all sounds far removed from the bright lights and cool galleries, but I’m starting to understand the need to ‘grow’ an audience from a tiny seed of goodwill. Maybe I’ve been a bit too ambitious, too soon.


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Well, the installation is duly installed and I think it’s OK. I’ll get a better idea tomorrow evening which will in effect be the private view for the Dragon Hall exhibiting artists. It’s a ‘sponsor’s party’ and performance evening in the Great Hall, so I’m hoping that quite a few of the partygoers and audience will find their way to the undercroft!

In the end I gave up the idea of projecting an image into one of the alcoves. It just didn’t look the way I had envisaged and with all the loose dust in the undercroft I feared for my overhead projector over the three weeks it would have had to remain in position. The image was to have been a photograph of the lower part of a poppyhead. Projected onto the crumbling wall below the vaulting, I hoped it would have a very ambiguous effect (see accompanying pic).

But I realise now that it was an unnecessary addition to the installation anyway, and that it works better kept very simple with just the TV on a plinth and two ‘portraits’ on twin plinths in the adjoining alcove. The bound A4 Kalender omnibus sits on a lectern near the stairway into the undercroft, and all the copies of the current Kalender are piled up on top of one of the enormous barrels that have a permanent home down there.

The one improvement that we’re intending to make is to sneak in tomorrow evening before the party begins to connect an extra pair of speakers to the DVD player. At present the sound comes only from the TV monitor itself, so if we position the speakers in different parts of the undercroft the soundtrack will hopefully form more of a soundscape.


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It’s my birthday today, but no let-up in the Fringe Festival preparations. I think we’ll treat ourselves to a meal at the local pub this evening, though!

Quite a few items in the catalogue of woe of my last blog entry have now been addressed, thanks in no small measure to Trevor, who has worked tirelessly helping to retrieve large unwanted TVs from lofts, giving technical assistance, making and painting plinths, offering calm reassurance and so on. I know I’m biased (well, we are getting married in a fortnight’s time!) but his soundtrack, now I’ve actually had the chance to start working with it, is sounding FANTASTIC!

Many more hours than I care to count have been spent in cutting, dipping, rolling and varnishing little elderberry beads for the covers of the new Kalender, but now every single one is stapled on and waiting to be taken to the undercroft of Dragon Hall in Norwich, where I’ll be installing on Thursday. All five of the past issues of Kalender have been printed out at A4 and comb-bound, so that’s another thing sorted. I’ve decided to project a single image into one of the dark alcoves within the vaulting as I have an overhead projector and the space just seems made for it. So there’ll be the projection in one alcove, the video in another (also naturally dark), and in the third, two tall plinths each supporting a photograph. That’s the plan, anyway, and at the moment it does seem achievable.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial

www.norwichfringefestival.co.uk



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It’s my birthday today, but no let-up in the preparations for my Fringe Festival installation. I think we’ll treat ourselves to a meal at the local pub this evening, though!

Quite a few of the items in the catalogue of woe of my last blog entry have now been addressed, thanks in no small measure to Trevor, who has worked tirelessly helping to retrieve large unwanted TVs from lofts, making and painting plinths, offering calm reassurance and so on. I know I’m biased (well, we are getting married in a fortnight’s time!) but his soundtrack, now I’ve actually had the chance to start working with it, is sounding FANTASTIC!

Many more hours than I care to count have been spent in cutting, dipping, rolling and varnishing little elderberry beads for the covers of the new Kalender, but now every single one is stapled on and waiting to be taken to the undercroft of Dragon Hall in Norwich, where I’ll be installing on Thursday. All the past issues have been printed out at A4 and comb-bound, so that’s another thing sorted.

I’ve decided to project a single image into one of the dark alcoves within the vaulting, as I have an overhead projector and the space just seems made for it. So there’ll be the projection in one alcove, the video in another (also naturally quite dark), and in the third, two tall plinths each supporting an image on canvas. That’s the plan, anyway, and at the moment it does seem achievable.


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