Half term and the Lego wars are in full swing next door. At the moment I’m trying to get my head around a number of projects, while it’s contstantly being invaded with thoughts of what I want to make, but I know I have paying commitments that demand their fair share of attention.
Such an absorbing week though. Invasion of Privacy opened last weekend which was fine except that the sound from the video (which is particularly intimate) was drowned out by the improvised music which moved around the house throughout the evening. This has been rectified though and strangely enough the daylight seems to work better with the installation than the harsher electrical light at night.
Despite being shattered from the post preview party party which I attended across the road I lay awake all night in a wine and worry fueled state about the rather unplanned workshop the following morning. In the end it went really well and I genuinely enjoyed my time making with the children. Give me a glue gun, a stanley knife and some card and I’m happy, I just love constructing stuff.
Yesterday Laurence and I drove to Portsmouth to visit the lead artist at ARC who is helping guide us to pull together the proposal for the show next year in Salisbury. He encouraged us to be much more ambitious and gave us some hugely valuable advice. We are both getting seriously excited about this venture now, organisations have been really receptive and I can feel an Arts Council application attempt coming on. Bring it on!
One of the advantages of being married to someone obsessed with progress in digital communications is that now and then he shows me something really mindblowing. Now possibly my mind is easily blown but if you’d like to test yours out go to
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/
and follow all the instructions. You may need Googlechrome but try it anyway. It seems really apt as I’m showing at Invasion of Privacy, and when my husband showed it to me with no warning as to where the video ended it really freaked me out. (I’m probably a little easy to freak out as well).
The show opens tomorrow in Oxford ‘Invasion of Privacy’, curated by Notfamousyet in a terraced house. Tonight is a private, private opening for artists and friends etc involved as it would be a health and safety nightmare, space- wise to open it up to everyone that we would have liked to have come. Over the next two weekends it’s open throughout the day though with a programme of music and performance artists, go to www.notfamousyet.co.uk for details.
I really like the collection of work that Gabriel has brought together and for me it is truly satisfying to have the particular work, ‘Bedtime Stories’ installed in the bedroom with the ‘Night Vision’ video as I had always planned it to be. I’ll be interested to see peoples reactions.
Life at home has been chaotic, racing back from Oxford yesterday, picking the three girls up then taking one child with an infected ear to the doctor and create a fancy dress Rambo costume for the other.
At 11 at night we were glued to a particularly monosylibic teenager who had kindly Youtubed himself making a replica Rambo knife. He specialises in cheap prop weapons so no doubt, now that my teenage son has discovered him, we’ll be visiting his site again. With husband in the States I’ve managed to ship all the children off to the relevant friends houses for the night but after the Oxford opening there’s a major surpise party for a friend opposite, husband home at 1am – and somewhere between that and morning I need to prepare for a workshop at the Arts Centre – plenty of time!
Just noticed I’ve been selected for artist of the week on Axis along with Claire Brewster – nice surprise,
http://www.axisweb.org/Directory.aspx?FT=&TYPE=2
Talking about Open submission shows – I like the bit of humour in the Crash Open instructions –
STEP TW0:
DELIVERY 16TH -19TH NOVEMBER
Successfully applicants will be ask to deliver their work to the gallery between the 16th – 19th November during 10-6pm.
Unsuccessful applicants will sulk for a bit, but go to Step Three!
(Step three being the opening party), made me smile!
