I wouldn’t recommend covering your bedroom ceiling in coloured latex, it is, obviously, an extremely messy business and only to be attempted if your bedroom is a bit of a sh*thole to begin with like mine – luckily when I did spill the bucket of latex, it was only on the tarpaulin.
Anyway, I attended the Artsway Open in the New Forest on Saturday. Beautiful drive down with the New Forest ponies doing their thing and my daughter Erin beside me. Last time I had taken Maeve who, when I looked around had taken out a notepad in the exhibition and was sketching the work on show. Unfortunately she had also been collecting grass in her little wicker bag (you never know when you may need it), and had left a trail around the gallery.
The buffet had expanded in variety since last year, much to Erins delight, while the show had contracted somewhat. Largely a hefty amount of brooding photgraphy and film, beautifully presented and tastefully hung, in line with the galleries particular penchant. Some great work there’s no doubt and Alex Pearl considerably lifted the mood with his exquisite little sketch of a space ship on blackboard paint, but on the whole I wonder did it reflect the breadth of variety they no doubt received in entries, and no 3d work that was free standing – all that wasted space. Anyhow, I waited to speak to the curator in the hope of squeezing a little favour out of him for the project we’re planning and after two hours (Erin had used up all the available paper one of the assistants had given her drawing pictures) I managed to nail him down for two seconds. Mission accomplished I picked up Erins ‘Giraffe in African sunset’, and for a split second was hit by the contrast of her cheery little picture beside the raft of bloodstained victims, mutilated images and grotesquely altered portraits. We left swiftly and just managed to spy a couple of little shetlands on the way home as darkness fell.
PS I am in no way against sad and mutilated imagse, my own work has a habit of emerging with it’s fair share of melancholy and foreboding.
Feeling really motivated for a change and have a number of developing pieces and a major project whirling around in my head which will result in work for the (fingers crossed) show we’re working on next year. Now I just need to track down a friend who is in the forensics section of the local police force and cast my bedroom ceiling in latex (I have a very understanding husband).
My husband has very kindly cycled around London with my work on the back of a Boris bike to drop off at a gallery – he has just rung to say mission accomplished…’but there is just the tiniest, weeniest nick out of the edge on one side after the bike trip’. It was newly mounted on aluminium. It is going on display. I don’t think I need say any more.
Times are lean in our household, very lean. The dog has been throwing up for two days in the garden but no-one has the money to take him to the vet, I’m praying for good weather as we can’t afford new hats and gloves for the girls and my son is on hunger strike as he has been ostracized at school as I couldn’t afford Black Ops. Tough times. The car is in the garage racking up bills and my husband is working flat out commuting to London and back. I bet he’s regretting the day he married an artist. Britain seems to be getting harder and harder to live in.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, a couple of comments on subjects raised by Jo Moore in her choice blog. Silence, absence, the bits inbetween, the lacuna that connects one presence to another, these are the elements that are so important to me in my work. And this is why I find open shows etc and displaying work on the internet so difficult. To experience and relate to that absence demands a physical presence by the viewer, the encounter, the interaction, without which I feel my work is incomplete. I’ll be interested to hear where Jo’s exploration of the silence brings her.
Jo also mentions crisis of confidence. I have found working in isolation the absolutely most difficult situation for myself as an artist, but I’m getting better at it. When confidence is low however there is no-one to pull you out. I can find all sorts of reasons to put myself down. Why did that curator contact me to ask me to exhibit? Well, they must have had someone pull out, perhaps they’ve got me mixed up with someone else, perhaps they needed that particular theme and I was the only artist they could find. But they said they liked the work? Perhaps they haven’t seen the photo clearly, perhaps they’re just being kind, perhaps that was the only piece of work that is the right size for the wall space. Working alone is a constant battle with confidence. I feel like I’ve got those good and evil characters on my shoulder like an old fifties movie, at times I’ve just got to mentally slap myself. Am I the only crazy one here?
All’s gone quiet from the Council etc, I think I’ll have to keep pushing or the proposal could drown beneath a host of other projects they’re focusing on. I’ve just uploaded a new video work on Axis,’I want a leotard’, follow this link to take a look
http://www.axisweb.org/seCVWK.aspx?ARTISTID=13808
