Just a quick addition to the last post. What interested me is that the rather random comments by the twins were nearly all based on projects done at school ie. colours on top of colours, shapes on top of shapes, vomiting ideas, taking a book about another world and creating the world from your head.
Other comments again that I haven’t included on their understanding of what art is are all directly from tasks set by the teacher. As you can guess they have had a lot of exposure from attending exhibitions with me etc. but it’s interesting to see what an impact school has had on their thinking. It shows the huge responsibility teaching carries on future attitudes to art.
By the way, the studio opening visit was shortlived. After a quick circuit of the work I managed about 10 mins of a constant chorus of ‘Can we go yet?’ then gave in, picked up a bottle of wine from the supermarket and went home.
Salisbury is waking up. Albeit very slowly, there are signs that it is rising from slumber. With its wealth of Constables drawing in visitors from far and wide this summer at the Salisbury Museum, the Arts Centre is kicking it’s heels with a contemporary response from artist Jonathan Parsons and Abigail Reynolds seeing Constable through 21st-century eyes. With Bob and Roberta Smith adding his contribution in August and a Gormley hanging in the cathedral, this little city is beginning to punch above its weight (or rather the weight it is always should have attained). While it is steeped in history it is always fallen short of the here and now but not any more. Tonight sees the opening of the only group studio I have ever known Salisbury to host. Started by a group of ex-MA students from Winchester everyone is looking to NewRed, as it’s called, to stir things up a bit.
As my husband is in London, I have no choice but to take the girls along with me. When I mentioned this earlier the usual moaning began. In my last blog post I touched a little on how the general public ‘see’ art and I thought it would be interesting to question them a little further. The twins are both nine and the conversation went like this.
Why do you not want to go to the art opening?
Because adult art is boring?
What is the difference between child and adult art?
Erin – Kids see art differently. Adults just put random stuff on, they don’t put lots of colours on top of colours and shapes with different shapes, you don’t understand what it means and that makes it annoying and then you don’t like it. There will probably be work with people in it tonight and kids do better people with spikey up hair and things. Kids art is really good, just better for understanding.
Maeve – When you have a book with a different world in it you can copy the world, kids can draw the world that they have in their head, Mrs Hill says you must vomit your ideas all onto the paper, not really vomit, just get them all out. When children make a picture they can make you feel a feeling, a sun will make you happy, thunder and lightning will make you scared, it can take you into their world.
How could artists make going to a gallery better?
It would be great if the artist was there to tell you what it all means, then I wouldn’t be sad if I didn’t understand.
websites…years ago we were blissfully unaware of the need for one – spending hours sticking little lables on slides and posting them off, (the only way of getting the work ‘out there).
Now websites begin to look dated before you’ve barely finished compiling them, – here’s the latest effort at my online presence –
www.susanfrancis.com
Ageing relatives, more bally fairies and how to look at art.
This morning I stood at 7 AM in my newly cleared studio with three clear hours ahead of me. My first thoughts were – what am I doing here, no really, what is it, what is the thing – what is this thing that I am doing? This art – this stuff, me, standing here,what is it?
The past week was spent hosting relatives. During the week we had two instances when we looked at art. At one point we ventured into the Barbara Hepworth sculpture centre, close to home but in another sense, it could be a million miles away. The sculpture centre hosts the big names, the heavyweights of the art world, Gormley, Caro etc. Dropping in for a few days here and there, they are cushioned and cosseted, discreetly hidden from the native villagers nearby. But kindly, and I really do mean kindly, they allow the general public freely to come and enjoy the ever-changing artwork.
Walking through the grounds, my lovely sister launched enthusiastically into her interpretation of the work she saw, (without the deadly baggage of an art education) and when she had run out of steam she asked for affirmation that her approach was ‘right’. A few more learned members of our party suggested that perhaps she ought to buy a book and learn how to look at art. I thought about this – about how her thoughts perhaps were not ‘right’ and how she could learn to make them ‘right’.
Our other art experience was at Mottisfont Abbey where high up in the upper floor of this beautiful old country home an exhibition of flower fairies ran alongside the House of Fairytales show. The flower fairies were truly lovely of course but merely served to remind me of my own flower fairy book as a child in which I had graffitied small flower fairy poos coming out of the unsuspecting flower fairy bottoms. After the flower fairies the work got much more complex, darker of course and absolutely absorbing. Tessa Farmers minute skeletons brandishing swords and riding mischievously on the backs of dragonflies and bumblebees were a wonderful surprise as I have never seen her work in the flesh.
It was at this point that my 87-year-old father (having spent most of the exhibition shuffling from window to window attempting to spot a trout in the Test below) made his critique on the show, in his uniquely raw and rather loud fashion.’ Get me out of here, I’ve seen enough bally fairies to last me all day.’ Age seems to have refined his words into a succinct few with no time wasted on pleasantries or politeness. I’m guessing somehow he doesn’t feel the need to read any books on how to look at art.
The one redeeming feature about piano lessons is that it gives me one captive hour (assuming I can keep the waiting siblings from murdering one another) to read, write blog entries, assess homework and work on whatever art work I am making (the small portable stuff of course). In the piano teachers waiting room, I am writing this as there is no time whatsoever aside of this due to the ridiculous amount of commitments all the children have in the last term of school.
Saturday I escaped with my friend Tracy from Margate to go and see the other Tracey from Margate,showing at the Hayward Gallery. The show has absolutely tons of work in it, too much to take in really. At some point she annoyed me immensely (the Tracey Emin that is, not my one), at others I think the work was let down by its positioning in the space, particularly the ground floor, but ultimately it was impossible not to be immensely moved and impressed at the journey her practice has taken. I have never been sold on the ‘neons’ but when dwarfed and disorientated in a huge, towering black room with a wall emblazoned floor-to-ceiling with Emins brutally honest words bearing down on you, the effect was powerful and unsettling in its honesty and rawness.
Ultimately the film of Tracy’s escape from Margate following the humiliation of the dance contest stands the test of time and is for me the most poignant moment of the show. Having spent 10 years in the area (my own Tracy grew up there) and sharing some of that time with Tracy Emins older brother, Alan, a friend at the time, every image brought us back there.
It was a day of big shows and big names as Tracy wanted to see the Saatchi gallery, it’s vast sterile rooms filled with massive, exuberant ( and predominantly male) statements, in ‘The Shape of things to come’. At the end of the day though having had (and lost) babies myself, Emins constant wrestling with the subject stirred up all sorts of emotions and I spent a restless sleep dreaming that I was holding someone else’s baby on my shoulder, crying to be fed and swinging its head round wildly looking for the source of food. Strangely enough it wasn’t the many ghoulish and demonic figures in Saatchi’s monstrous sized sculptures but the intimate memories of motherhood that filled my head with nightmares.
Snatched moments spent cleaning up the studio for work in the summertime and a meeting with the curator to see what we can salvage from the plans for the Salisbury show make up the rest of the week but with family descending, sports day, three concerts and to end of term events to attend in school I’ve given up all chance of getting work done in the following week.
