Flesh on the Bones of the Belfast Child

Back to life, back to reality – and back from a week in Devon swimming, reading, exploring and generally forgetting all responsibilities. Unfortunately though all good things we must come to an end and back we came – to e-mails about potential workshops at the other end of the county (can’t complain as the hole left in our bank account has got to be filled somehow), to house repairs badly needing done and a studio once more needing a clear out.

Walking in, the same piece of work hangs and moves, suspended in the centre of the studio. I am totally lost with it. Where does this piece of work begin and end. Initially it began as a piece of cloth stripped from a man’s pin striped suit, wired and stitched, a black line cutting an incomplete circle in space, the suit violated on the floor. Then primed, it was soaked in layer after layer of household paint, the pale yellow gloss adding strength upon strength to the fabric, then latex, then paint, peeled away like skin and painted again. I know where I am with this process, the compulsion to layer, to strengthen, to conceal. Like the windowsills of my parents home, with 50 years of redecoration, it lies thick with process. Coat upon coat – I love that term. But what of the final piece ( if it ever finds a place to finish as such), what of the onlooker, to whom only the final surface is visible , and to whom the pin striped fabric is totally concealed. Would knowledge of the process change what they see and experience?

Applications, – I have begun to develop an intense phobia of them, an entire morning or more writing documents – statements, proposals, saving and compiling files in correct formats, knowing yours will be one of five hundred to a thousand to be considered, while other pressing jobs continue to pile up, housework, washing etc, not to mention earning real money, how many times a month can a busy parent afford that kind of time? Still, with another child starting secondary school and an ageing parent announcing he may relocate from Belfast, change is afoot, as always.

Reading Phil Illingworth’s post on how having an unusual name can help online made me recall that I continue to vie for position with Susan Francis, the American animal portrait artist (‘Always in our memories, forever in our hearts’). One day I will commission her to do my dog Otis and exhibit it. Now I notice Sarah Francis also has a blog and pops up on Axis, so confusing as a lot of people look at me and think I’m a Sarah anyway for some reason (no idea why, I once even had a brief boyfriend who kept calling me Sarah, needless to say he wasn’t much good).

Anyway, I am toying with the idea of using my married name and adding it to Francis in brackets. My husband is laughing now as back when we got hitched I insited on keeping my maiden name for work, despite his taking it as a personal rebuff but now it doesn’t look like such a clever move. With a married name like Alibocus, let’s face it, there is no chance of me ever getting with mixed up with someone else again, there only are a few left in the world and yes, it does attract laughs but we see it as a kind of test of strength of character – if you can cope with the sniggers as it were.

Anyway, I’d be interested to listen to peoples responses. At the moment it gives me an opportunity to live two seperate lives, and also to know when the phone rings and they ask for me, whether I need to slot into work mode or not. As more Francis’s rise to the top of the search engine though, the pressure’s on, not sure if I’m ready to drop my alias though, having two identities has it’s advantages.

New work on Axis front page today – ‘Box of Tricks’ http://www.axisweb.org/ If you go there take a closer look, it’s tiny

Smoke and mirrors. We could have done with a touch more of these last night. Bob and Roberta Smith graced the Salisbury Arts Centre with his latest work, the Salisbury Golem, alongside an exhibition of his text paintings. With the Golem bearing down on us we gathered round the makeshift creature constructed of old bits of wood, eagerly awaiting the performance when the dumb souless being would come to life as it were. What unfolded was a little ceremony whereby the artist (who towered above us himself in a handsome straw Stetson) snuck behind his Golem, and read his challenge to Michael Gove on the destruction of the arts, particularly in relation to the EBACC which had earlier been submitted by letter to the Observer this week. This is just the beginning of a series of workshops which will result in wishes and hopes for Salisbury being offered to the Golem over the coming month. Some of us were a little disappointed that we had not been routed to our chairs as some makeshift mechanism had bought the wooden monster roaring to life, but there was a certain irony in the fact that the artist had merely hidden behind his creation, providing its voice a little like the Wizard of Oz, his charge quite clearly motionless and showing no signs of stomping out of the arts centre, tracking Michael Gove down and bashing him on the head with the garden spade which hung from it’s big wooden arm.

The performance over, Bob and Roberta Smith, ran off together to catch their train but hopefully we’ll get time to meet up with him at the closing event and discuss his ideas further. After a chat with other artists I rushed off to Tesco’s to replenish our stocks of Calpol as holiday plans have been derailed by a nasty bug which is going around all the children. Studio time is suffering as in between nursing patients I am having to entertain the ones who are well and bored stiff by building a dolls house. This is distracting me though from the fact that a piece I have been working on for months is not going to plan.

As many of you will appreciate, working with materials where the outcome is unknown, as opposed to traditional artists materials, is a bit of a gamble. In this case, what actually happened when I coated this particular piece in latex was not what I had in mind at all. What immediately sprung to mind when I opened the studio door the next day can be summed up in this film clip. This is a moment that ever since I saw it years ago, I have banked in my mind and repeat to myself when the moment requires it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvbQ4wJak_c

Thinking about this later when I had calmed down, I pondered for a while on the materials that have resurfaced in my work and become part of the language which I chose to communicate with. I am absolutely drawn to liquids. Liquids that conceal, that coat, that glide over and solidify, liquids that seal a moment and stop it in it’s tracks, plaster that picks up every facet of surface, wax that transforms, with subtle alchemy written text into glorious translucency, gelatine that drips and sets into golden sheets, gloss paint that rolls along a surface and hardens like a mirror and latex which overnight metamorphosises into a perfect skin. I love them all.

I am trying to go with the flow and let this work take me where it wishes to go. I am going to try and refrain from rerunning that clip in my head. Back at the arts centre though, perhaps the child beside me, who may have expected a little more action from the Golem with her politics, may have made good use of that clip in her head. For the rest of us though, well done Bob and Roberta for the chance to see your work first hand in Salisbury and for speaking up for all of us in your inimitable style and shining a light on this critical issue.