Flesh on the Bones of the Belfast Child

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.

In truth the week did not start that well – having survived building a set from Romeo and Juliet, creating a giant Carnival sculpture, and entertaining twenty-five 12-year-old girls at my daughter’s party (plus the dreaded sleepover) last week, all while having the worst cold I’ve had in years, I was congratulating myself at having survived it. I’ve discovered this week, though that not taking time off when you’re ill means it drags on even longer. I really had no choice in the matter though as a carnival without the artwork just isn’t going to happen.

This week began with a visit to the vet to remove the grass seed from the dogs ear. Totally traumatised, he went berserk leaping off the vets table onto me, and losing bladder control into the bargain. I stood at the pay desk later, stinking to high heaven and covered in black hair and wee. This should have been a bad omen. Once showered and changed I began to pull together a brief summary of the proposal for the exhibition and events I’ve been working on to Salisbury City Council for the meeting that night. My husband rushed back from London just in time for me to make the meeting and to cut a long story short, as you will read in the other blog, our proposal was turned down without an opportunity to defend it.

After a brief heated discussion I rushed off to join my daughter at the local secondary school where an induction evening for new children was being held, and where my husband had had to replace me. My daughter asked how the meeting went and when I told her she said ‘ Nevermind – it’s more fun being with us anyway.’ She’s probably right but after the best part of a year’s work putting it together, it still took a bottle of wine and a plate of chips to make me feel slightly better (my husband’s remedy).

Somehow the educational projects I have taken on continue to take up far too much time, as anyone who works in this area will know, it’s my own fault for creating too ambitious a programme. Now it’s just time to knuckle down and see it through to the end of term, as I have no alternative but I’m aware that putting so much emphasis on being able to dive into my own work the instant the summer holidays begin sets quite a high mark to attain.

I have a yukky, sniffly cold and worse still, I have let myself be utterly consumed by projects with schools and community groups etc. For some bizarre reason this always happens to me at the end of the summer term. Not only have I set myself a ludicrously complex task which is coming in way over budget, but to deliver on my own self-imposed deadline is requiring me to work flat out leaving my own work to one side. I think to cut to the chase, once I start making things, anything really, I start to get excited and always want to push it one stage further. I set myself ridiculously ambitious goals, which is great because I get plenty of work, but ironically it’s not the work I really want.

With frustration building, I have got as far as dividing my workbook into clearly labelled sections, they read:

reading/research

galleries to visit/contacts

work to be made

ideas

film effects to explore

new words

The master plan is that once summer holidays have started I will get up at 7 AM, go straight to the studio and work until 10 AM, (luckily I’ve got really sleepy children who conveniently like to sleep in during holidays). As such the mangled mess of half finished work in the studio should be resurrected and completed. Come September, space for photographing will be hired and a proposal put together to be subsequently sent to galleries. Looking at a website for an exhibition recently which interviewed all the artists I noticed one woman say she had written to over 100 galleries and museums in order to get the show she had planned on tour, I guess it’sthat sort of dedication that gets results. It certainly made me sit up and think.

In truth though I have purposely cut myself some slack this year as far as applying for opportunities goes. I’ve spent a lot of time putting a proposal together for a show in Salisbury but I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking and planning the direction of my work without the pressure of application deadlines. I have four children and right now they need a lot of my time – but that will change. If I am completely honest I feel confident in my practice. Confident to take time to allow my work develop at a pace I can handle.

Right now though, it’s out with the tissues and the Lemsip because, at the end of the day, there is no one to pass the work on to, the buck for these projects well and truly rests with me.

Clever a-n, very clever… Half-heartedly scanning the blogs yesterday I noticed the term, ‘Top 10 blogs’, and sitting up a little in my chair, clicked on it. I was at number three. Hmm, …I thought,… well, this won’t change things, after all, what do numbers matter, I’m merely happy rambling on to myself. But then I looked a little closer,… It’s good to be number three, but where was I last month – not even on the list, but why, …more thought… Ah, Chief blogger, number one Emily Speed pointed people to my blog in one of hers last month. So that’s it – I’m only a number three on the back of the great number one but why should that matter, after all is not a competition is it. Then I began to think, I like number three, how can I stay at number three, and I begin to think tactics. More blogging, more blogging means more hits and that’s bound to be good, but I’ll never beat the great Emily. On Facebook fellow bloggers are beginning to throw taunts at oneanother, threats are made to use titillating images to boost readers and so, the seed is sown, the days of innocent blogging are gone, what have you done a-n, what have you done!

Words. I have too many of them. I have little of significance to say in relation to myself this week. But the urge, (which I believe is an Irish condition), to spill them out nevertheless, remains with me. This week has been about making money. Workshops, schoolwork – my own work has totally taken a back seat in order to pay the bills, but it is never far from my mind. Amidst the flurry of a busy schedule a Facebook message popped into my e-mail, ‘So sorry…, so shocked…’. Matthew Miller, co-director of Fabrica, an old fellow studio member from my days at Red herring had died suddenly. I clicked on his name. There was a Twitter message from just a day or two ago, it was a cold wet day and Matthew was busy lighting a fire.

Technology, Facebook, Twitter has altered so much for us. When my mother died I found a message on my mobile phone, her voice, like nothing had changed, remained for two weeks or so, reminding me to make sure that the children were warm enough in the snowy weather, I listened to it every day then one day, without warning, it was gone.

Matthew – with his message on Twitter – a moment caught in time – so poignant in it’s ordinariness.

Some years ago when I returned to making work, I began to look up old contacts, names I had worked with, to link up again perhaps. I was thrilled to find an artist friend, with some wonderful photos of his hugely accomplished work, much evolved from his early years. But the Facebook entries, so full of exhibitions, friends, events, stopped abruptly on a certain day. Nothing more was added. And further research confirmed sadly, what the unfinished page said without words.

My studio is full of many bits and pieces, scraps of this and that, items destined to become part of works that may never be realised. One such item is a folder which I keep in a special drawer. It is the carers record of the daily visits to my mother, ‘Took Mrs Francis to the toilet, put back to bed, helped Mrs Francis get dressed… etc etc’ lists and lists of dates, until the last entry and the page, left blank, beyond.

Matthew will be remembered for the wonderful contribution he made to the visual arts in Brighton and beyond. Each day more and more Facebook notifications pour into my e-mail, as people update the page in his memory. Matthew, however, in addition to all his creative abilities, had that very special quality, he was a quiet, thoughtful man and he knew when words weren’t needed.