Sunday I returned for what I thought would be a quick visit to the exhibition where Gavin Turk himself was hosting a sort of workshop/game/adventure that children could go on and gain medals and badges as they completed challenges.
This proved great fun for the children and after nearly three hours of following them round as they covered their T-shirts in badges and medals (they became obsessed with gaining every one) I was in a kind of bored stupor endlessly circling the arts centre, so much so I completely forgot I had a child to pick up ten miles away and arrived a whole hour late.
This year I’ve carried on getting up hours before the children and working in the studio. I keep fluctuating between being really motivated as the regular time is helping me keep the momentum going in my work and really cheesed off at the lack of opportunities I can apply for and the dark hole that the funding cuts are creating in the area for the visual arts. With loads of empty buidings and shops in Salisbury I’m toying with the idea of putting something on myself but I’m a bit wary of how it will be received.
I’ve been doing some work with anaglypta, beloved by anyone wanting to disguise the imperfections on your walls when decorating. My mother, suffered from manic depression, as it was referred to in those days ( I can never get used to the term bi polar) and was always decorating to stave off a depressive bout. In Northern Ireland you never moved house, we all lived in exactly the same semi-detached boxes, but we decorated like mad. And I distinctly remember as a child, a really disturbing, moment of epiphany, when it struck me that below all these flowery layers there were dirty grubby, rough walls and floors and no matter what we stuck over them, what existed underneath remained regardless. I remember how the folly of it all struck me really hard.
I think I was an odd child.
