JULIET-
Just got a text from my friend Joanna, she says ‘Sounds to me like ur beginning to enjoy hiding away!’ Maybe she’s right.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table where I’ve been sitting most of the day except now its dark outside and perched up in this top floor flat I’m beginning to feel very excited about our first show at Southside Studios.
I’ve spent the majority of these last three weeks hiding out in my very comfortable surroundings planning, plotting and promoting this project. There has been an absolute enormity to do, but I’m coming to realize that this is in part because we have approached it in the way we have.
When Gregor gave us this opportunity, an eight-week period to curate a series of exhibitions at the Southside Studios, I don’t know what he expected us to make of it. What we have made of our opportunity is very characteristic of ourselves. From a position of absolute naivety, having never done anything like this before, we have run the project in a way that is ultra idealistic and incredibly ambitious. As a result it has been a huge amount of time consuming hard work filling up all our time between our day jobs, taking tours, working in shops and serving drinks, but as a result this has been the most incredibly enjoyable learning process. I do hope that the finished product bears the marks of our sincere labor and the serious attempt to stave of the emptiness predicted for our first months out of art school and to harness the tenacity and talent of the year group with whom we graduated.
From a position of no previous experience our aim has been to curate thematically series of shows in which the participants entirely self-selected, would be recommended to the project by the compulsion to continue to produce visual art, in a way ultimately both compelling and coherent.
From a position of almost total ignorance we have secured sponsorship, produced a website, courted the press and planned a large party on small budget.
The kitchen table from which so much of this project has been planned and put into action does not belong to me. I am currently homeless, but have been taken in by some kind friends of mine, and like the mongrel in Disney’s ‘Lady and the Tramp’ have been given three luxurious meals a day and a comfortable place to scheme from.
Though, I admit, very nervous about how little time we have left before the opening, I feel so excited about what our artists have proposed for show one and by what we will do with the Southside Studios.
A person cannot be too nervous that the close of a day that began with pumpkin pancakes and the sale of a painting and has concluded with arrangements for the delivery of a considerable quantity of cider. A lot can be attempted whilst hiding out in someone else’s kitchen.
