This is interesting: http://mashable.com/2009/06/15/google-artists-work…
Should illustrators give Google their work for free? They will regardless I think. Interesting that Stan Schroeder who wrote the article says,
“There’s a reason, however, why they aren’t offering monetary compensation for skinning Chrome. Google didn’t set the price for such work at (nearly) zero; the community did.”
Struggling to reach deadlines at the moment. Life feels thinly stretched and time to apply for other things has been squeezed out.. Hopefully I may manage the two that close next week…
Exhibition (Dumb Objects), up. Opening, fantastic. Lots of people showed up, including creative director of Tate Liverpool, Art head at the Uni, loads of artists whose work I really like… oh, it was nice to feel rewarded after all the hard work. Visitors have also been coming after the opening too, which doesn’t normally happen to be honest…
Yesterday I zoomed to YSP for a presentation and realised that although receptive, some of the teachers I will work with do not trust artists (read – me) to deliver workshops. They were a bit baffled by the talk on my work and its conceptual content I think. Regardless of that fact, I’m sure they will leave me alone with the kids while they go and get on with other things. Hmm, is that very cynical of me? Met a few really great people though, who had tons of enthusiam about working with me, looking forward to those parts of the project at least!!
Today, a workshop with Everton group at Tate. Not the most successful we’ve had, but still progress and it makes clear how much support from Youth Workers can transform these things.
Tonight: a night out! Can you imagine? I have nothing to do tomorrow (apart from aforementioned proposals) and I will be off on the same day as my wonderful husband. Plus it may even be sunny!! It seems to good to be true, so no doubt we will get over excited, end up with horrible hangovers and spend the day crying or similar.
Tuesday I am off to Venice to see the bienniale and to drink over-priced wine with my mum. Really looking forward to not taking much, including my diary (I didn’t want to pay Ryanair for a hold bag!), turning my phone OFF and just wandering in sunshine. Needless to say I will be practising my Italian on anyone who gets too close :) Can’t wait!!
Paying for everything this month on my credit card as no payment for work will be through till the end of June or July. The waiting kills me.
Ciao Bella + Sto andando a Venezia…
exhibition text continued…
"We live a companionable life; myself, the chair, the chair, the little red table; the dining-table, the window, the waste-paper basket; the horrible curtains and the houses across the street. We conduct no conversation, but our silence is amicable. And this is how it is with the things that surround us. We look at them, but we no longer see them. They do not speak, and we do not hear them. They are dumb objects – their forms, which are their souls and very voices, obscured by function, worn away by familiarity.
And sometimes they grow old and tired and frail, and we forget that we had loved them and cast them away, for a new one can always be bought. And sometimes we lose them, or perhaps they leave us, slipping mute and invisible away; and we seek for a while and we pine for a while – but a new one can always be bought.
But what becomes of our old things? What are the after-lives of objects? They, scattered seedlike, take root in a state between being and not-being; a strange, penumbral space. We understand that a broken mirror is not a mirror. The naming of objects is truly the naming of uses, which glare upon the surface, so that we cannot reach nor even see the solid thing beneath the name. When a mirror is no longer a mirror, what is it? We might call it useless.
The exhibition Dumb Objects unpicks the relationship between use and identity. In liberating broken and commonplace things from their usual contexts, the artists permit them to speak in new voices, to take on new forms; to fledge, to emerge, like butterflies or birds. A reminder that all things are mutable, all things are possible; that even the most solid or broken of things may shift its shape; may live again: an act of ordinary magic."
Jo Moore
2009
Thanks Jo!
Thursday will see the opening of the exhibition I have put together with Susan Massey at Wolstenholme Projects in Liverpool. We have done it all on a shoestring (kindly provided by WP) but it's looking good and I'm excited to see it up.
The exhibition text has been kindly written by Jo Moore, a Liverpool-based artist, writer and curator who also runs peachtree, peartree press.
"We place our trust in objects, which quietly receive us. The chairs onto which we fling our tired bodies. The doors that glide open as we approach, permitting us to never break our stride. The bookshelves, which quietly bear their loads: the plant-pot and the flower.
Returning from the outside world, I take off my shoes, I hang up my bag. I survey my living-room: the chair, the chair, the little red table; the dining-table, the window, the waste-paper basket; the horrible curtains, and, beyond them, the houses across the street, which look like dolls’ houses, quaint and somnolent. Nothing has changed. These objects, which I trusted to be still and to behave, and not transform, or dance around, or float towards the ceiling, have not betrayed me."
continued..
A silver lining to the recession? Me thinks he is coming from a slightly different point of view..
just doing my evening trawl through the paper (and getting some previews of Venice before I go!) and found this quote:
"The good thing about the recession is that we will now be able to concentrate on art, on what matters. The bullshit we had to deal with before is over."
Francois Pinault
Emily Speed is an artist based in Liverpool. www.emilyspeed.co.uk
