Back from YSP after a few elating, sunny days. Now I am mainly avoiding my tax return, but I have to do it today, otherwise I shall go to New York on Saturday and it will plague my dreams. Pretty sure I don’t owe any tax, it’s just the paper mess I have to contend with. As I started the schools bursary in September 09, I just lost my handle on everything like that as I was barely keeping up with day to day work. Since the bursary I have sorted it out, but there is a massive black spot in my accounts. BOO.
It was probably the sun, but I was on a complete high at the park. It is such an incredible place and I feel very privileged to be able to wander freely round the whole place, including the nature reserve, which is off-limits. I also finally got access to the old student halls that are there, after I have been pestering for a while; see pictures. The halls used to be part of Bretton College – a teachers college and exciting hub for experimental theatre and dance in the 70s. They also had fantastic art facilities and the sculpture studios remain intact up by Longside Gallery. Anyway, I am going back in a couple of weeks to make some site-specific pieces in the halls and have a costume work photographed, so this was groundwork for that. They are damp and stink, but I am drawn to them, despite the grand hall, probably because they are marked for demolition.
William Wentworth, who lived at the Hall, was by reputation, a bit of a cad. He had a ship, Aurora, that he held lavish parties on the lake in, some of which lasted for days. There was also a cluster of islands that he built in the lake, with follies like the temple of Venus (which may really have been a temple of lurve) and another with a menagerie on. Unfortunately, when the lake was dredged later, these islands were filled in with mud from the bottom, but their forms are still slightly visible. I cannot explain to you how these stories set me alight and inspire all kinds of ambitious and preposterous work (I am seeing that this may be my best kind). So now I have plans for a work set in the landscape, and I NEVER saw myself leaving the gallery, as well as a performance work on the lake. I feel light and skippy and generally excited to the point where I can’t sleep. It is wonderful.
Now, where was I?? Oh, shit. The bloody tax return.
