continued from previous post (told you this was a subject liable to get me going)
So – based on my track record up until 1997, and the small projects I'd done in the intervening 10 years, ACE were prepared to fund me for a research trip to Kyrgyzstan to learn yurt making techniques. This trip changed my life. Two weeks without mobile phone or email contact. I had no duty to anyone but myself. This was the start of things, and I've really got my practice at the core of my life again now.
I've had a couple of great mentors, Jane Sellars from the Mercer Gallery and artist Rebecca Chesney, who really gave me the confidence to make work from the starting point of my experiences as an artist and mother. This is what underpins all my work now.
My practice involves an investigation into how we become who we are. I had to undo the version of myself that I had constructed as a mother, and reinvent my artist self. Now I have to be vigilant, to nourish and feed life into both roles. We all 'get into character' for our different roles in life, but I observe, document and analyse these roles, looking for a revelation in the details of domestic life.
I am interested in the way that subtle injustice becomes invisible, and therefore more insidious and undermining. In households with two heterosexual parents working full time, the woman is statistically likely to be doing 80% of the domestic work in the home.
My work, my art, my life are all intertwined and overlapping, each one influences the other. My life is rich, my children are at the heart of every thought I have, my art tries to express something about the subtle hidden elements of family life. The process reflects the content, to the extent that I don't know which element influences the other more.
There are side effects to talking on this theme – it doesn't represent everything about my work, and some people enjoy looking at my work without ever knowing about this starting point, or identifying any feminist angle. This subject matter is an anathema to some people. I hope that the process of making the work is an evolutionary one, starting from the point of view of a parent, and resulting in something relevant to anyone. Some of the content of the work is entirely imaginary, mixed in with biographical information, which confuses and upsets people who think they know how I should be.
So – parent as artist – artist as parent is a big theme for me. And I haven't even mentioned the discriminatory aspect of many artist opportunities – particularly residencies, which offer accomodation for one person and require you to commit intensively for several weeks. It precludes parents from a significant income stream.
Ooh I'll be chuntering away all day now. Better go and see what the kids are up to – they've been worryingly quiet for ages.
