Keeping It Going

I first posted images of the objects below a year or so ago as part of an artist call on Twitter. I can’t remember what the theme was now, but I do remember being aware of how personal and precious the items were to me.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen and handled them and when I found them again yesterday, it felt good to be reunited with them in a different setting, uncluttered. I was able to see them properly and was more aware of their unique qualities – the marks of wear and tear, the patina of age and use – each object so evocative of my childhood and the many times I spent with my Nana as a child.

Memories came flooding back – the knife, completely worn with use, a poignant reminder of the times I spent chatting to my Nana at the kitchen sink, as she peeled huge piles of vegetables in preparation for family dinners. The bone, left overs of a Sunday roast lamb dinner from eons ago, hung for years by a piece of string on an apple tree in my Nana’s garden – originally put out for the birds to peck on. These objects are steeped in social history and powerful reminders of the huge impact Nana’s way of life has had on my own – particularly her unerring devotion to domestic chores; how not to live my life, perhaps. I don’t strip the beds every day and remake them with hospital corners (pre-duvet days) or stand the dining room chairs on the table to polish their legs every Monday – or iron my tea towels & sheets.

The hairnet, the mirrors and the broken comb represent another side of Nana when she was alive – the side that turned her attention away from domestic life and focused on herself – Vitapoint combed through her hair, curls carefully caught up in a hairnet – in private, of course, for bedtimes only – intimate, shared moments.

The subject of our mortality is one that has always fascinated me – the fragility of our existence and that very thin line between being alive – or not; using that knife, that comb, that hand mirror – or not. Examining my late Nana’s objects yesterday was exactly about that – these objects, unlike her, have lived on – the permanence of objects versus the fragility of life.

Sometimes, something you read just clicks and resonates so deeply with the things you’ve been thinking about, that you can’t shake it from your mind. So much of what Suzanne Moore wrote in her article in The Guardian ten days or so ago struck a chord in me.

‘From India and Turkey to Oxford and Yarl’s Wood, we live in a perpetual state of war against women.’

Depressing words on so many levels – and also remarkably timely in relation to the creative work that’s been at the forefront of my mind in the lead up to International Women’s Day – Sunday, March 8th.

Moore’s reference to how, in this country, ‘we move from one abuse story to another’ was particularly pertinent at the time of reading, as my ‘Sweet Nothings‘ assemblage work was simultaneously in the Atom Gallery, included in a group show, Disturbance.

‘Sweet Nothings‘ is a piece of work made up of 21 small china female figurines. The figurines are of girls, not women – all bows & frills, sweet & subservient-looking in their stance; placed on a dressing table, faces turned to the mirror. It’s not obvious at a first glance, but all the mouths of the young girls are taped up – gagged and silenced by a strip of Elastoplast. Just like the girls and women Suzanne Moore discusses in her article, they have no voice:

‘When David Cameron says he is going to do something about child abuse, one wonders how he will admit its scale, or admit that the lives of working-class girls are not important to him and, even if they were, that this is beyond the scope of his rudderless government. The make-believe election we are having will always be more of a priority for those who run things. The war against women is waged routinely and globally. Equality of the most basic kind cannot exist when a woman’s life and her words are always worth less than a man’s.

‘But in the darkness of the night, what haunts us are not broken systems but the faces of the broken girls. So, so many. All the time.’

If every picture tells a story, then ironically, the images above speak volumes.  And Suzanne Moore’s vivid and heart-wrenching description of being haunted by ‘the faces of the broken girls’ sums up in just six words what I suspect I couldn’t in a million.

The full version of Suzanne Moore’s article can be read here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/04/india-turkey-oxford-state-of-war-against-women-sexual-violence

I took the last piece of art work down from my studio wall on Thursday. Moving out has been a major undertaking – much greater than I’d imagined – and there have been many times over the past few weeks when I’ve felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff I’ve needed to shift. Friday at 2pm was the deadline for having the studio emptied and left in a good state for the next artist; today I returned the key fob to head office and have now completely signed off from a studio that I’d rented for three years.

Leaving my studio this time round feels very different and is a million miles away from my last experience. That move was a complete emotional upheaval – abrupt & sudden, with only 48 hours notice given. Alongside a small group of artists, we had no choice but to simply react. We had decided to make a stand against rent increases imposed by the landlord and we lost. It was that loss that got me first started on writing a blog here – Keeping It Together.

This time round, moving feels significantly different – namely because this move is about making a personal choice to leave. I’ve had more time to prepare and consequently feel more in control of the situation. That’s not to say that I haven’t felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have, but at least I’ve had the chance to properly acknowledge the sheer volume of what I own.

It’s been an exhausting process, but a positive one nonetheless. I’m amazed that I’ve managed to fill one hundred 35 litre boxes. It’s the first time since coming back from living in the States that my possessions have been in one place at the same time. I’m going back 26 years – I left Ithaca, New York in 1989!

My sister’s house sale fell through right at the very last minute and ‘that’ garage I’ve been writing about and hoping for since last February is no longer at my disposal. For now, I feel really lucky to have the tremendous support of a friend who has loaned me space in hers.

Moving has taken up pretty much all of my spare time over the past couple of weeks. Being involved in creative work has been low on the agenda and as usual, I’ve had that uneasy feeling I get whenever I’m not actively making work. This will all be rectified tomorrow when I’ve carved out some time for continuing to work on the carefully preserved pieces from my studio wall, currently laying on my bedroom floor. I’m itching to get back to this new body of work on the theme of domesticity – centred around repression and restriction.

On which note, I’m really pleased to have had one of my pieces of work selected for Disturbance, a show featuring some amazing artists whose work I love, curated and organised by Paula McArthur and Wendy Saunders. The piece, Sweet Nothings, features 21 gagged ceramic female figurines. I’m looking forward to talking about the work more as the show progresses.

Details of the show are here: http://www.atomgallery.co.uk/exhibitions/disturbance.html

Taking 10×10 to Colchester was a really positive experience for me. There was a great turnout with over seventy exchanges made in all and I had a lot of animated conversations with people who seemed genuinely interested in 10×10 and its history. In fact, I hardly stopped talking throughout the entire 5 hour exchange!

I was in very good hands from the outset, of course – the Hunt & Darton Cafe having been such a positive force in the town before I arrived. I was lucky to be invited into the midst of this upbeat atmosphere, where there was a real sense that something fun & exciting was happening. This positivity spilled over into the people who interacted with the 10×10 cabinet.

There was a real buzz when I arrived last Saturday morning to remove the perspex from the cabinet and I’m grateful to the generous Hunt & Darton team who had encouraged a good crowd to come along and take part in the exchange. An article about 10×10 in the local paper, together with the ever-helpful Anthony Roberts (Director of Colchester Arts Centre)’s mailing list and some much appreciated retweets on Twitter, all contributed to getting people along to participate.

People, after all, are what make the project happen. And people from all walks of life came along – from young children and teenagers, through to the elderly.

And if so much of what happens around 10×10 – the conversations and the exchanges – can be considered ‘a comment on humanity’ then I think the event in Colchester showed humanity as pretty colourful and diverse. A whole manner of objects were brought along to be exchanged and the way that people interacted varied greatly. Some people really wanted to communicate and were keen to tell the story attached to their object, others chose to say nothing, and on the surface at least, simply made straightforward swaps.

One person on arrival told me of her decision to leave something ‘nice’ in the cabinet and only to take something that she considered to be throwaway. In the event, she left an amazing hotdog brooch and took away a business card – a sweet gesture which echoed another act of generosity, when someone left an onyx vase that he had bought in China as a memento of proposing to his girlfriend while on holiday there. In exchange, all he took was a cheap pen. I was really pleased to see one of the (to my mind!) surplus supply of pens taken away – quite a number have been left in the cabinet over a period of time and, whilst one or two have been well thought-out exchanges with stories attached, I can’t help but feel pleased to see them go.

One of the most interesting moments for me was when someone decided to Google to find out the monetary value of two South Korean coins which had been exchanged and left in the cabinet earlier in the day. On discovering that they were only worth 36p, they decided to take something else instead. It was a classic example to me of the issue of value and worth, a theme that is at the heart of the 10×10 project.

There were some lovely moments during Saturday’s exchange, some interesting objects left, and there are plenty of stories and photos still to share. The cabinet changed a lot in its appearance as the day progressed and I will add the photos and document the changes in due course. Huge thanks must go to my partner Pete for his patient and thorough documentation of the exchanges. I really couldn’t keep such an accurate record of the day’s exchanges without him and this project certainly wouldn’t be alive without his amazing generosity and enthusiasm for helping.

Many thanks again to the fantastic people of Colchester who came along to participate so positively – Jude, Rose, Ally, Dolly, Rosie & Alice, Amy, Gina, Jak, Alan, David to name but a few – and also to Jenny, Holly, Jess, Gemma and the rest of the Hunt & Darton Cafe team, as well as Anthony at Colchester Arts Centre and Charlotte and the other staff at Firstsite – for inviting the 10×10 project in and making me feel so welcome.

It’s taken a while, but my 10×10 project is back on the road. Thanks to Anthony Roberts of Colchester Arts Centre and Jenny & Holly of the award winning Hunt & Darton cafe, I was invited to take 10×10 to firstsite Colchester.

For anyone who’s not familiar with the 10×10 project, the history of it is here… http://www.katemurdochartist.com/ten_by_ten.html

Last Saturday I installed the 10×10 cabinet, put the 100 objects left at the end of the previous exchange in Hastings in their correct places, sealed them behind a perspex screen and left them for the people of Colchester to view until exchange day, this coming Saturday January 31st.

It’s always an interesting experience unwrapping the objects. I remember a lot of the narrative associated with the various items as I place them into their respective boxes. Certain people are called to mind and I’m reminded that these 100 objects are no longer mine. Just a couple of the original objects from 2008 are left (both ceramic pomanders, coincidentally) and I’ve now become a custodian of what other people have brought (and will bring) to the cabinet. 10×10 is an ever changing creation, made by the people who have contributed to it.

Since leaving the cabinet in Colchester – excited about it being in its first ‘proper’ gallery and grateful to the generous, welcoming Hunt & Darton cafe team – I’ve been wondering about what people will make of it and its contents. It’s big! – nearly two metres square – and though I was concerned about the perspex when it was first suggested by curators at the Herne Bay museum, it seems to give the objects a sense of grandeur. A used make-up case, a dried out highlighter pen, the four or five pens that have been left, for example have taken on a different kind of meaning behind a screen; the value of the individual items somehow appear to be heightened by the perspex.

Issues around value and worth come up a lot in my work, especially in relation to the objects I’ve collected over the years – a lot of tat, rubbish, kitsch junk on the one hand, but unique and precious indicators of social and cultural history on the other. In 10×10 it’s often the sentiment behind why they’re left and the stories and emotional associations attached to any given object that give them their true value. The small stub of a used yellow candle nearly always comes to mind when I think about this and, in response to a conversation I had about it with Hilary Wilce, an education correspondent and a trustee of the amazing organisation People United, she wrote this:

“On Saturday a tiny stub of ancient yellow candle sat in one box. An international student had come to see the cabinet, then returned to claim a fat, decorative candle that someone had left and leave his last inch of burnt-candle. He was living without electricity and had only a candle for light – a wrenching little cameo about how it is to struggle in the cracks of society.”

There isn’t always a story attached to the objects left for exchange in the 10×10 boxes, but the narrative around the small yellow candle stub sums up perfectly for me so many of the issues around value and worth that continue to fascinate me. It takes me back to the questions that I asked at the very start of 10×10, when I let go of 100 objects that meant something to me:

What is an object worth to you? How much do you want it and what are you prepared to give up in return? Will it be people’s generosity or meanness that triumphs when it comes to the value of the objects that are bartered? Will the piece be ‘worth more’ at the end of the process?

Let’s see how the people of Colchester respond. And if you happen to be in the area this Saturday, here are the details.

https://twitter.com/katemurdochart/status/559440517818499073