Keeping It Going

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

At the end of my last post, I described nostalgia as being akin to grief and mourning – ‘a reaction to loss.’ Loss has been a pertinent theme for me this past year, both personally and professionally.

A dictionary defines nostalgia as: ‘a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.’

Nostalgia in psychoanalysis is considered not only as a longing for the past, but a longing for an idealised past – a past that might perhaps, not even exist. We’re all aware of the distorted effect that time can have on real, authentic memory. Nostalgia has a habit of editing out the bad bits, making us able to momentarily dismiss the more negative aspects of past experiences. Facts are forgotten and narratives unwittingly changed.

But nostalgia adds a sense of personal meaning to life and provides us with an understanding of our place in the world at large. This feeling has manifested itself several times in the course of this past year’s sorting – ploughing my way through the mass of objects and other paraphernalia from my past, I’ve become acutely aware of how time has changed the way I feel about so much of the stuff I’ve accumulated.

Time has also, of course, changed me. I’m not the same person I was 30 or 40 years ago, the point at which my collections first started to develop. I wrote in my last post about the strong urge I felt to revisit nostalgic childhood places this summer just gone. I wondered how much the sorting had impacted on my desire to go back to places that held happy childhood memories for me. As it turned out, these trips simply mirrored what had been happening in the studio – looking at what was there, examining it for what it was (truly was) and deciding whether it was going to continue to be a part of my current life, or not.

Through scrutinising the individual objects, I’ve been able to make decisions about what stays and what goes; through scrutinising my past and recognising that I’ve been feeling rather stuck in it, I’ve also felt able to make decisions about leaving my past behind and looking to becoming more engaged and connected with the present.

The loss of loved ones, ageing, the fragility of life and so on are themes that will continue to drive me to keep making my work. These themes and their associated emotions are all wrapped up in the various objects I’ve been holding onto all these years. But there has been a definite psychological shift in me which has made the whole letting go process infinitely easier.

Colour has continued to play an important role in the work I’ve been making and I’ve become ever more conscious of the colours that surround me outside of the studio. The geography and landscape of the Isle of Arran and the Holy Isle made a big impact and strong visual memories of places in the western isles of Scotland have stayed with me since my summer visit. Located in the county of Ayrshire, the district where my late Father was born and raised, the surrounding countryside is very familiar to me. It has its own unique colours – the rich brown, peaty soil, the rough, scratchy purple heather, the fresh, lush green of the ferns in the lower glens, the rust-coloured water of the burns – the grey granite rocks.

I visited Little Sparta, the garden of the late artist/sculptor/poet Ian Hamilton Finlay as well, while I was staying with family in Edinburgh. Despite it being less wild and natural than I’d anticipated (and hoped), it’s still a special place – aesthetically beautiful, with wise, pertinent and humorous comments on social & cultural issues inscribed on the various structures and sculptures placed around the extensive grounds. Everything is carefully and strategically placed, colours carefully chosen.

In complete contrast to my summer trip to Scotland, I was in the flat fenland area of Cambridgeshire a month or so ago, staying in Cambridge with a close friend. It’s another place I feel attached to and is closely associated with my Dad as it’s the area he and my Mum returned to from Scotland, my brother and sister in tow – primarily, in search of work. It’s my Mum’s home area – the place where my parents settled for a large part of their married life.

And it’s also of course, the county in which I was born and raised, a stone’s throw from my Nana’s home – a place that was very familiar to me and which has had a big influence on my creative practice. The Fabric of Life, Here Today, Gone Tomorrow and Nana’s Colours are bodies of work that have developed as a direct result of using various raw materials gathered together from my Nana’s house when, after some seventy years, her failing health meant she had to leave it.

I visited Jim & Helen Ede’s house in Kettle’s Yard during my visit to Cambridge, another place well known to me and one which I’ve visited on numerous occasions over the years; the house, its architecture and the amazing art, objects and furniture inside it, continues to be one of the most inspirational places I know. The city was looking as lovely as ever, too – beautiful contrasting colours, from the vibrant, autumnal colours of foliage on the trees and the late flowering plants in the University’s botanic gardens, to the quiet, muted tones of paintings, furniture and objects of the Ede’s beautifully curated home.

Issam Kourbaj’s work, Unearthed (In Memoriam) in the small neighbouring church provided yet another amazing array of bold and contrasting colours. It’s a poignant installation, informed by current events in Syria, the artist’s home country – a response to the ongoing violence and huge number of casualties. Issam Kourbaj has lived in Cambridge since 1989 and has been artist in residence at Christ’s College for many years. I was really moved by the installation – old hardback book covers placed side by side on the stone floor of the ancient church – some painted with white or coloured paint. Black lines were painted across a lot of them, a representation of the black ribbons placed over the photographs of the recently deceased in Syria.

As well as the impact that it had on me, especially in light of the continuing tragedy in Syria, Issam Kourbaj’s exhibition also made me think of my own very different roots. Where I come from has always remained important to me. There has been a strong sense of re-visiting childhood haunts this past few months – nostalgic, childhood spaces, full of memories – places that were significant to me then, and have continued to be at various points in my life since, for all sorts of reasons.

I’ve been wondering about how much this all ties in with the sorting – albeit at a subconscious level, how much the re-finding objects associated with my own past and with that of late loved ones has steered me towards wanting to go back to certain places – to exorcise certain ghosts, perhaps – to lay certain things to rest?  For whatever reasons, I felt a real longing to go back to these places this year and I’m glad that I did.

Nostalgia, like grief and mourning, is about loss. How we respond to that loss determines whether we move forward or remain stuck. But that I think, is a subject for another post …

Finally. Finally! Back into the studio, producing work. It feels great to have re-established a studio routine this past week after an exceptionally busy summer with other commitments.

This evening sees the launch of the Deptford X festival; Bob & Roberta Smith is the lead artist and this year’s theme is the Value of Art. My thoughts are again focused on my 10×10 project and the whole issue of value and worth – value in relation to humanity and all the amazing possibilities that can bring – it’s been there in a lot of the stories people have so generously shared. This is the part of my work that excites me and makes it feel worthwhile; it also reminds me how keen I am to resurrect 10×10.

As the government continues to threaten and impose yet further cutbacks on public funding and the gap between the rich and poor in this country grows ever wider, the whole theme of value and worth continues to be a pertinent issue.

In sweet serendipity, this article appeared in this morning’s Guardian. An American friend of mine has been talking about The Burning Man festival ever since I launched 10×10 in 2008. I can but dream of taking 10×10 there one day. For now, it’s back to the studio to work on a personal response to this year’s Deptford X theme of the Value of Art.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/sep/26/gifts-in-the-desert-psychology-burning-man-altruism