Keeping It Going

There are times when life puts art firmly into perspective. I’ve always believed that art can’t exist in a vacuum. One of its main purposes, for me, is to reflect what’s happening in the world.

This morning I read an article in The Guardian about a father whose sons have recently been diagnosed with a life-shortening genetic disorder. If this doesn’t help put into perspective what really matters, then I don’t know what will. You can read the article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/16/our-beautiful-sons-could-die-before-us?CMP=twt

And then there’s what’s been happening elsewhere in the world. The recent events in Gaza (and in Syria and Iraq, too) must surely have touched us all. Who could fail to be moved by the reports and harrowing images coming out of these countries? Innocent civilians, many of them children, killed and maimed; homes and communities totally destroyed.

I’ve been deeply affected by the scenes of people in Gaza sifting through piles of rubble (once their homes) in the hope of finding some remnant of their past lives – a photo, perhaps; birth certificates proving that their children exist – or not, as the case may be. Ever sentimental when it comes to personal possessions, I can’t even start to imagine what it feels like to lose everything in such a brutal, violent way. Headlines like ‘Civilians pick through ruins of homes to salvage belongings’, ‘Choosing what to save’ and ‘Proof of a life’ have stayed with me.

These shocking events in the wider world have brought the sorting process I’ve documented here over the past few months sharply into perspective. The contrast is stark. While I’ve been wondering at my leisure what I should keep, the people from these war torn areas have had their possessions, quite literally, blown away.

It’s made me think again, about the motivation behind my art and what I do; how fortunate I am in comparison to have a choice over what I do and to exist in a safe, stable environment. I have the privilege of choosing the items I would like to keep and secure surroundings in which to keep them.

It makes me realise just how lucky I am to be able to have this kind of control over my life – I’ve never been forced back by war or the sheer struggle to survive like the people in Gaza, Syria or Iraq. And this won’t be the first time for many of them, either, that their homes have been shelled and ripped apart, all possessions lost. Sadly, it probably also won’t be the last.

For me, these dreadful images and stories touch on what is at the heart of my practice and resonate with what my work reflects – ‘the permanence of objects and the fragility of life ‘ as described in my artist statement. Despite hundreds of people’s lives being wiped out through direct military action, objects can and do survive – the photos, the birth certificates in the article I’ve linked to below.

I’ve never had to experience anything remotely like the suffering these people are going through. Compared to their daily struggles, my moans about how laborious the task of de-cluttering is, my fretting over how hard it is to make a decision to let go of the things I’ve grown emotionally attached to, pale into absurd insignificance.

A lot of the art I make is produced as a means of trying to make sense of my own world and the world at large, so that other people can relate to it. If art holds up a mirror to society and reflects life as it really is for others outside of my own safe, secure home and art life, then it can only be a positive thing. It’s all about keeping things in perspective.

http://www.click2houston.com/news/scenes-from-the-ground-in-gaza/27168172

This Saturday marks my late Nana’s birthday. Born on July 26th 1908, Nana reached the grand age of 102 years, before her death in September 2010. I always find anniversaries a powerful time – a time for reflecting and looking back. It was thinking about my Nana that reminded me I’ve never fully documented a piece of work that I created at the end of last year.

It was called Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, one of three pieces made for a group show, The Beginning of History. I remember this particular piece of work having a strong impact on me when I made it, and looking back, I came across this blog post, written in February 2013:

‘Here Today, Gone Tomorrow stirred something deep in me which needed to be processed.

It was the emotional connection to the objects that touched and moved me. Such intimate and highly personal objects, still here, physically present – in the flesh, as it were – while the hands that touched and used them, left their trace on them, no longer exist.

‘The permanence of objects’ – the mirror, the powder, the make-up, the faded silk flower – and the powder puff especially, for me, so reminiscent of the skin itself – recollections of precious moments spent with Nana at her dressing table.

These physical objects, however battered and used, essentially all still exist, while the woman whose life was so intrinsically involved in using them, no longer does – that fine line ‘between the permanence of objects and the fragility of life.’

During The Beginning of History, the show’s curator, Nick Kaplony, suggested that I might like to interact with one of the pieces of work I had created while it was in situ – to add to and take away the various objects I’d accumulated. In doing so, I would be literally acting out the whole concept of the work’s title: here today, gone tomorrow. I welcomed the suggestion – it appealed to me to have a chance to experiment with my work, an opportunity to keep the work more fluid. These photos document the process better than anything I can write:

Interacting with the objects inevitably brought me closer to them and what they represented. Memories of a past Grandmother/daughter relationship. Loss. The fragility of life, whatever age you might live to. Small wonder that it touched me in the way it did. It made me want to explore this area further and has led me to creating more assemblages, built around my recollections of the various objects from my Nana’s life – their history, their colours, the materials they were made up of.

One point that’s perhaps worth making is that not all of the objects I use actually belonged to my Nana. Maybe it’s because so much of my recent work has revolved around my Nana’s life, that some people understandably assume that it’s based solely and literally on her and her life.

In fact, although the four items used for Here Today in its initial stage and many of the other objects added at a later date did belong to my Nana; the kitten books and pictures didn’t. I added them as being representative of the kind of thing that any Nana of a certain age and class might have in her home. I’ve been collecting such paraphernalia for many years – way before my Nana’s death, in fact.

Although my Nana is often the starting point for this sort of work, I am always consciously trying to reach out to an audience as part of a shared experience. My hope is that my work will resonate with other people, remind them of their own lives and prompt them to share their own responses to it. That would be a fitting tribute to my dearly missed Nana.

Yesterday’s conversation with a neighbour who’s about to go back to work after maternity leave has got me thinking again about my own situation career-wise and what a different experience I’ve had since becoming an artist. After many years of working in the public sector, the past six years or so has seen me experiencing huge changes as I’ve become increasingly acquainted with working within an art environment as opposed to the public sector; with artists as opposed to public sector workers.

I hadn’t realised until I no longer had it, just how protected I felt in my previous career – working within a unionised work force, protected by the various employment contracts I signed over the years. Being paid was on the agenda, full stop. Before the recession hit, I hadn’t even heard of unpaid internships – how on earth could I – could anyone – work for nothing? How would you survive?

Transparency and openness was key; I was clear about what was expected of me and had a clear idea about what to expect of my colleagues, too – who was the senior member of staff on any one shift, what my various line manager’s responsibility towards me were, mine to them and so on.

I also had certain expectations of how professional people behave and moved in a circle where people anticipated nothing but the best from each other and strong, cohesive staff teams were consequently created; staff meetings were high on managers’ agendas and there was a true sense of democracy with regards to most decision making. It felt like there was an underlying trust and respect for each other, encouraged perhaps by the fact that in child protection cases, the work was hard enough as it was – and so, the general consensus was one of pulling together and genuinely caring about each other, whatever one’s professional status; caring for the carers, essentially.

I also had a pretty clear idea what wages my team members were on, according to the grade they were appointed to. Rivalry and competition consequently, was hardly an issue; the workforce generally felt secure and protected and consequently, clear and focused on the job at hand.

Which is exactly the point I want to keep returning to – the job at hand. How to keep it going, crucially – how to keep making the work and to keep myself distracted from some of the inevitable unfairness and hypocrisy that can arise as a result of things not being clear and transparent.

These frustrations are a distraction to my creative practice, capable of steering me away from the act of making and can easily prevent me from achieving what I set out to do.

It takes determination and effort and a lot of forward planning to keep things effectively focused and moving forwards, especially I think if like me, you’re a real stickler for what’s morally right and what’s wrong. It’s an obvious enough point to make and a lot of people universally are doing the same, but yesterday’s conversation with my neighbour around her anxieties of the work/childcare balance has made me readdress what really is important to me – both as an artist and a mother. And of course, in terms of my creative work.

The transfer of this website takes place tomorrow – on the same day as my son’s last GCSE exam. And so it feels timely to be writing this now. It feels almost like I’ve written some sort of note to self – the dos and don’ts in preparation for the next phase in my creative work, whatever that might be.

It also feels like the end of a long and challenging term – but a time of potential positive change, nevertheless. I have a long summer ahead of me, with teenage sons who will have no defined structure to their days. No wonder then, that yesterday’s work/life balance conversation with my neighbour felt significant – alerting me to a sense of urgency with regards to effectively managing my own time.

With all this in mind, plus (literally) stepping up a training programme for a long distance walk I’ve committed myself to taking part in, in early September, I’m looking forward to seeing what the summer brings.

This week I was deeply affected by the news story of the killings in Santa Barbara, California – another human tragedy for six young, innocent people and their families and friends and for the US and their gun laws. How did a gun and over 400 rounds of ammunition come to be in the hands of a young person who both the press and his immediate family have described as vulnerable? More recent reports from US authorities state that he had three legally-owned handguns with him at the time of carrying out the drive-by shootings.

As well as showing us a heart- wrenching display of a father’s pain in response to losing his son, this piece of video is a sad indictment of the US gun laws in the state of California. This is what the father of one of the victims, Christopher Martinez, had to say about the recent shooting incident which claimed the life of his son:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27562743

There’s nothing much I can add to that – a grieving father of one of the victims says it all for me.

‘Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA.’

I started this blog over 18 months ago, wondering whether it was possible (or not) to maintain it at the same time as managing to continue to create work. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how important it feels to me as an artist to maintain an interest in the world around me. Can I maintain a blog and continue to create art at the same time as being aware of what’s going on socially and politically?

My Nana often used to say to me, ‘You can’t take on the responsibilities of the world.’ But you can, if you choose, be aware of what’s going on in it. If my creative work is to continue to concern itself with celebrating and reflecting the wonders of life and humanity, then I have to confront the human condition in all its varying states. Bad things happen; tragedies such as the above are sadly, not unique and point to a real need for ongoing campaigns for change in the world around us.

RIP All the victims of yet another senseless act of gun violence, Santa Barbara, CA. May 2014

continued from #49

But it hasn’t just been about mementoes from my late Nana – it’s also about the things that I’ve held onto from my own past. Sorting through this vast lifelong collection has involved having to think about the human condition at large – both my own inner personal issues and the more universal issues of life and death – and love and loss – and other people and my relationship to them, theirs to me. Like so many people before me, I have been let down and hurt by others at various points in my life; I have lost loved ones, too – both through death and circumstances. Certain items of clothing, individual pieces of jewellery, the sound of specific music, the scent of particular perfumes – all these reminders have the ability to stir up vivid memories and bear testament to those hurts and scars from the past. Remember that dress I mentioned a few posts ago …

Someone made a comment about my work recently that struck a deep chord; he suggested that my inability to let go of things might perhaps, relate to an attempt to hold things together – ‘in order to stop things falling apart.’ It’s a fascinating point and one that’s certainly crossed my mind – a sense of exerting control over the present, in response to an inability to control circumstances of the past – it’s a common trait amongst collectors.

But what we are aware of intellectually doesn’t necessarily always equate with how we feel emotionally – nothing prepared me for how challenging this sorting process would be. Revisiting so much of my past through encountering the physical objects from it, has been about needing to process, accept and put to bed a lot of the associative painful memories. An emotionally tiring time – but necessary and cathartic nevertheless. I am feeling lighter as a result of unloading a lot of physical and emotional baggage.

And the added bonus, of course is to to have found a new body of work emerging in such a positive and unexpected way. It feels great to have Nana’s Colours to bear in mind while I’m in the process of sorting, ever more aware of how certain items connect and relate to each other – whether it’s through materials or colour, it’s the grouping together of related items that steers and creates the work for me.

With a less heavy and weighed down heart, then – an empty attic for my sister and a slightly less cluttered studio for me, the sorting continues …