Keeping It Going

Back with more to say it seems, already feeling that I’m reaping the benefits of a return to blogging. When a busy family life and illness conspires to keep you out of the studio, it feels good to maintain some sort of connection; it’s what I use this blog for most, I think – like a kind of hello from the sidelines.

Comments left by other artists in response to my blog mean a lot to me – often kind, considered and just plain friendly, they can act as a real source of comfort and yet simultaneously, throw up all sorts of questions and alternative ways of seeing and thinking. It’s very easy for thoughts to stagnate when working in a vacuum and I’m reminded once again of the many advantages of blogging; writing here is as much about connections and community as it is about self-promotion.

The comments left on my blog for this particular week have got me thinking about the sorting process.

Why I do it is clear. The sorting is an integral part of my practice and a necessary process to go through in order to unearth and reacquaint myself with the collected objects and assorted paraphernalia – essentially, the raw material for my work.

How I sort in the studio is another matter …

I’ve been thinking about patterns that are repeated – these intermittent periods, one of which I’m experiencing right now, when I fret about the amount of stuff I have and allow myself to feel completely overwhelmed by the sheer mass of it. I’m talking here about emotional as well as physical mass, of course and am acutely aware of the additional weight of emotional baggage stored away in a lot of the boxes – that’s the overwhelming part for me.

Sitting around worrying about all these things isn’t conducive to getting on with generating work and historically, it’s kept me away from the studio for longer periods than I’d like. Displacement, perhaps? Self-preservation, maybe? Who knows … but recognising the pattern of behaviour at least means that I know the problem isn’t insurmountable – I’ve been here before, and so am aware that the best strategy for overcoming it, is to just get myself back into the studio again – tidy it up and return it to being a space I can work in.

I embraced the chaos of it in the few weeks leading up to the Christmas – like my friend said, it felt like a ‘really alive’ space – but it got too cluttered by the end and I wasn’t able to see the woods for the trees. There’s probably a case for loosening up my control over how orderly I keep my studio space in the future but more about that another time. For now, it’s about getting rid of the worst of the mess and starting to produce work again. New year, new beginnings – I have no idea what it will bring but my hope is that I will stay curious and open to any opportunities sent my way.

I stopped writing this blog some six months ago with the intention of freeing up some time for a big ‘sort out’ in my studio. Up until this point, I’d been having conversations with other artists about the importance of archiving my collections. I’d hoped that cataloguing the collection of stuff accumulated over many years might be a solution to not feeling quite so overwhelmed by it; hoped that once the sorting and labelling had been done, I’d be able to return to my creative practice – more effectively, more efficiently – everything to hand.

In actual fact, nothing much has happened in the studio in terms of sorting stuff out – nor in terms of documenting, either. There was a certain amount of shifting around and opening up of the boxes when I needed to find things for the recent group exhibitions I was a part of, but I just haven’t been able to apply myself to the kind of proper sorting in the studio that I’d envisaged.

Retrospectively, I think it was a bit of a tall order to think that I could get so organised in such a short space of time. After all, I’m talking about a vast amount of stuff here, collected over some 20/25 years.

The collections are what provide me with the raw material for my creative work and it’s through them that I’m able to tease out the various stories from my life, ones which, for whatever reason, I feel compelled to tell. I have a good memory for what I own and what’s stored away in the boxes in the studio, but it takes time and patience to locate the required items. It’s why the idea of archiving my entire life collections (still) holds so much appeal for me; who knows, maybe one day I will find the time and motivation and it will happen.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to keep on doing what I love best – to keep making the work. I’m pleased that, despite the chaos, I was able to access enough materials in order to create new work for two group exhibitions I was a part of in the last couple of months of 2013. Being a part of the first one, The Beginning of History, was a really positive and rewarding experience for me -the Q-Art one, too, in a completely different way – and the fact that I ended the year showing alongside other really talented artists has been one of the highlights of 2013 for me. More about this another time …

I’ll be back in the studio next week and I’m feeling positive about my return, largely down to the optimistic response of an artist friend who came to see The Beginning of History exhibition in the ASC project space, attached to the studio I rent in New Cross Gate. My friend described my studio space as looking ‘really alive’ and there being a ‘real energy’ emanating from it. Crucially, she felt it had a different feel to it since her last visit.

I think what my friend saw was the effect of me loosening up my control in the studio. I’ve been too busy to keep it tidy and have actually been enjoying working in a different kind of environment – one that isn’t quite so organised and orderly.

How ‘organised’ does my studio actually have to be is a new question I’m asking myself. Who’s the organising for? And if, at the end of a working day, I’ve been feeling compelled to tidy things away, who am I tidying away for? I don’t yet know the answer to these questions, but what I do know is that while the boxes in my studio are closed and neatly stacked – closed off, effectively – there’s not a great deal of creative energy around; once they’re open and their contents exposed, however – that’s when the real work begins for me. Consequently, I’ve been feeling a lot more freed up and creatively inspired – surely a good start to 2014. Well, let’s hope …

continued from post #33

I like the part of my work that responds spontaneously to other artists, new ideas and calls for exhibiting, just as I have in the past couple of days. I very much want to improve my access to my collections – the raw material of my creative practice – so that I’m able to continue to do so, more efficiently. The issue of time, in all of this is of course, the crucial factor and my current situation has made me recognise the benefits to be had from investing time now, in order to save time for the future. One of my first steps towards this, is to take a break from writing this blog. The entire premise of ‘Keeping It Going ‘ in any case, asked the questions:

Will I be able to maintain a blog at the same time as being creative in the studio? Will it help or hinder my practice as an artist?

Even if only temporarily, I will miss the discipline of writing here. But the time used for regularly maintaining this blog will be better placed for now, in sorting out my studio space and getting on with making work. Setting up ‘It’s The Little Things’ for the This ‘Me’ of Mine exhibition over the past few weeks has reminded me just how time consuming installation/assemblage work in itself can be – and that’s when I’m familiar with the work, know where things need to be placed and have already processed and emotionally let go of the items used in the installation.

I haven’t familiarised myself with a lot of my collections for some time – it’s that difficult to get to/access thing again! But I know it will be no small task to sort through it and I know that a considerable amount of time and patience will be required to do it thoroughly. There is a vast amount of ‘stuff’ – both the literal, physical objects and the emotional and psychological.

Letting go has never been easy for me; I’ve never been good at endings or goodbyes. But I do want to say goodbye to feeling in the dark, disorganised and a bit all over the place with regards to my knowledge about what is it is that exactly makes up my collections – the materials that stimulate new ideas and sustain my creative work. It’s time to rediscover, assess and know what I have.

I will at some point, I’m sure, want to report back. There are a lot of emotions and stories tied up in the boxes I’m preparing to unpack – I’m almost certain that I will want to share some of the associative narrative with you.

Thank you in the meantime to so many of you – to a-n who encouraged me to start this blog in the first place through organising the ‘Why Blog’ workshops; to the Artists Talking community for your commitment to reading what I have to say; and to those of you for taking the time to leave comments about what my posts have meant to you; it’s always been truly appreciated.

In a conversation about our respective creative work with a couple of other artists on Tuesday night, I announced that I was going to take a break from writing this blog. I surprised myself a bit by saying it, but then it’s often said that the most meaningful conversations take place in the pub.

And anyway, it didn’t come completely out of the blue, it’s something that’s been on my mind – especially since that Monday, a couple of weeks ago when I took a long, hard look at my studio space – essentially, looking at how workable it is – or not, as the case may be. Such thoughts arose from a long nine hour stint of sorting, a nine hour stint of unpacking a whole load of things from boxes.

Unpacking the boxes is always exciting for me – I’ve held onto all this stuff for some reason or other, after all. And however many times I’ve seen them, most of the items unpacked from the boxes never fail to delight me. It’s through rediscovering them, that new ideas for making work often come up.

But it also creates mayhem and chaos and with just a few unpacked, the studio floor quickly becomes full, littered with books, objects, photos and clothing taken from the boxes. It’s always the way – by the time I’ve emptied just a fraction of them, there’s no spare floor space, no room to manoeuvre and making work of any sort is made completely impossible.

I’ve been in this situation a few times now; the only solution after sorting seems to be to repack things and re-stack the boxes in order to re-establish a space for making. There are times of course, when the sorting becomes a positive part of the whole creative process – when new ideas are formed.

At other times, though it’s felt like I’m quite literally shifting things from one place to another, without any clear sense of purpose. It’s what I call the hamster wheel scenario – going round and round in circles and crucially, not getting anywhere. This unpacking and repacking routine has started to feel increasingly pointless and dissatisfying.

Time at the studio is limited and precious enough as it is; I feel the need to find ways to make use of that time as effectively and as constructively as possible. My studio space needs to be made more workable and I need to have easier access to the stuff in storage. A studio visit from an artist on Thursday confirmed this; I couldn’t immediately put my hand to the glassware I wanted to show her and I felt frustrated about being disorganised in this way and even slightly unprofessional as a result. I was also included in a fun twitter exchange with some other artists at the end of this week just gone and felt equally as frustrated about not knowing where my handkerchief collection was so that I could get involved with some photo sharing.

continued …

Leaving a piece of work I made for the recent ‘Discernible’ show in the hands of the curators was, as I said, a new and interesting experience. Allowing ‘Other’ (see image) to stand alone, without any explanation about the narrative behind the work, was unusual for me. It feels ironic, retrospectively, that I asked for it be suspended, hanging in the air – just as I’d left the whole concept that lay behind it; hanging, unsaid & unspoken.

I also let go of ‘It’s The Little Things’ when it was installed in the Kaleidoscope gallery in Sevenoaks last Friday, on the third leg of the This ‘Me’ of Mine touring exhibition.

In Deptford and in Folkestone, I’ve been there to install my work for the exhibition. I didn’t even question whether I should be there; it felt like a given. This time round, however, I made a decision – to be practical about the implications of being at every installation set-up and to try and let go of controlling the installation of my work. It wasn’t easy, but I decided to hand it over to the capable hands of the curator, Jane Boyer – alongside a photograph for guidance of where the various bits and pieces should go.

‘It’s The Little Things’ is composed of a number of small things rescued from my Nana’s home, placed onto shelves and a mirror frame set on a plinth. The objects are pretty precariously balanced and it takes a while to set them up and get the things looking the way I want them to. I’ve managed to spend a good hour or so building and then just generally tinkering with the various objects during installation in the last two venues – making sure they’re ‘just so.’

Apart from a couple of text queries from Jane and then, very thoughtfully, a photo of the installation completed by her, I haven’t seen my work in its finished state. I’ve missed being involved in installing it this time round, if truth be told. The process of placing the individual objects is the part that I love – it’s what feels crucial to me in terms of how the final piece of art work is realised. I enjoy it probably more than anything else I do in my creative practise.

But if one of the driving forces behind my work is to continue to be about letting go, then handing over the responsibility for installing it is a necessary part of that. Someone once told me that he felt I lost something quite crucial in my work when I started ‘sticking things.’ It’s an observation that has stayed with me. But in practical terms, I think I may need to reconsider how I present the assemblage pieces I create in the future. If they’re not fixed in place, they may be fine as they are in the studio but not so fine if they need to be transported and installed by someone else. It’s all been a bit of a learning curve.

I hadn’t intended to go to the Kaleidoscope gallery in advance of tomorrow evening’s launch night, but as the time approaches, I’ve realised there’s a part of me that’s keen to be there to make sure the work is exactly how I’d like it to be. This is not a reflection on the curator – but as I said, the placing of the objects is everything to me. If I don’t do it, am I really the artist?

Letting go, it seems, has its limits!