My work, reasons behind it and what happens to it.

Had quite a nice day off today and although I’ve spent a lot of my time making paper planes, I did it while sitting in the garden, so it didn’t feel so much of a chore. By the end of the day, I would probably have made 40 of them. I haven’t counted them all yet, but I’d guess there are over 200. Realistically, I need 500 to fill the space. Five weeks to go, so I should do it.

Had an email off Louise Atkinson today about the Bound exhibition. I knew it was touring to Bristol after the Leeds showing, but she thinks she has confirmed a Liverpool venue as well. If it comes together, I will be in FIVE exhibitions during the Independents. Quite a scary thought.

I know what I am doing for the empty shop … the paper planes., and I know what I am doing for the Soup collective exhibition at Tate Liverpool – I’m being lazy and doing a variation of the paper houses again. But for the Bridewell exhibition, I’m struggling a bit. The theme is ‘Inhospitable’ and I have several ideas running around my head somewhere, but I just can’t get them to the making stage. I just hope I can unblock those thoughts in the next week or so or I will be in trouble : /

Its always this dilemma around the Liverpool Biennial time… I feel I can either do one exhibition and feel comfortable about it… or I can do, in this case, FIVE and be tearing my hair out. What do you do though? Isn’t it best to make the most of any publicity and jump on the bandwagon?

Links to exhibitions.

Bound : http://abcarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/bound_8.html

Host: http://www.independentsbiennial.org/2012/08/07/host-by-soup-collective/

Inhospitable: http://www.independentsbiennial.org/2012/08/03/inhospitable-scibase-at-the-bridewell/

I’ve written so many statements in the last few days, it’s all becoming a bit of a blur now. I’ve now ( I think) sorted the blurb for the first of the Independents exhibitions : http://www.independentsbiennial.org/2012/08/03/thus-far-the-miles-an-installation-by-wendy-williams-15-30-september/

I have so many paper planes in my house that they are spilling out of the boxes. Like the houses I made for my last installation ( in the same venue) I can only realistically make 20 a day before I start screaming. I have six weeks left before I install…….

I have three lots of artwork on the go at the moment – all needed for the Liverpool Independents Biennial starting on 15 September and no end in sight for any of them : http://www.independentsbiennial.org/2012/05/04/registered-artist-wendy-williams/

So, while I’ve been spending all this time concentrating on the Independents, I haven’t applied for a single exhibition, done any open shows, thought about what comes after November…. or even kept up this blog!

It was very fortunate then that an exhibition I had bothered to chase up many months ago ( when I had the energy to fill in an application and think up a proposal!) came back to me, inviting me to exhibit.

I will be showing 3 of my ‘books’ ( and I use the term loosely!) at ‘Bound’ – an exhibition organised by the artist book collective and will be part of Divided we Fall, in Leeds.

http://basementartsproject.wordpress.com/divided-we-fall-13th-august-to-26th-august/bound-14th-24th-august-library-opening-times/

So while I’m spending every free minute I have making these new installations ( which I will write about later ) I feel happy that with my work being installed in Leeds, people won’t think that I’ve actually fallen off the planet!

One thing we noticed yesterday when invigilating our exhibition, was the huge difference that the time of day made to an exhibition space. In the evening, it is a gallery and people will walk in without any hesitation. In the daytime though, the space becomes a ‘shop’ and they begin to fear crossing over the threshold in case they have to buy something.

They stood glaring through the window at my houses, ooing and arring and taking lots of photos, but when we gestured for them to come in, they walked away.

We did entice quite a lot in though and if I could have £1 for every photo that was taken of my work, I could probably have a month off!

Today, we’ve decided to take a break. We’ve left the lights on so that all viewings can be done safely from the window!

While setting up the exhibition the other day, I was told of some comments another artist had made. I can’t quote exactly, but it was on the lines of ‘ If you can’t be a full time artist, then don’t do it at all’.

I hadn’t had a day off last week, so had to set up the exhibition during my breaks. Fortunately, the unit was just a few doors down from where I work, so I was able to go there very early ( before work) and run across on my lunch and afternoon breaks. It was really tiring doing it and probably wouldn’t have been able to complete it without the help of Jackie ( Jacqueline Kerr, who I shared the space with) …. but I found the comment really deflating and quite insulting.

Good luck to anyone who can be a ‘full time’ artist…. who has the funding to support themselves, but sorry – I’m not one of them! I’ll probably go back to this subject another time as there’s a lot I can say, but for this post, I’ll stick to my current exhibition.

Jackie was able to stay at the unit for most of the 2 day set up and was an enormous help. I’d spread the houses out but every time I dashed back to work, I had a re think over the layout. I decided that to make full use of the space, the houses should be laid out with a slight swirl. This would enhance the colour variation and say more about the idealist housing estate I was trying to convey.

Seeing me struggle, Jackie offered to finish off so I could go back to work – giving her full artistic license as it were.

Returning to the installation later, I was mortified to see that she’d added extra ‘ swirls’, making it far more decorative that I wanted it to be. Admittedly, I was very tempted to change it again, but had second thoughts. I thought about the time when I had installed Julie Dodd’s work in the Stockholm exhibition. On asking how she wanted it set out, she said she was happy to see how others curated it, as every time it looked slightly different.

So, taking a deep breath and let someone else ‘control’ my work, I left it. After all, artworks can be interpreted in any way and with housing, people do make changes .

As the work can be seen easily from the window, a crowd had gathered in no time at all. Letting people in, I was really surprised at how many positive comments there were over the layout.

For such a short exhibition, we got an incredible amount of coverage as part of lightnight Liverpool. We had a huge amount of visitors last night and we’re taking it in turns today to sit in the space today to open it up to people.