A day off… an actual day of not going out to work, or creating any work of my own. Bliss. It’s having these periods of time that allows you to just take stock of where you are up to.
Even though my last blog was dated 30 December of last year, these last 3 months have literally been nonstop work.
I spent most of January and early February preparing for SUPERMARKET; The Stockholm Independent Art fair: http://www.supermarketartfair.com/ …. ( more about that on my other blog: www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/sing… so I won’t bore everyone by going over the ins and outs yet again – exciting as it was…to us anyway!)
After returning from Stockholm and settling back to work, I began on my installation for the Journeys exhibition at Chapel Gallery. Well, I didn’t actually begin then…. I’d sent in my proposal for the exhibition last year and found that I’d been accepted by October. As my installation was based around the novel The Cruel sea, I searched through EBay for cheap second hand books and bought several copies. By November I’d started cutting into one of the paperbacks.
I’ve seen so many book sculptures by artists, but I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to actually cut into the pages! I gave up after a week… but to be fair, I needed to concentrate on the Arts Council funding application and work to take to Sweden.
So I then had a month to make at least 280 ships ( I’d calculated the least amount I could make to fill the space) By ‘a month’, I actually mean 6 days off from work ( between other stuff I have to do )and as much as I could do in the evenings.
Oh never again…..!! I felt close to killing someone ( anyone!!) by the time it came to install my work. It is unbelievably tedious to cut out so many shapes, glue them together and then wait for the glue to dry before adding another section to them.
I’d assumed that I would be setting out the ships on a raised platform, but was a bit disappointed that the ‘base’ was really quite low – AND very close to the main entrance. It is actually fantastic that my work is the first thing that you see, but it meant that every draught from the door just blew the ships over. Two hours of sticking each individual ship down and constant interruptions from the public, who were passing through to the cafe and asking ‘ is that the Titanic?’ , I was finally done.
Journeys. Chapel Gallery. West Lancs. ….until 5 May.
