Nottingham Trent

image of my current work

I was asked to write a piece for our degree show catalogue…and this is the final piece I have written.

I decided I wanted it to be like a stream of consciousness …kind of note like.

Writing.

Writing…the quest to express something of life…to translate a notion,    an experience,    a record of something we don’t want to let fade into the distance…. the distant past.      Through this natural….or strangely unnatural urge to create, we all as future artists… are yearning for this translation…this ability to make something that replicates an element of what is already there…. or to invent something that shows elements of what we see could be there.

On occasion, this urge can only be portrayed through language. Sometimes words are the only way… the only way to find… or even come close to describing…to creating… to fulfilling this urge.

Language is everywhere. It is vital within the visual art context…You may not realise it…but subtly it is everywhere…from the titles we give our work, to the pieces written about it, to the conversations that surround it. It is the beginning of the art…the core. Only from the words, the thoughts created in the mind…and then transcribed out onto the paper of your moleskin notebook …and then…only then does it reach materialisation.  It is the beginning and the end… the bookends that encase our practice…and at the same time, the thread that runs through and binds, holding the object and intention together

At times, nothing but the simple complex forms of words could possibly transcribe and portray what is yearned to tell you… intensions of giving something to this world. 

Of bringing you in to ours and thus forming a bond…a bond only reached through the connection of an idea.

Sometimes things cannot just be translated into an image. A visual image just isn’t enough…it cannot describe fully… it cannot control like a word can… It cannot take you completely in…and then…if it chooses…chuck you out on to the street… fed up with the unreality or the rational that you bring to it.  Words surround us daily. They have the power to encircle, to grab hold of you…and not let go…until they feel like it.    A photograph can signify memories…you can see the look in the eyes, the location, perhaps the occasion…yet…only a series of letters, that make up words, that make up a sentence, that make up a paragraph, that can completely entangle you. There is no escape once you are in…yet if you could …you probably wouldn’t choose to.

Sometimes reality just becomes overtaken by the signs of reality…or the debris…of what we leave behind.  The real…the facts and figures…the experiences I long to cling on to…grab hold of…become a work of fiction…or what we want to remember and what precise moments we choose to let stay in the edited version of our past.

Something more is needed in the image than you can ever create visually.

Text can sometimes be the only way to show more…give a smell, and air, a lighting a composition that images have to leave out.

You cannot keep building.

advert for our show

I have recently just seen the initial draft of the advertising poster for our show…and I think it is terrible. It looks as if someone has just found computers and photoshop and used every tacky function in the book..i mean..on the screen…spray paint and jaggedy images.,..you cant even tell what they are!

It’s ridiculous…now how do I get up the confidence to tell someone?!!

top [Thursday 22 Mar 2007]

MY REVISED ARTIST STATEMENT

Art is a connection;

a pathway that connects the artist with their audience.

Through this idea, I aim to produce work that can reach the viewer on a personal level, by evoking memories, exposing my own, and taking them through an experience that connects us intimately.

I am mainly interested in recording myself and others around me;

It is the notion of watching people and exploring the boundaries or ‘crossover’ between innocent observation and actually becoming an intrusive voyeur that truly intrigues and excites me.

The people of our world seem to have an obsession with being noticed. I share the idea that we are all worried that one day we will realise that our life has passed us by without us being recorded and thus not continuing to existing in some form after we have physically gone with writer Margaret Atwood.[1]

My audience is for not for the young as it can be quite intimate and could be unsuitable, but apart from that, it is for anyone: each viewer has the potential to develop characters within my story and thus become entwined with my memories.

I am continually writing down descriptions, feelings, notes on certain experiences in my many notebooks and incorporate parts of it into my freewriting when appropriate and where certain thoughts spark off connections to these recordings of past encounters.

My work takes the form of language and text within a performative context. Through live performances of typing, I have explored the act of writing, where time is overlapped, where the dimensions of memories in the past, and the record of people in the present are merged.

I am very interested in how the words appear on the page and fall

down

the page

and how each pause and how it is supposed to be read is shown through the spacing.

Through being personal and writing about private and intimate relationships and experiences, it creates a sense of awkwardness and the uncomfortable for the audience. I find this control that it gives me, a very important part of my work.

Within my work there is a continual theme of the idea of playing games and ‘role-play’. During the performances, I take on the roles and perspectives of different people, both real and fictional. Throughout the piece, there is persistent questioning on whether it is make believe or truth or a mixture.

When it comes down to it… it all really…

is just a game.

[1] ("Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we are still alive. We wish to assert our existence…At the very least we want a witness. We can’t stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.") (ATWOOD, M., Blind Assassin, P188)

I have just found out that my proposal has been accepted for one of the "Rules of Game" exhibitions at Surface Gallery, Mansfield Road, Nottingham. It is titled "Double Take" and will be on 15th-19th May 2007.

I feel pretty excited yet scared as it is so close to the degree show, although I feel that it will be a good chance to prepare for it and hopefully straighten out any problems.

Today I talked with the curator at 1pm and we have sorted out where I will be showing/performing and talked through the work of others within the exhibition.  I think it should be good. It’s all about perception and possibilities of things not being quite as they seem. I feel that mine should fit in with this.

I am currently worrying slightly about finding the perfect desk and making sure that I can hire out a projector from the stores at uni, and also that it will not overheat, and that I can find a really cheap laptop to buy(all i need is notepad on it) so that I can leave it on the gallery, without too much worry.

But they seemed enthusiastic about my piece. I will start just before the opening begins, and then continue for the first hour, and then finish and hopefully enjoy the rest of the opening night with a couple of glasses of red wine!(fingers crossed I wont need them too much by them).

I think the most worrying part, is that people I know will be there..and what I write about can be quite personal and intimate, and although they should be questioning whether it is real or not…Im not sure I want acquaintances to know me quite that well!! it’s so much easier with strangers!!

Especially with a particular person who is also exhibiting…I am unsure whether that means that I wont be able to write about certain things, or whether it will just mean that it will be more powerful?

I dont know…I suppose I shall just have to wait and see!