Project Me

I am truly appreciative of the support and encouragement that I have received from artist, curator, and academic Michael Petry over the years since meeting him 2007. Being included in his latest epic tome ’Mirror Mirror’ is an incredible privilege. I’m in a book! A serious proper art book!! And I can hardly believe the company that I am in!

A stroke of luck (technically bad luck but that’s for another time and place) meant that I could attend the UK launch last night at the Groucho Club in London. It was great to catch up with Michael and to meet some of the other artists featured in the volume – and a super surprise to see my old studio colleague and fellow Crystal Palace Artists founder Tine Bech. Tine is an amazing person and it was wonderful to bump into her like that.

Thames and Hudson’s World of Art series was a fundamental part of my early engagement with art, and their David Hockney monograph was my (unconscious? … subconscious? …) introduction to gay art. This adds an extra dimension to being in a book published by them.

I am looking forward to having a proper look at the book … for now I can say that I am delighted that ’Play’ (vhs gay porn tape installation, 2009) is in the ’material’ chapter.

Roberto Ekholm was of course there too – he’s worked with Michael for over eighteen years now! We continued our loose conversation about doing a two-person show – an idea that we have been speaking about since before his pre-pandemic show at Glitter Ball. It’s definitely something that I want to make happen. There’s a nice symmetry with him being a Swede relocated in the UK and me being a Brit relocated in Sweden. The timing feels good for both of us. Although he has been in the UK far longer than I have been in Sweden we are both feeling that a show in our countries of origin would be appropriate and meaningful.

Does writing applications count as artistic activity? It is certainly an activity that artists do … a time consuming, frustrating, and more often than not a fruitless one at that. In the past three weeks I have made three applications: one wonderfully quick and simple; two more challenging – one of which contained a section which until I attended an ’advice workshop’ I had not been provoked by and now I am.

The section in question concerns providing evidence of income for the past three years. At the workshop we learned that our eligibility for the ’artists’ working award’ might be deemed weak if we have a reasonable/liveable income. This provoking as there is no distinction made between income earned through artistic practice and income earned through paid employment unrelated to one’s practice. As a single artist without a private income I have to have a regular to ensure that I can pay my rent and put food on the table, I also subsidise my arts practice from this paid work. This paid work prevents me from being a full-time artist. The income declaration can be easily checked by the award giving body as information regarding income, tax, and assets is public information in Sweden. So someone who receives support from a partner or other family member, or who has non-taxable private income or assets, can declare income earned solely from their practice and in all likelihood appears to be in far greater financial need of the the award than someone having to work part-time in order to support themselves and their practice.

In the modest space provided ’give account of significant variation of income, for example high sales of work’ I have quite possibly shot myself in the foot by stating in no uncertain terms that more than 90% of my income is earned outside of my practice and that I am too poor to be a poor artist … did I mention that having debt precludes eligibility for the award?

Prior to the workshop I assumed that the income declaration was simple to see that you were ticking along and had some kind of economic stability. I had not imagine that it might used to assess ’need’. Where did that Swedish notion (false by the way) of equality go?

I am truly frustrated by these kinds of biases and Catch 22 situations that reasonable artists find themselves dealing with all too often. Frustration breeds frustration … and now I find myself frustrated by the realisation that the administrative staff working with these grant applications are on far higher, far more secure, salaries than any of the awards that they are administering … and certainly won’t have been expected to spend a full working week (40 hours unpaid labour) applying for their job.

The amount of the award has not increased in several years. The advice at the workshop was to think of it as a six to nine month award rather than a year’s – which is how it used to be referred to.

This is my fifth, possibly sixth, application for the artists’ working award. I am not holding my breath … not least because the results are not known until April next year.

The other challenging application is part of a ’course’ … a series of seminars, study visits, and workshops … that I am attending. The application is in the form of an Open Call for a public art commission. There is no actual commission but a few of the applicants will be selected and given a fee to make a ’sketch presentation’ to a would-be selection panel. Everyone who applies will be given feedback on their application – which is kind of the point of the the exercise – to find out why one was or was not selected to progress to the sketch stage. The Open Call was specifically vague as the selected artists will collectively decide the site for the fictitious commission.

Update 2024 11 19: my Open Call application was not successful. I am waiting for feedback.

I am travelling home with a suitcase full of vintage sequins and probably not far shy of one hundred meters of hat wire. There is adequate room for them in my case as I travelled with clothes that I could leave at my parents’ apartment should it be appropriate – it is appropriate.

I am not exactly sure what I will do with the sequins – a collection of reels in a glorious colours: champagne translucent, pale pink iridescent, teal, fucshia, fire orange – I see them on new drape pieces … extensions and developments of the material needs exercise.

I want to be in the studio, to gently close the door to, and to surround myself with my glitter, with my fabrics, with my ties, with my sequins, and my needles and my threads and my pins and my wires … and to pretend that everything is going to carry on just the way it is.

I shall go to the studio, I shall makes things, everything though will change … and that’s okay, that’s how it is … it’s just going to take some getting used to. My hope is that things will change slowly until … until they don’t change anymore … until the come to rest.

And then I will keep going knowing that that is exactly what I am meant to be doing. That that was always the meaning even before I knew how to make things, before I knew who I was, before I knew how to breath

It’s often when I want most … need most … to write that I have the least time to do so. Nothing collecting three new boxes of ties – seconds, nothing about the open studios, nothing about Know How, nothing about Skulpturjogging, nothing about Uppsala Open Studios, nothing about Alina Kopysta’s talk, nothing about the paper weave, nothing about visiting the Iaspis Open Studios, nothing (as yet) about the basic embroidery course at Handarbetets Vänner …

I don’t particularly want to ’play catch-up’. At the same time I am aware that I feel the desire to account for my time, to record what I have been up to, to perhaps sort through all this activity – to work through things in some kind of order … to order them.

Not one of the lgbtqi+ organisations in that I got in touch with after Uppsala Pride has responded to my email. It’s rather disappointing as the artist who proofread it for me said that it sounded like an exciting project. I will send the email again, and then follow-up with phone calls to the organisations that have phone numbers – several do not, simply Facebook pages and gmail accounts. Echos of other people’s difficulties in getting group activities ring in my ears. I thought that after making personal contact things would be easier … it seems not!

The project design is not finalised and if there is insufficient interest from potential collaborator participants then I will reduce that aspect of the project and focus more on my own research and work. I can arrange some drop-in workshops and promote those … though the current situation does not make me expect a great of enthusiasm … lgbtqi+ Uppsala malaise? Or perhaps it is the slow turning of Swedish associations’ democratic processes. Perhaps my suggestion needs to be tabled at the next scheduled management committee meeting, the pros and cons discussed, a member of the committee to draft a reply, that to be discussed with a working group before returning it to the full committee for approval, then perhaps an email to me.

I want to re-read … to find them first … the references to Eugène’s mother. And if possible to find out more about their relationship. A stern woman if I remember correctly … religious? A widower – her husband, Eugène and Adrian’s father, dying relatively young. Eugène lived with his mother much of his life – I don’t think that he ever had his own apartment, he simply moved into his studio – the studio where he invited his models to exercise and train … did he train with them? Did his mother ever visit? Did they drink tea and talk about art?

I want to read between the lines of the story that Eugène’s mother burnt his sketchbooks and correspondence – between and across the lines. Context.

The relationship between Eugéne’s mother and her gay artist son was never meant to be a part of the project and yet it seems to ask for attention. It came unbidden.

The sketch that I made on Friday – material needs exercise 1 – is something that I have had in mind for a while … perhaps over a year. It felt very necessary to make is on Friday … to make something material, to get something out.

It brought to mind something that I made in my second year (maybe first year) at Dartington. The pieces are really that similar but there is a certain baroque-ness about them, an outpouring.

I wrote those two short paragraphs last week. I had thought to merely take a short break however I didn’t return to them and the post that I had imagined writing did not get written. I am getting used to knowing that my mother has cancer again, this time though it is not treatable. I am not going to write about that however I want to acknowledge it here.