The main thing that I realised whilst doing Kinetica last week was the range of interpretations and assumptions that people put onto your work.
I have difficulty in understanding this as I come from the stance that ‘if I know it – you know it’ and therefore my work is so completely strightforward that no-one would ever need to ask about it. How wrong I am.
This is however, where the fun lies, and having work that is basically reconstituted laundry, brings about far more interesting interpretations than most.
As my ideas have developed over a very long period of time due to lack of making time (thank you small children) and the fact that I seem incapable of making anything simple and quick, my work does contain quite a lot of diverse reasoning. It is funny to realise that people come to some very simplistic and comical responses, which to be fair, so would I if saw someone exhbibiting pulsating socks with udder-like contraptions hanging below them; a depressive inflatable woman and a promotional leaflet that would get you arrested if you wore it on the bus home.
Please feel free to put your own analysis on these pictures….
KINETICA Art Fair is over. I’ve collected my work and now have to reflect on the whole amazing experience.
What a fabulous week. I expected to have a very boring time sitting by my work for 10 hours a day but far from it. I have never had so many very funny conversations with lovely people who were genuinely interested in what I was doing. All the other exhibitors were wonderful and offered lots of helpful technical advice (always great for a technophobe with interactive work). I was amazed at the diversity of practice. Everything you could think of was represented – lego that played music, legs that walked alone, holographic mermaids, music box PCs and the man who invented the bouncy castle. What more could you want?
I have never been to an art fair before but what everyone tells me is that they are generally rather dull, you never get to talk to the artists and if you don’t have a big bag of cash then the dealer won’t give you the time of day let alone talk to you about the work. Kinetica is the absolute antithesis to all these things.
The main thing I have found from the whole spectacular is that to stand infront of three pieces of work, having to justify what you have made, and to explain the ideas behind it to 12,000 people for 10 hours a day is a very clarifying experience. This is made even more interesting when the work you are representing is made solely from holey old socks and raggedy clothing.
To have made so many people laugh and then look with wonder and ponder at my SOCKPAINTINGS and inflatable WORN woman made from discarded clothing made me realise that I really am, finally doing the right thing.
I’m now feeling a strange mix of nervousness and relief.
My work is up at Kinetica and I am really please with how it looks.
Considering the trials and tribulations that got it there the actual hanging of the work was pretty quick and easy. My nervous anticipation is now for the reactions of everybody else.
Relieved (but not yet counting my chickens) to say that my work is READY for Kinetica.
Despite many disagreements in artistic matters my wonderful father has been a dedicated assistant and without his help I would be crying in the snow somewhere by now. I feel terrible for the sleepless nights I have given him in worry about how to transport my annoyingly awkward work – he keeps wistfully saying that life would be much easier if only I painted tasteful watercolours instead of sewing holey old socks into interactive contraptions.
He may have a point.
I hardly dare think it let alone say it out loud but (whisper it) I think the snow is melting…
Having been in a state of apoplexy about not getting to London for KINETICA next week and realising that if I can’t get there i will have wasted so much money on the whole endeavour for nothing that I could cry (and money could have gone instead to my RNIB London Marathon fund) I feel a small amount of hope that it MAY be ok – as long as there is no more snow, or ice.
Living in the deepest darkest countryside has many advantages but access to the artworld is not one of them. Whilst I can get to London for a day trip the actualities of getting work there are still tricky. I have never ever driven in London – and was a little apprehensive about it without the prospect of even getting to London being like crossing the arctic. And although my home is quite near a mainish road, my studio is in a very small village which at the hint of snow is instantly cut off from all civilisation. Guess where all my KINETICA work is stored.
