So, Strained Fruit is happily singing away up at the country park. All that is left to do now is my ACE evaluation form. How I hate forms!
I am imagining that this will take nearly as long as the project itself. However I have grabbed the nettle in both hands and have tackled the nastiest bit first – the budget – big swot that I am, and thankfully all seems to be neatly balancing out – phew.
Now for the rest of it….
I am now going to go against the purpose of this blog – I am going to talk about something that you should never talk about – for WD you need to be forever sunny, forever successful – I am going to talk about rejection.
Despite my obviously BRILLIANT ideas, over this past weekend I have received no less than four proposal rejections.
In addition to this, I have a project that they just haven’t replied to so I must suppose, after all this time, I can add this one to the pile.
I am quite good at ‘water off a duck’s back’ but honestly. At what point does all this make you question what you are doing? I think I have good ideas but if no-one else does then am I wrong? and what about following your own path and doing what feels right?
I have come to the conclusion that the main problem I have is that my work does not fit into a neat little box and, generally speaking, people don’t like this.
Or maybe it’s just a load of old rubbish and I should go and get a ‘proper job’.
So, apologies for cross pollination, but here are a load of balls.
Finally got to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern today – having failed a couple of weeks ago due to massive Damien Hirst queue slowing ticket office down.
Brilliant – if you haven’t seen it GO!
The last room is the best – magical. But I also loved the phallic boat and shoes and sofa and clothes.
As someone who has made the odd proturberance in my time these were very compelling. Such a shame (of course I understand why) that you can’t touch them – I would love to know if they are squishy or not. So much art needs touch too but how do you get over the practical problems of this?
My children loved it all too, particularly the luminous sticker room. Confidently expecting a ‘sticker-fest’ in our house soon.
During my car journeys today I have been pondering upon the complexities of autobiographical work and problems therein.
What do you do if you want to make work about your life or aspects of it but don’t want to have that ‘airing your dirty laundry’ feeling.
It would be easy enough if you were an author – nom de plumes are ‘de-rigeur’. But what if like ‘Belle de Jour’ you are unmasked? What is the equivalent in visual arts – Banksy? Did Bob and Roberta Smith try to hide his identity to begin with or is it an elaborate joke?
Currrently listening to old Blur I am reminded that a lot of autobiographical music emanates from the ends of relationships – what if the work you want to make comes from the core but you don’t really want the others involved to know your thoughts?
Do you have to rewrite the enigma code?
Just asking……
Socially disengaged artist
