Since the last entry, apart from school starting for my kids (an intense time of transition for everyone), and the opening of the shape of things show at Flow Gallery last week, I have been buried in text editing for both galleries and preparing objects for this week of design composition in the studio with Raphaella, my dear friend who has worked with me on a lot of projects, assisting and project managing. Always a grounding and practical influence and we get focused well together. We have managed to test hang two of the three portraits in two days -pretty good going. The third, the Tallo portrait, has twice the number of objects so will take a lot longer.
I did some rough sketches of the sculptures based on the shapes of objects and my perception of the groups as a whole, but it is like painting -one stroke (object) leads to another and also one suggests the next -especially as I know their stories, the associations between them start to connect and interact and ask to be placed in certain points within the composition. Of course it will all look different within the gallery, topped and tailed with mirrors, but at least this isn’t a complete unknown as it follows, in a methodological sense, The Gifts (1-99), so we are using the learning from that to work more clearly and swiftly and pre-empt what will be needed for the real installing. Like the way objects are numbered and mapped etc. It’s a two person job and I only have Raphaella for four days and the objects will be picked up next Tuesday to go to the NPG, so I am riding the deadline with focus and really enjoying seeing it all come into alignment. We have had to make adjustments -which is a pain when you are hanging objects one by one from a great height – but the composition has to be right, No doubt there will be more adjustments on site but it is so essential to work it all out three dimensionally first. Back to text editing now, another of my late night tasks…
