My house (home?) is ‘on the market’. It is a very strange feeling, not only does it mark a significant point of change of my life, it is also all so uncertain. Change is a very current theme that appears to permeate so much right now. Perhaps it’s the scale and range of the changes that everyone is experiencing that makes them seem so all pervasive.
Some of the changes that I am still struggling with are the shifts in technology. Starting to ‘log in’ again after weeks (months?) of keeping my laptop away from dirt, dust and paint I have notice just how much goes on ‘on-line’. I’ve missed nearly 60 messages and events on facebook, and at the same time I hardly received any post or messages on my answer machine. Friends who write and leave telephone messages (rather than voice mail) are, save one, those living outside of London.
Beyond keeping in touch with friends I am becoming concerned that my preference for old style forms of communication could be detrimental to my life as an artist. Some of those facebook messages were invitations to exhibition openings. An increasing number of opportunities are listed on-line, which is terrible for someone like me who does not enjoy reading and scrolling through screen pages. I can see the attraction (economic and environmental) of electronic media but I am a material, object and tactile loving person. I like to feel the pages of a magazine, I flip backwards and forwards, I have a ‘code’ of turning over and tearing page corners to mark things of interest. I’ve been doing and refining my media skills for more than 25 years now and I’m finding the speed of change to electronic/digital media too much!
I’ve been invited to show Go-Go again. It’s a very interesting project – the M2 Gallery (who showed it at their Peckham site) have invited four artists to take part in a kind of ‘meter cubed’ gallery/pavilion that they are making this summer. I cycled past where the gallery/pavilion will be sited yesterday, it will be very interesting to see how Go-Go’s light splatter works in that location.
This morning I’m going to have coffee with some of the other artists that used to be the core of Crystal Palace Artists. It’ll be good to hear what they are up to and to be with other artists again!
