On my way London … and other parts of the UK. My flight bords in 30 minutes. I haven’t been in the UK since 2019, and not in England since 2018 … I should have been there in spring 2020 to celebrate my mother’s 80th but Covid 19 came … I should have been there last summer but then staff shortages and chaos at Heathrow came. I feel apprehensive – friends and family have repeatedly mentioned that things have changed in the UK. I am already very aware of this – I can’t … or rather have been strongly advised not to … put anything through my business account – no exhibition tickets, no books or catalogues, no materials, nothing. Doing so would in the eyes of the Swedish tax authority (who have very big and wide eyes) mean that I have traded with a ’third country’ that is not the first country, Sweden, nor a second country, anywhere in Europe or Scandinavia, but a third country – anywhere in the rest of the world. Dealing with a third country requires registering certified accounts with the tax office every quarter, the cost of this alone would wipe out any modest profit that I might make on my practice … in fact it would put in a deficit (according to the accountant who does my annual non-certified accounts). It might seem like a small thing … the price of entry to a show at Tate of the V&A (hardly ’small’ in themselves), a book or two, and maybe some glitter or some fabric … but it means that I am forced to travel to Britain, which will always be my place or origin, as a tourist rather than as a professional artist. And that irks me.
Of course I will go to shows, I will meet my artist friends, I will buy books and materials, I will do all the things that I usually do and no-one will see any difference … not unless they look very closely when I pay … I will be using my personal bankcard, not my business account card.
I am going to miss going to my studio … which after a hectic couple of months is feeling more and more like my happy place.
For about a day and a half I thought that my existential question – what kind of artist am I? – had been resolved by default … but not. A colleague at the studio mentioned that they had been called for interview for the half-time position that has been causing me much consternation, I had not – so I reasoned that despite being invited to apply my application/experience wasn’t what they were looking for – problem solved. It was only when they said something about getting both an auto-response confirming their application and the call to interview that I began to wonder if my application had been received.
I checked my inbox again, and then my scrap-mail inbox … no confirmation of receipt email. So had they even received my application? I tried to find some trace of it but it being an online application all I could find was my word document which I cut and pasted from.
Not wanting to appear ungrateful or ignorant I though it best to email and ask if my application had been received. A few minutes later I was having a phone conversation with the very concerned the head of department – yes they had received my application, and I had been invited to interview. He was on his way somewhere and would be in touch later.
I have no triple checked by email – all possible inboxes – no sign of any communication from the county. There is a bit of history with this – during the pandemic they offered the chance to submit a digital portfolio for a project where the counties would purchase works from artists in other counties. I submitted by portfolio. A few months later at my show at the artists’ club someone from the county expressed surprise that I hadn’t submitted work to the purchasing project. I explained that I had, they said that they hadn’t seen it. A month or so after that I heard from the person who had visited my exhibition … my portfolio had been submitted but had something had gone wrong and it hadn’t been forwarded to them.
We’ve yet to work out what went wrong this time … could I have misspelled my email address on the application … it seems very unlikely …
So now I have to negotiate a digital interview as I leaving for the UK on Saturday and the interviews are next week. That might ot be possible so that might rule me out. If it is possible then I have to prepare for an interview … this time I need to make sure that I listen really carefully to what they say about the role and that I ask the right questions so that should I be offered it I can make the right decision … whatever that might be!
In other news …
I have filled, sanded, and painted the wooden peg that the pink ties were hanging on – it looks noticeably better! The ties themselves are being refined, the manufacturer’s labels and the tail secure loops have been removed – meaning that not only will they hang more elegantly but there isn’t the visual distraction of either labels of loops.
Progress!
