Supermarket day -1
Nice calm day for me. A few more registrations for the Meetings – a couple are nearly full, others have yet to attract a registration. I don’t got around the booths and ask about interest in Meetings while the exhibitors are setting up – they have more than enough to be getting on with!
My visit to the charity shop to borrow some more chairs and a coffee table was fruitless. They don’t have sufficient stock to loan out more than the three sofas that were borrowed over the weekend. So the Meeting Room won’t be as cosy and eclectic as I had hoped.
I am both looking forward to and a little nervous about sitting on with every meeting. I am sure that after the first meeting it will feel natural and make sense. My ambition is to take care of the the ’housework’ – making it easier for the moderator/host to focus on the discussion.
It is amazing how quickly the time passes here. I can’t claim that it was a particularly productive day but things have been done, conversations had … and that is what it’s about.
Supermarket 2025 day -2
As soon as I arrive at the venue the last year collapses in on itself and I feel as though it was only yesterday that I was here. It’s so nice to see the team again. I am certainly one of the older generation – not simply chronologically, but in that I have been involved in the fair, in one way or another every year since 2011 – that’s fourteen years! And then there are the exhibitors too … many of whom I have gotten to know over their regular participation. Of course some exhibitor names are familiar even though the members/artists attending the fair differ from year to year.
I love the sense of anticipation in the exhibition hall, the almost palpable focus and concentration as artists make real the booth that they applied for six months ago. This year I am seeing all of this with new eyes … in ten weeks time it will be me, and at least two other artist/collaborators, putting together our presentation at the Juxtapose art fair. Shoes will be on other feet!
Yesterday I sent L and R’s proposals for a performance and a participatory event to Juxtapose (deadline today). That sounds so formal … I could equally say that I let Pam and Cecilie know what L and R want to do. Pam and Cecilie are coming to Supermarket over the weekend, and we will be meeting for brunch on Sunday morning. I definitely have a professional friendship with Pam who I have gotten to know through the Meetings and Think Tanks programmes. Going to Juxtapose as an exhibitor/participant is incredibly exciting and feels like a great step in re-engaging with … re-activating … Glitter Ball.
M and I submitted applications for travel funding to help us get to Aarhus. I have been in touch with a couple of artist-run initiatives in Copenhagen – one of whom I know through Supermarket and Juxtapose – who we will visit on our way back to Sweden.
The blindingly obvious only struck me a while ago … much of what I do is about making connections. That might be connecting people, as I do with the meetings programme at Supermarket. It might be making connections between artworks as I do with my curatorial work. It might be inviting other people to make connections with art as I do with my pedagogic work. It’s almost a little embarrassing to only now realise the connection between these practices and some of the materials that I use – ties. I mean literally second-hand and deadstock men’s ties . What are ties if not connections?
Interestingly the Swedish for tie is ’slips’. Of course it has nothing to do with slips (English) as in small mistakes, lapses, errors, or misses … and yet in my head there is of course the aural connection. Unlike the word tie, which in English is both a noun and a verb, slips (Swedish) is simply a noun describing the (now) decorative fabric item worn around a shirt collar. In my head though the synapses fire and momentarily connect ties (noun, strips of fabric) with ties (verb, the joining of things) with slips (verb, to slide) and slips (noun, lapses and errors).
