Skanör, Skåne
Yesterday at the beach I sketched the leaden cloud … clouds … that filled the sky and hung heavily over the sea. Did I sketch because I wanted to or because I felt that I should? Intellectually I understand that sketching is an exercise that trains the eye and that hones the connection between the eye and the hand … it’s just that it feels somehow artificial … as though I am performing … doing what is expected … doing what I expect of myself if I am to be taken seriously as an artist. The blustery conditions meant that the cloudscape was in constant evolution … never static … how to convey that in graphite on paper? I was aware of the difference in scale between the vast and rolling sky, and the small movements of my hand across the A5 page. Sketching … observational sketching is not a regular part of my practice. The last time that I sketched was probably this time last year when I was here with L … what does it mean to be an annual sketcher?
I am thinking about the walk on the beach in Latvia … an exercise in experience rather than image … another way of paying attention. If it hadn’t been for that walk and seeing those tall pines collapsed at the frontline of the beach’s errosion of the forrest I may not have come to the more collapsed positions in subsequent installations.
Writing now I am recalling a series of ink sketches made on the insides of disected manilla envelopes … broad landscapes loosely sketched in fountain-pen ink … each envelope opened up so as to create the widest panorama. I made them when I was on my foundation course. Did I take materials with me to Plumberow Mount and work there … I don’t remember that crucial (?) detail at all. Were there sketches of the Southend seascape … estuaryscape? … too? I do remember keeping some of those sketches for a long time. I liked the dark ink on the unglazed and absorbent light tan paper. I miss manilla envelopes … their colour, their texture, their proportion … their materiality.
Yesterday I laughed out loud, several times, in a gallery … I can’t remember the last time that I did that. The show, a retrospective: Roman Signer at Malmö konsthall.
I ’kind of knew’ his work … from some group/thematic shows … maybe something at the Haywood (London) in the 90s but I could be very wrong about that. I was excited to learn that he had a solo, his first in Sweden, that coincided with my being here in the south. I didn’t just laugh … I smiled, wondered, and even felt an odd little nervous excitement. It was the video/film pieces that made me laugh … and that made me nervous – there is something cartoon-like about several of them: they put me in mind of Tom and Jerry, and Roadrunner or more accurately Wile E Coyote. The static camera records the scene, there is stillness, you know that something is about to happen – that the stillness is about to be shattered … literally exploded … I feel an excited tension build in my body … anticipation … and then in perfect synch with the explosion comes the release – it lasts perhaps a fraction of a second. And that is when I laugh.
To me … for me … the work is elegant, absurd, playful, ingenious, confident, hilarious, intelligent, simple, refined, mature and childish all at the same time. I find myself drawn into a world of curiosity … of asking ’what if …?’ of experiment for experiment’s sake. He is constantly testing things … testing materials … testing energy. When I was at Dartington I was in the 3-4D … 3/4D… department – the fourth dimension being time, which enabled performance, live, and durational practices, having seen … experienced … Roman Signer’s show I wonder if that fourth dimension was misnamed … misunderstood … misattributed … is the fourth dimension energy? Is energy a dimension?
I am inspired by his curiosity, his consistency, his commitment, his craziness. I love it when I leave an exhibition enthused and desperate to get to the studio and to get on!
It’s been two weeks since I worked in Enköping – I have three working days remaining (in the last week of July) before my sabbatical starts. This time away is time-in-lieu for working full-time most of June. Even after the first few days I noticed a huge change in how I feel – everything seemed so much more appealing and far less harduos. I have been at the studio a lot … doing what I think of as settling in … preparing myself for being here full-time after the summer. It’s pretty quiet here – usually just three of four of us around. It’s so nice having time to eat lunch together on the balcony, last week we went for an ’after work’ (veggie) burger and drink at a pop-up summer cafe a short cycle ride away.
Yesterday evening I watched a short YouTube video about the ’signs of burnout’. I immediately recognised my employed self – especially in the emotional exhaustion – the sense that one is very very close to simply not being able to cope or deal with things. I am smart enough to know that self-diagnosis based on one YouTube film is hardly a medical assessment that one can rely one … however it certainly gave me pause … cause … to think. Have/had things gotten so bad at Enköping that I was a hair’s breadth away from burnout … emotional collapse? I think that they have/had. I don’t need to go in to detail here, but I do want to acknowledge to myself that my sabbatical is more than a period in which to focus on my own practice – it is a necessary stage in extraditing myself from an unhealthy situation.
I am slowly slowly and very pleasantly gathering my materials and thoughts in preparation for the two upcoming train station installations. On the way home last night I picked up the parcel of ’flag holders’ that I had ordered. I have to say that they look far better than I had expected. I am always sceptical when ordering something on the internet – especially something from an unknown supplier. Today I am going to the hardware/diy store to get dowelling and paint to make the flag poles. I’m looking forward to getting on with that task … it’s so nice to know that I can spend a couple of days making a good job of it.
The list of things to do … to catch up with … is ever increasing, however it doesn’t seem so daunting as it did when I was working for the council. Then it seemed positively threatening … which in both physical and mental ways it was. Now things such as updating my website, updating my mailinglist, meeting with the new administrator and project leader at the artists’ club, re-writing parts of the club’s operating manual(?), registering my works bought by local authorities and national arts organisations (for which I will receive a small annual ’rights’ payment), and sorting out the materials and tools that I bought here when I left the studio in Enköping in February, seem like natural parts of my working week – things to to be interwoven with the making and playing that takes place at the studio – rather than things that take time from, or even completely prevent, the making and the playing.
Having time to exercise (in the last two weeks) is also having a positive impact on my wellbeing. I am someone who really needs quite demanding physical exercise to feel good. I am very pleased to have time and space for that in my week now … getting fit for my sabbatical!
It’s so nice to be here at the studio having been to the gym – the start of my day feels wonderfully familiar … or rather like a very welcome return to my preferred routine after several weeks … a month and a half or so … of an other way of being – working almost full-time in Enköping and having other activities that have kept me away from both the studio and the gym. It’s no news to me that both these places are necessary for my physical and mental well being, and while the various events – installing shows, openings, running workshops, taking down shows, meetings at the artists’ club – have been, for the most, enjoyable in themselves the combination of them with extra days of my ’bread’ job have lead to me feeling somewhat less than my best … somewhat frustrated and irritated, and not at home in my own body.
Now that I think about it things have been pretty hectic since March – when the deadline for proofreading the Supermarket art fair catalogue and magazine when fast approaching. Then came the final preparations for the Meetings programme, the fair itself (mid May), followed by the making and installing of the first of the three train station commissions (which I took down yesterday after it’s four week run).
I have been working at least 150% if not more so it’s no wonder that I am looking forward to taking time out from my 50% job. Some weeks it has felt that I have been working more than 200% – eight hour days at the council, two or three hours each evening for either the artists’ club or with various projects, and work/events (installing, openings, meetings) at the weekends too. It’s just not sustainable! Being single there’s no-one around to share the cooking with, to take care of the laundry and/or shopping … I won’t even mention the cleaning …, or to just be there giving that unspoken but very necessary love and support. I became very aware of this when I snapped and ranted at my dear friend K. She made an unfortunate turn of phrase to reflect on my lack of Instagram posts. After I very nearly broke down and cried while rattling off how much I was doing and have been dealing with … and how dare she tell me that I’m not doing enough … should be doing more … I realised that things have gotten very out of hand. We spoke the subsequent day – both of us apologised and then talked things through. I am usually a very calm … too calm? … person and I can count on one hand the number of occasions when I have been triggered and lost control. Those moments are always of course a breaking point and a very obvious sign that things have gotten way out of kilter and that tensions have been building unregulated. So now I know just how bad things have become, and it makes me even more confident in my decision to take a year out from the job with the council – a source of many diverse frustrations, irritations, disappointments, … if only I could run things like the art summer-school all year … how different things would be!
So a day at the studio! A day of sorting and ordering (in ’both’[?] senses of the word – putting things in order and also ordering some materials). There are various boxes and bags lying about on the floor – traces of workshops and projects/shows that were hastily left on flying visits here after busy days elsewhere. There is also a small stack of paperwork that I brought with me from home – things that need filing … sorting and ordering by another name … project notes, contacts, invoices (hopefully already paid), copies of texts. One of my aims for the coming weeks is to get on top of much of the administration and paperwork that has been left to it’s own devices for too long. I think of such things as ’structures for freedom’ … an appropriation of a much admired phrase that I learned at least 30 years ago in a dance workshop in Edinburgh … knowing that I have ’all’ (there aren’t that many!) the project contracts filed in date order and that they can be easily located is the kind of (physical) structure that creates a (mental) freedom for me.
This evening I should have been meeting an artist form the artists’ club to talk through some of the recent turbulent events. He has just asked to postpone until one evening next week – his daughter is making a surprise visit this weekend. I am very happy to postpone … it means that I can take my time and enjoy my day here without looking at the clock … I am pretty sure that I will end up playing with materials into the evening … I picked up some great upholstery fringing at a charity shop on the outskirts of Arboga yesterday …
It was frustrating not to have time to write when I have felt the need to write over the past week. I have to believe that anything truly meaningful will re-emerge in my thoughts … at the moment though I cannot recall what seemed to urgent … I just remember that there were things that I wanted to record here as part of the process of working through them.
Departures and Arrivals: Arboga, opened on Friday – though the work has been in plain sight since it was installed the week before. I was … I always am … anxious before the opening … before meeting the people who commissioned the project, before seeing Kajsa again and her colleagues from the cultural department. Everyone was very complimentary about the work, and there were interesting discussions around flags, making, public art, and materiality. I think that when it is time to go back and de-install I will arrive early and have some time with the piece on my own – I haven’t had this yet. I think that I make some sketches of the work … that might be a way to better understand it … to understand it as an artwork … to spend time with it as an artist … to create some critical distance(?).
The workshop on Wednesday prior to the opening was good fun! Ten fantastic friendly, engaged, lively (in their own ways!) children … young teenagers … tweenagers … made their own flags. Each one was unique, some bold and simple, others intricate and colourful. It felt different from the workshops that I run as the arts education worker for Enköping. Maybe because the participants are familiar with each other, but even when I have run workshops for youth clubs in Enköping it has never felt so enjoyable and so appreciated. Everyone was genuinely eager to be there and to make something … and that enabled me to be a better artist/educator. The two staff members who were there were fantastic too and perhaps the atmosphere in the room was a credit to them. I would not hesitate to accept if I was asked to do another workshop there.
Other people’s approval is so very important to me … if I am honest then it is probably more important to me than my own feelings about a work or a workshop. Receiving such positive feedback about the installation and the workshop enables me to appreciate them too. And I am excited about getting on with preparing for the other two installations … just three full-time weeks at Enköping to get through before that can happen!
Between the Wednesday workshop and the Friday opening was a Thursday in the north of Uppland starting to install my pieces in the five person group show that opens in a couple of weeks on the old Lövstabruk estate. I thought that we were all going to begin installing that day but after meeting up and discussing where individual pieces might be three of the others revealed that they didn’t have their work with them, and the fourth needed to do some more on-site filming (in the estate’s old library), so I had the Grand Store to myself for the day. I set about hanging Lek. The first time that I installed it I had a specific and predetermined pattern for the individual batons from which the lengths of videotape hang. This time I relied on intuition and instinct … and I am pleased with the result. The work is adapted to the room’s architecture … dominant ceiling joists and a series of pillars are embraced and incorporated. These existing structures create new apertures and sight-lines in and through the work … which will provide glimpses of the other artists’ works when they are installed. I am very intrigued and excited to see how this works. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to see the piece alone in the space before it will be joined by the works of four other artists.
On the Saturday after the Opening in Arboga I returned to Lövstabruk to install my other works there. Once again I was there on my own – the others are installing this coming weekend when I am working in Enköping. I am rather glad that they weren’t there as I was not being my most effective … my tiredness was showing. I spent the morning hanging Nocturne with much going up and down between the first, second and third floors – the work hangs from the third floor to second floor (both of which are off-limits to the public), and is seen from the first floor – the exhibition floor. It was only once the work was carefully installed – much time was spent ensuring that the motor unit was installed as level as possible to prevent undue and uneven strain – that I saw that the temporary joist that I had built would be much more discrete if rotated 90 degrees. So after lunch I took everything down and re-constructed everything in a north – south rather than an east – west orientation. Thankfully that went a little quicker than the morning’s work – I had worked out most of the challenges though there were of course some new things to take into account. Writing now I realise that I could have made a significant improvement to a particular aspect of the piece … I don’t have time to return and make it … I wish that I hadn’t thought of it was now, I wish that I had though of it on Saturday or even in the preceding weeks! Again a sign of my tiredness and having too much to think about.
Perhaps I should start to keep installation notes for individual works … especially now that I am regularly starting to show pieces more than once. Doing so would feel very grown-up and professional!
