Project Me

Preparations for the show are coming along.  The aluminium boards for the jigsaw puzzles arrived this morning, it feels good that they are finally here!  And thanks to what might well be a ‘vintage’ salad-washing bowl but which I am using as an oversized glitter shaker, glittering the door has been a lot more effective and efficient than my earlier attempt.

There is still quite a bit to do before I am ready to actually hang the work and unusually for me I am confident that there is time to do it all.  Maybe even to do it at an enjoyable pace!

I get into the gallery on Monday, or possible even Sunday afternoon if the person who is using over the weekend to photograph things finishes early.  Things remaining to do:

• mount the puzzles
• write and print/copy an ‘exhibition guide’
• set prices for the puzzle series
• buy some wine and nibbles
• install the show

I have an idea of how and where I want things in the room, however seeing the pieces in there might present other, better, possibilities.  I am also considering having an additional piece in the room before the exhibition space itself.  It would be a slide projection so it is simple to try it out and see if it works.  I have a very nice old projector that I would like to use but I a little nervous to have it running for four hours as the bulb is also old and I do not know where I can get hold a spare here.  Not only is the image something significant to me, and in many ways the show, but it might be an interesting way to illuminate the room rather than the strip-lights in the ceiling.

Last week a friend of a friend who is on placement with ‘The Local’ (a Swedish newspaper in English) interviewed me.  I managed to give a fairly succinct account of my move here and my views of the art scene.  Perhaps it was good not to have too much advance notice about the interview!

The Local – my Swedish career

I am delighted that my friend (and international art tourist!) from Switzerland is coming to the opening.  We do not see each other as often since I moved from London, and it is wonderful that he is making the trip primarily to see my show.  Moderna Museet have just opened a Louise Bourgeois show and there is a press launch of the new Asylum show at Kulturhuset the day after my opening, plus some good shows at the commercial galleries here too.  Not at all bad considering that we are still somewhat in the ‘darker months’ here.

Coming up for almost twenty-five years(!) since I left Dartington and I am seriously thinking about returning to the country – that is the ‘countryside’ rather than Devon or the UK.  Tomorrow I go and have a second look at a small cottage about an hours drive north-west of Stockholm.  It is not far from where I have been working with Tim and that makes it easier to consider such a move.  It is also only about 15 minutes away from the closet large town which has an art centre, library and cinema.  The train takes only 40 minutes from that town to central Stockholm so part-time work in the city is not out of the question.  The real advantage would be the time and space that I would have.  I would set up my studio at home …. I would actually have a home!  It has been four years since I packed up many of my things before redecorating and then selling my flat in London, it would be lovely to have somewhere to unpack them and use them again.  The possibility of finding anything to either rent or buy in the city seems more and more remote if I want to continue with my practice – which I do.

Luckily have I have some good role models for making a success of being a contemporary rural artist.  Friends in Norway have done it, and so has Tim.

An exciting week ahead!

I am thoroughly enjoying spending more time at the studio.  This morning I was continuing with testing different adhesives for glitter.  Last summer I spoke with Pia, the (now retired) specialist in the Royal Institute’s ‘Material Knowledge’ laboratory, and I am starting from her recipes and suggestions.  It is good fun to do these tests and compare the results as I build up layers of glitter on wood offcuts.  While mixing various ratios of different glues I started thinking about, and not for the first time, how I often have to learn new skills.  I love learning new things but perhaps it would be nice to have a deeper knowledge of a few materials and techniques.

Last night Donatella Bernardi presented her work for Kunsthalle Bern to us – Morgenrote Aurora borealis and Levantin Into your solar plexus.  It is an amazingly wide ranging and ambitious installation throughout the galleries realised through collaborations that she negotiated between at least seven other institutions and countless artists, the whole thing being conceived and produced in about two months.  She, and it, are truly impressive!  A combination of hearing how she works and being in the midst of putting on my own very modest show made we wonder about ways of work and scales of ambition.

I am fighting the thought that I might be too old to re-assess how I work.  Not that there is anything fundamental wrong with how I operate, just that I might get closer to my ambitions for my practice if I opened myself up to new ways of thinking about what ‘making’ can mean.  There is also something about not being awkward about being ambitious.  I can be bad at asking for help, and at asking for what I want.  It is probably more accurate to say that I can easily feel that asking for anything is too much and to avoid disappointment I do not ask for even appropriate things*.  This is definitely something to return to!

(* on the other hand I can be surprised when I am not offered one of the very limited places on an internationally renowned PhD programme … funny when I know that I would not bother competing for an exhibition at an equivalently high profile museum.)

I dislike terms such as ‘strategy’ and ‘network’ however these might be exactly what I need in order to advance my practice and make it truly sustainable.  I might already have started to do things differently (which is why reflection is useful!).  The show that I am putting on here feels like a ‘try-out’ – something to be worked on and developed.  I want to see how these new pieces function and how I feel about them.  Testing them, and myself, and inviting people to see them will give me feedback that I can use to take the work to the next phase.

Many years ago, at perhaps the height of its popularity, I made the decision not to be an ‘artist/curator’.  It was, then, an important and necessary choice for me to call myself an ‘artist’ and nothing more.  Now might be a good time to consider if my artistic practice might benefit from some lessons from contemporary curating.  So much of what I am interested in are ideas and possibilities of the connections between things … might this not be well expressed through presenting my work in relation to some of these other ‘things’?  And is this not curating?

Inspired by Donatella, I imagine how wonderful it would be to design an exhibition that includes not only my glittery door and jigsaw puzzle pieces but also artifacts and artworks that refer to black-holes, rites of passage, time travel, burlesque humour, stage show illusions, and discotheques …  Wouldn’t that make it easier and more fun for my audience to engage with what I am doing?

2015-01-26

Friday before heading back the UK I attended Graham Harman’s presentation and question and answer session at Moderna Museum here.  I have to confess that I have not read anything of his, nor heard of ‘speculative realism’.  His talk was quite something, his passionate, entertaining, and surprisingly comprehensible delivery made wide and varied references to other philosophers whose works I ‘know of’ rather than ‘know’, however this did not prevent me from enjoying his line of reasoning.  The title given to his talk by the museum (rather than by himself, which he pointed out) was “What is an object?”  I particularly liked his notion that an object can not be reduced – and by reduction he means understood in terms of either it’s particles (reduction down) or effects (reduction up!).  It becomes more complex when he explains that everything with physical form is an object but perhaps ideas and thoughts might also be considered to be objects.  What then, one might ask, is not an object?  During the questions and answers he made reference to businesses succeeding when they understand, and/or return to, their core values and ambitions, citing IBM as taking a massive leap forward when they realised that their core value was information rather than typewriters.

This idea of understanding, and returning to, one’s core values or principles struck a chord with me.  Perhaps this is because I find myself wondering about where to live and how to earn money, or perhaps how to live and where to earn money!  Applying the idea to myself I realise that for me my ‘core value’ is making art.  It feels important to hold on to this when investigating possibilities and making decisions.  I know that I can become distracted by other values such as living in the city centre, and having an academic position for example.  But do these really help me achieve my core value?

There is a little house coming on the market soon.  It is about forty minutes outside of Stockholm.  Opposite the house on the other side of a small yard is a barn that might make a studio.  Living there would be a huge change, however it seems more achievable than finding anything in the city (to buy or rent).  Might living there, and teaching English for example, enable me to take a sizable step towards my artistic ambitions?  Could what might at first seem like a ‘move away from’ actually be a ‘move toward’?

In the meantime I am racing to have work finished for the opening of my show in the gallery here at the studios.  The week before going to London I made good progress and hope to get back into the swing of it now that I have returned and dealt with some urgent and unavoidable things (my UK tax self assessment return).  Though the current puzzle I am working on has two large areas of clear blue sky in it, and I have learnt that I am far better at seeing pattern than I am at seeing tone.

My grandma had her ‘good send off’.  I was very tearful and found it a challenge to get through the poem.  Service was very good and I was pleased to see so many of her friends there.  Perhaps because we only saw each other once or maybe twice a year since I moved here it seems harder to comprehend that she is no longer there.  I already know that it will of course be at the anniversaries throughout the coming year that the sense of her absence will heightened, neither sending nor receiving birthday greetings, nor making a mother’s day card for her.  After the service there was a wake at her flat, and I enjoyed listening to her friends tell me about their friendships with her.  Being in her home without her being there was not as strange as I had thought it would be.  The bustle of people and sound of chatter felt good.  Some days later I wondered if that is not the meaning of a wake – to make it alright to physically be where the deceased had lived.  Like the wake of a boat the wake, though turbulent, passes and the waters calm.

What a very different week at the studio!  There are artworks being made and thought about!!

My upcoming show will feature a number of new works that are inspired by missing pieces in a second-hand jigsaw that a friend and I started last Christmas.  The original jigsaw that we began together but which I only completed long after my friend’s return to London took months to finish (it was actually Easter when I put down the last piece).  A combination of other commitments and adverse work conditions (a cramped bedroom with poor light) made the ultimately rewarding activity a somewhat arduous task.  How different it has been to have time and light at the studio in which to work!  I am amazed at how engrossed I become and at how quickly time passes.

I am becoming fascinated with the processes and thoughts that I experiencing.  It has been a while since I was so aware of looking.  Looking and looking, and how seeing – seeing where a piece belongs – is so different from looking at the piece.  It is as though I am able to look but not to see, that is to say that I consciously look for a piece but the seeing it seems to happen elsewhere or at least differently.  I feel that I can challenge myself to look, but seeing remains elusive to me – coming when it chooses rather than at my command.  Perhaps because I do not draw I am particularly aware of the looking that I am doing now as I make these jigsaw puzzles.  This is something that I want to return to.

It has been a wonderful week – and I mean ‘wonderful’ as in ‘full of wonder’.  Funny that a week ‘full of awe’ probably should not be described as an ‘awful week’.

Next week, being in London and at my grandma’s funeral in Devon, is going to be considerably different, but absolutely not awful.  My grandma, like John, left few but very clear guidelines for the service, neither of them wanted people to mourn – they both enjoyed a good party and wanted a ‘good’ send off.  With her “green door” coffin, three uplifting poems, and Frankie Vaughn singing “Green Door” my grandma is going to have the service she wanted.  The secret that the green door has been keeping is not a secret to her anymore – she is on the other side.

My grandma decided years ago, and told family and friends, that she was going to have a “green door coffin” – I thought that she wanted something ecological.  But she was actually referring to the Frankie Vaughn song that was a favourite of hers, and she carried in her glasses case a cutting from an advert for coffins painted to look like doors.  My brother’s partner – a very talented draftswoman – has drawn up the design for what will be a unique ‘green door’ casket.  And in her purse my grandma carried three poems about ‘remembering fondly’ rather than ‘mourning’, in one of them she had amended a man’s name to “mum” and now it makes perfect sense for my mother to read it about her mother.  I will read the poem titled ‘Death is nothing at all’, the funeral will be just a few days after the seventh anniversary of John’s funeral and the sentiment seems especially poignant

” … Nothing is past; nothing is lost … “

New year is always a good time to reflect on things and set ambitions for the coming twelve months.  With the somewhat unexpected, though not entirely surprising, death of my grandmother at the age of 103, wondering about what it is exactly that I am doing and where I am heading seems even more poignant and pressing.  Add to this that I have spent the last four days making an application for a teaching post that is bound to attract a very high standard of applicant, whilst finishing up the last of my duties on the Introduction to Artistic Research course, and it is easy to understand my almost overwhelming desire for some sense of certainty.

So, new year, new goal setting!

• focus on making art
• that’s it … focus on making art!
• and just that

Putting together a truly comprehensive CV for my application I came to see just how many things I do at the same.   It is no wonder that they over lap and compete for my time which ultimately makes it difficult (nigh-on impossible) to achieve the very thing that they are supposed to contribute toward – a sustainable practice!

This blog, and with that I refer to the processes of reflection, synthesis, and expression that it requires, has been an obvious casualty of my diverse and demanding activities.  I had neither time to write it nor much content beyond the occasional comment on art produced by someone else.  So with the cancellation of my teaching and my leaving the gallery committee here at the studio I intend to redress this somewhat sorry state of affairs.

Firstly I need to get on with making work for the upcoming exhibition that I have here at the studio.  I know what I want to make and how I want it to look.  The short time in which I have to achieve it (or at least something approaching it) will ensure that I do not get distracted or tempted to do something else.  There are several practical issues that I will need to resolve, and I look forward to doing this!  I also look forward to seeing if I am able to pull the whole thing off!!