It is as though I cannot help myself! I have accepted the invitation to be on the management team at the studios. I did make one condition, that I do nothing this side of New Year. There are a couple of things that need to be looked at right now and I know that with the final assignments for both the Swedish and artistic research courses coming up I simply do not have time. Being on the team should be a win-win situation – I will start to use and learn Swedish in a professional artistic context, and can offer different ideas and perspectives from my experiences with Crystal Palace Artists and Bow Arts Trust.
The first show in the newly renovated gallery went very well. Melissa Henderson has such enthusiasm and passion which makes it an absolute pleasure to work with her. At both the opening and closing events she pitched her talks perfectly. ‘Talk’ sounds rather formal, she gave a kind of guided tour speaking about each of the artworks in turn and also making connections between them and to the show’s title “As I begin to speak”. Birgitta, Ellinor and I now need to sit down and go through the exhibition proposals that are coming in. There are also some administrative and practical aspects that need to be taken care of, thankfully they too can wait until January. In the meantime we have our first Christmas Market at the studios! As I do not have anything to sell as such I am going to set up a stall where people can make there own Christmas decorations from those plastic beads that you bond together with an iron. I made some as presents last year and people liked them, so this year people can do their own – I will make a pattern book too!
Hopefully the sense of crisis at the studio is lessening. We still do not have a definite answer about the future of the building but with a ‘refreshed’ management/steering team and a few collective activities it is starting to feel as though we are a body of artists rather than lone individuals rattle around a condemned house! My proposal for a Christmas party has been warmly accepted. These social and enjoyable things are essential in trying times! Empowerment through pleasure!
The work at Mejan is progressing slowly but surely. My home-made plaster lathe is now ready! Next week I begin to actually use it. It has taken far longer to get to this stage than I anticipated, however it has been unexpectedly rewarding and I have made discoveries along the way. The glass-casting course has been very inspiring and I have a few things that I will try out next term if I do not manage them this side of the Christmas break.
On Tuesday I gave a presentation to students just starting on the Research Inquiry programme at Konstfack. It was very well received, not least by Rolf Hughes the course leader and my tutor on the Making Matters course. He has an amazing ability to hone in on and articulate aspects of my work that I find difficult to express in any means other than their own physical being. I am truly thankful for the opportunity to speak about my work in this way as it is always a rewarding process from beginning to end. I understand things by doing them in real time and space, and in the context of other people and their responses. This is true of both my physical artwork and the thinking around and about it.
Of course a question remains about how to make this experience communicable. And it is this questions that I am attempting to resolve through my approach to artistic research. I am in less doubt now that ‘research’ exists within my practice, now I want to work out how to deal with content and make it accessible. Perhaps my resistance to the idea of artistic research has been formed by thinking that it was something external or other to my existing practice, where as it might be more appropriate to consider that it is always already present…
What to do/write/say after such a long break, or rather, four very full weeks?
The most significant thing to note it that I finally have the template/profile that I need to make a ‘positive’ 3D form based on the shadow. Once I found the right person to work with the profile took less than half an hour to produce! It is hard not to resent the four weeks that passed while speaking with the wrong people at the wrong firm. Part of me settling into Stockholm is this process of finding the right people. The template, which I hope to test out next week, was relatively inexpensive to produce which means that if the process works I can experiment with other forms too. It feels like a real turning point!
Besides that an assignment for the artistic research course – a written assignment – got me thinking about, and looking at, my work in a different way. And although my ‘challenge’ to the requested text structure somewhat distracted the group criticism the exercise has been very useful. Previously I had focused on the objects that form and inform much of my work, however in writing about the form of the artwork itself the emphasis shifted towards talking about the encounter with the installation. I think that this aspect of the work had been lacking in my previous attempts to write about it.
In addition to the group discussion I had a one to one tutorial with a visiting guest speaker who pointed out that my writing is out of balance and does not serve the artwork well.
On Tuesday I will present my work to MA students on the Research Inquiry course at Konstfack. It has been a while since I have done something like this and I am both excited and a bit nervous. Last Sunday while out running I had so many brilliant ideas about how what to show and how to talk about it, how to open up a discussion about practice and research … I wondered if it might not be a good idea to have a dictaphone as ideas always seem flatter by the time I am back at the house and have pen and paper to hand.
However it is now time to head down to the glass workshop where I am learning about glass casting. Tomorrow I have my final Swedish written exam … jag hoppas allt ska vara bra och jag blir godkänd!
I have been working on sketches for what will become an object – the object – starting point for my work on the project programme. After years of working with ready-made second-hand objects drawing something to be made with with raw and ‘formless’ materials brings interesting questions. I feel more responsible and alone than I have done in a long time. Thoughts about ownership and power as well as about the creative processes have been raised while dealing with the practicalities of making an original form. Objects I have been working with lately have already been authored, the thing that I am working with now is being authored.
While pondering all this, ideas for other pieces are surfacing too. These nacent ideas combine working with ready-mades again, with making processes that have a strong rationale behind them.
It is becoming very clear that Mejan is an art school absolutely grounded in materiality. Working with Annette to build a plaster lathe it is apparent just how knowledgeable she is about wood, and how she engages with making from a position closer to that starting point rather than to an ideological one. And conversations with Ulrika about the ceramic workshop she was leading demonstrated how material knowledge forms the core of students practice (at least in their first years). It was good to see, and reminded me of the sculptural workshops I had at Dartington. It has been interesting to think about how – both practically and conceptually – I have recently engaged with materiality, lacking both technical expertise and physical resources, my materiality has become a blend of home-crafts and ready-mades.
Speaking of which, I had to laugh at myself as I taped pencil drawings to an internal window in order to trace the lines I wanted. My adopted working space is a room that is also connection between the older and newer college buildings. I was literally between the department for 3D prototyping and printing in one building and digital technology in the other, but as I do not know how to really use computers, I was using simple and effective techniques that I learnt at primary school (when computers were the size of a house) to do something that I am sure is now easily done with a few clicks of a mouse. For me scanning and manipulating an image on a screen does not have the same appeal as working with paper and pencil. I like the hands-on-ness, and the feel of the tracing paper.
Next week, however, I am doing a three-day workshop in ‘physical computing’. And already I am dreaming up projects that could relate to my kind of interactivity. It is an introductory course and from what I understand looks at the potential for using off the shelf technology such as simple sensors but in a more advanced way than I did with Go-Go. I am interested in how information collected by sensors can be fed in to a computer to activate something else. My experience of interactive art to date is that it was not something for me – too playful by far! – I hope that by starting to understand the technology I might find a use for it that makes sense to me. I am wondering if I can use sensors to register stillness rather than activity – a kind of interstillness rather than interactivity! I am also keen to see how a direct cause and effect relationship might be put off. The potential is simultaneously amazing and terrifying.
This daydreaming led me to this think about Mariko Mori’s show at the RA (although I did not actually see it). I was fascinated by the idea of how Japan’s weather could change the colour of a sculpture in London. I am not sure I want to know that it might have been as simple as relaying and processing data from weather sensors. This in turn, and in connection with thinking about artistic research, has led me to think about the idea of magic. Some of my anxiety about research is perhaps the erasure of magic.
I want, I need, art to be a bit magic!
My relationship to the studio has changed completely! Taking the computer out of it means that I spend time there completely differently. This week I began working on the glittered door again after a break of possibly nine months. I spent a few happy hours sitting with a paintbrush, binding agent and glitter, filling in tiny blank spots where the white ground was visible. It was pleasantly labourious. I (think I) can see a difference between the area I worked on the rest of the door. While I am at Mejan I am going to take the opportunity to ask for advice on glittering. I wonder if I will have to rig up some kind of door-size ‘shaker’ to get an even coating … on the other hand the ridiculousness of working by hand is quite appealing. The process minded me of some of the other labour intensive and optically challenging things that I have done; the patch-working, the sewing-up of white shirts with white thread in white rooms. It is hard to focus on the glittered surface and sometimes even then a reflection of the ceiling looks like a blank spot … or a slight tilt of the my head reveals glitterless patches where there appeared to be none.
Yesterday I met with Amanda (Newall) my project supervisor at Mejan. We had a good and wide ranging discussion, and I left feeling motivated to get on with making. We talked about the year being a period of experimentation (and space for failure) with critical feedback and support – Brilliant!! This is exactly what I need. I noticed immediately how we talked about my ideas without me feeling that they required explanation or justification beyond that the idea intrigues me. I have a starting point and that is the most important thing right now, what happens after starting will to a large extend be determined by the work itself. Or rather by my feelings about it – in discussion with Amanda. The lightness of this is both frightening and delightful. I have the feeling that this is going to be a very interesting and rewarding year!
Last weekend I had the pleasure of being at Liz and Kjetil’s wedding. They are a truly lovely couple and it was as if no time at all had passed since I was staying with them and making the “Brief Encounter” piece for their gallery. A couple of days before the wedding Liz put me in touch with another couple who would be travelling over and staying in the same cottage as me. Via email we arranged to meet at the airport and share the cost of a hire car, and despite both our planes being delayed we met up and started to talk as Debbi effortlessly embraced driving on the right in the horizontal rain of a very dark Norwegian night. We spent most of the weekend talking about being artists and all that that entails – it is amazing how sometimes it feels as though you have known strangers all of your life! Debbi’s name seemed familiar to me and at some point during our conversations we worked out that we were both in the Pilot 3 project and attended the opening in Venice. We did not say more than hello then, how fantastic to meet again six and a half years later in another country at the wedding of artist friends! A wonderfully inspiring weekend that reminded me how important it is to stay in touch with like-mined souls!
This morning I collected my overalls (bought when I was at Dartington) and the shadow sketches. They are now in my locker at Mejan just waiting for me to meet with the tutor who can help me construct some kind of plaster lathe for turning the solid forms from which I will make some moulds …
Now I am going to have coffee with Leah Capaldi who I met at her presentation at Mejan yesterday.
My world is moving very fast at the moment ….
http://www.amandanewall.com/
http://elizabethcroft.net/
http://jankjetil.net/
http://www.debbielawson.com/index.html
http://leahcapaldi.com/index.html
Re-reading my application for the Project Programme has helped settle my somewhat overwhelmed mind. I started to wonder if the project I proposed (aware of my suspicion of the word ‘project’) was still relevant to me as it was conceived many months ago and before doing the artistic research course. That course made me realise the importance of my sense of integrity in my practice. I made the application to Mejan thinking that it would be interesting to develop (re-engage with) more sculptural aspects of my practice – exchanging the installations and second-hand materials for independent objects and more traditional materials. Since enrolment the validity of this switch has given me much to think about:
Is doing something quite different advantageous or disruptive? An opportunity for new learning and experiences, or a distraction and dissipation of energy and focus?
Re-reading led me to wonder if I can have/be all these things at the same time, and if any anxiety I feel now is actually the excitement of knowing that I could be on the brink of something new and unknown. I took out the sketches that I was making when I made the application – shadows of my childhood soft toys. I had also made a few sketches where I drew mirror images of halves of the shadows, these created more abstract drawings that almost resembled those visual illusions where you can see different things depending on whether you focus in the white or black image. It was during this re-looking that I began to wonder if my sense of not knowing the value of my proposal could, and would, only be resolved through doing it – though the making processes.
And so I have started to think of this time/work as an open process rather than as the realisation of a proposal.
How great to allow myself to say “I will not know until I make it”!
It is most important that the work (“the project”) makes sense to me – I do need to remind myself of this no matter how obvious it sounds.
Meeting with my supervisor on Tuesday. Looking forward to second session of Making Matters course at Konstfack tomorrow …
