Project Me

Proof-reading the entries for the Supermarket Art Fair catalogue is a good reminder of the range of activities that artists undertake – it is far too easy for me to become fastened in my own routines and habits. Reading an article about how an artist worked with her siblings to establish two dynamic and radical contemporary art venues in Syria which since the ‘unrest’ have become domestic residences/refuges for her and her colleagues families is somewhat of a wake-up call. Both the passion to actively engage with forming a new art-scene and the practical solution to surviving subsequent national turmoil are inspirational.

So the question is “what is stopping me?” stopping me from doing everything that I can to realise my dreams. The question is particularly pertinent right now, not just because it is the beginning of a new year, but also because after two years studying Swedish I now have to get on with building a life that felt rather ‘on-hold’. In a recent feature about a designer’s home was a photograph of a sentence written across a wood-burning stove, it reads: the best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. Again, there is something about the relation between ambition and pragmatism, and it is perhaps this that seems to be hooking me in.

I am in an amazing position right now; I have very few responsibilities, just about enough security to maintain the studio, I am at a prestige school, and I am relatively naïve about the scene here so can ask questions that Swedes would not. Perhaps the question is not about what might be stopping me, but rather what do I want to do – really want to do!

We have one final assignment for the Making Matters course – to write and present a draft research proposal. After a year of wrestling with the concept of artistic research I feel ready for it and am looking forward to working the assignment. My intention to see if I can produce something which successfully combines my artistic dreams with the pragmatism of institutional frameworks. If I pull it off then there is no reason why it could not be the basis of real project*.

It is hard for me to say what I want, not because I do not know what it is, but because I am scared that by daring to utter it it will become vulnerable. Somehow keeping it locked away inside me can become a way to keep it safe. The inherent foolishness of this is clear to me – I cannot expect anyone to know what I want, and therefore to help me achieve it, without me sharing that information with them. If I want to have shows I need to let people who can make this happen know that I am interested. Working with the exhibition space at the studio it has been interesting to read the letters we receive from artists hoping for an exhibition. The easiest ones to respond to are of course those that describe both the artwork(s) and the intended exhibition clearly and succinctly.

Every year I think that this will be the year when I learn how to get an exhibition, learn how to speak with galleries, learn how to make successful applications. As the Supermarket fair approaches it is a good time to remember that there is no “best” way to do things as subtle/random/personal as this, for me thing is just to do it! Wake up, turn up, and say hello!

Please get in touch if you will be visiting the fair (14-16 February, Stockholm) it would be great to meet you, and I can pass on some tips for surviving a weekend in what can seem an expensive city! I highly recommend Supermarket for anyone engaged in artist-led initiatives, it is a great networking opportunity, not everywhere is as economically stricken as the UK and well-conceived collaborative projects can really benefit all partners.

*And here I do mean ‘project’, not a single artwork or a series but a piece of sustained work with its own processes and outcomes.

www.supermarketartfair.com

I have passed my Swedish language course – I got my results on Monday morning. So that is it for the adult education courses, on paper at least I am now capable of studying at degree level in Swedish. Obviously there is no way that in two years I have achieved the command of the language that a native 18 year old has, however it is a very good start. Now it is just to keep going.

The Friday before that we had what should have been our final Making matters (Artistic Research 2) session. However we will meet once more in the new year as the majority of the group felt unable to make presentations. This was a bit strange to me – I was expecting to make a presentation, though as I had a cold was quite glad not to.

The concluding of these two courses means that next year I can really focus on what I should have been doing at Mejan on the project programme. It can be frustrating when my part-time attendance coincides with teachers meetings and their other commitments. Next term I can be more flexible and focused. Though I have to say not having a studio to ‘retire’ to when work in the workshop is suspended is hard to deal with. Today I am using a computer here at school while paint dries … if I had a studio I would be there getting on with something else.

I had a few hours at the studio yesterday and am (finally) getting around to re-arranging it since it became fully mine. In my mind I imagine it being a place for both production and contemplation. Books and packed up old artworks are on one side, while on the other are materials and work that is being made. The table is in the middle, being a little bit ‘order focused’ I can imagine sitting on opposite sides of the table to do tasks that more or less belong to either side of the room. What I have not yet figured out is whether to sit facing the books, and therefore actually on the practical side of the studio, when I am contemplating. Or to sit on the contemplative side looking at the work in progress … and, of course, vice versa. Why do I even think that it is necessary to decide something like that? I know that often I like to have established orders to take care of simple things and thus free up time for more interesting things. I have the same thing for both breakfast and lunch each day otherwise I could easily lose a few hours wondering what to have.

There is still a nagging doubt that I am not doing ‘the right thing’ at Mejan, that the Casting Shadows proposal is, despite everything, a red herring. Maybe I am just too aware of how valuable this year is. Making things (sculptures?) from scratch is certainly a challenge. I miss the input from my materials, I miss that sense of collaboration. The other day I wondered about trying to introduce second-hand materials in to the process. To measure the amount of glass needed for casting a form you use Archimedes’ principle – putting glass nuggets in a jug of water until the internal volume of the mould is reached. As I was standing before a shelf full of second-hand vases in a charity shop I wondered if I could measure the volume of the vase, then use the same volume of wax to make form that would eventually be cast in the crushed glass vase … Something to test out next year! It certainly feels more ‘me’ than ordering glass from a Czechoslovakia.

Had a good tutorial with Rolf yesterday. It made me think about how important critical distance is, and how difficult that distance is when I am in the making process. This might well be at the heart of my wrestle with artistic research. Rather being ‘resistant’ to research as a form of rejecting the concept, I am finding it necessary to defer the critical distance – and therefore also the research aspects – of my work until I am well clear of its particular creative process. Can I be, do I want to be, both inside and outside of my processes at the same time?

Presenting my work to Rolf’s Research Inquiry students had some unexpected benefits – not least Rolf’s responses to seeing a broader range of pieces than I have presented in the research group. Another was being able to listen to myself (so I managed a bit of critical distance there then!). I planned to mention the names of the colleges I attended, however I explained in some depth Dartington’s unique Art & Social Context course. In the process of doing this it occurred to me that my education is quite different from artists of a similar age who studied more traditional fine art courses. In many ways Art & Social Context was a research based course – not that it was referred to as such, and I wonder if that is why I am somewhat perplexed by this new discipline – it is not ‘new’ to me! Throughout the course we gave account of and made claim for our practice and process, we communicated it within the field of interest and to those working in the wider community, we located it in cross-disciplinary and problem orientated activities. I might see if I can find anyone else who has re-thought what we did in the late eighties in the light of the more recent development of artistic research.

Yesterday I took a further step towards actually making something at Mejan! I used my ‘Heath Robinson’ lathe to cover the rough polystyrene forms in plaster. Working in the sculpture workshop in my old green overalls took me back to being at Dartington. Reflections on my time there seem to be very current!! I do enjoy sculptural processes – the hands-on-ness of it, the step-by-step-ness of it; I drew a shadow, which I then mirrored and traced, from this a template/profile was made, now I have a positive 3D form from which a negative (mould) form will be made so that I can make more positives. There is something about the backwards and forwards between positives and negatives that I find attractive about casting.

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!