My first of four screen-printing workshop was on Tuesday evening. It was really good. Lucy who runs the course and the print workshop is really nice and a great tutor. She even provided me with a towel to dry myself after cycling there in an absolute downpour. Luckily I had been shopping earlier and had with me a new pair of shorts. It’s only now that I realise ‘exactly’ why it felt so odd to be doing the course in sport shorts – I must have looked like middle age version of the schoolboy whose wearing his PE kit in class because he had an “accident”.
We made a very simple screen and got used to printing. It was lovely to be doing something in a creative environment again. I am looking forward to getting better with the technique and seeing what I can do. I had some ideas of very simple prints which would fit well with my other work but I’m going make myself to try new things and play a bit. Lucy asked us to email her three pictures that we will use to make prints over the coming weeks. It was quite a challenge not to think too much about my choices and not to imagine how I want the prints to turn out.
Finding a simple alarm-free ‘inverter’ for Go-Go is proving harder than I anticipated. After discovering that I can’t disable the alarm in the inverter I already have I am worried that all the affordable devices have built in alarms. I don’t know what to do if I cannot find an alarm-free inverter as it is an essential component.
I was really saddened to hear of Cy Twombly’s death. It seems especially poignant coming a week after the opening of the wonderful Arcadian Painters show at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The show pairs Twombly with Poussin, and it works so well. I was Kim’s ‘plus one’ at the opening night and arrived late after work. Slowly wandering through the show when most other people were socialising in the bar area felt like a real privilege. Twombly’s Four Seasons hang in the last room, I think they are beautiful paintings – I was alone with them for several minutes and I was moved to tears. The gallery attendant closed the doors behind me as I left.
Perhaps in preparation for my move to Stockholm I am becoming interested in artists who follow their instincts – like Twombly who in 1957 moved to from the US to Europe as the art world shifted in the other direction. Artists who know what they need to do to be who they are (to be who they will become?).
My house (home?) is ‘on the market’. It is a very strange feeling, not only does it mark a significant point of change of my life, it is also all so uncertain. Change is a very current theme that appears to permeate so much right now. Perhaps it’s the scale and range of the changes that everyone is experiencing that makes them seem so all pervasive.
Some of the changes that I am still struggling with are the shifts in technology. Starting to ‘log in’ again after weeks (months?) of keeping my laptop away from dirt, dust and paint I have notice just how much goes on ‘on-line’. I’ve missed nearly 60 messages and events on facebook, and at the same time I hardly received any post or messages on my answer machine. Friends who write and leave telephone messages (rather than voice mail) are, save one, those living outside of London.
Beyond keeping in touch with friends I am becoming concerned that my preference for old style forms of communication could be detrimental to my life as an artist. Some of those facebook messages were invitations to exhibition openings. An increasing number of opportunities are listed on-line, which is terrible for someone like me who does not enjoy reading and scrolling through screen pages. I can see the attraction (economic and environmental) of electronic media but I am a material, object and tactile loving person. I like to feel the pages of a magazine, I flip backwards and forwards, I have a ‘code’ of turning over and tearing page corners to mark things of interest. I’ve been doing and refining my media skills for more than 25 years now and I’m finding the speed of change to electronic/digital media too much!
I’ve been invited to show Go-Go again. It’s a very interesting project – the M2 Gallery (who showed it at their Peckham site) have invited four artists to take part in a kind of ‘meter cubed’ gallery/pavilion that they are making this summer. I cycled past where the gallery/pavilion will be sited yesterday, it will be very interesting to see how Go-Go’s light splatter works in that location.
This morning I’m going to have coffee with some of the other artists that used to be the core of Crystal Palace Artists. It’ll be good to hear what they are up to and to be with other artists again!
I’ve emailed the wip:stkhlm and asked if they have any studios available from August. It would be great if they did. I feels really good to think that I’ll have a studio again, and August 1st is the second anniversary of my residency there. I like the roundness of it.
It feels like the right time to do it. I have about two and a half months to get things in place; this should be achievable. There is no reason why I can’t set up my studio even if I am technically still living in London. The idea of the financial commitment is a good incentive to work hard at finishing the DIY and getting the agents to look over my flat.
Not having a studio (and not finding a satisfactory way of working without one since installing Play at MOCA London last September) has made me realise that if I don’t make something happen then nothing/no-one will. I imagine it would different if I had a gallery asking for new work, but as most of my work is self initiated or comes about from talking about what I’m doing, when I stop it all stops! I need and want to be working again and for me that requires a physical space. It is exciting to think about loading up a van with my previous work and materials, taking the ferry to Sweden and driving up to Stockholm.
DIY and the skilled artisan …
Two things have recently made me think about how I do things. I bumped into another artist in the local supermarket and was talking about the work I’m doing on my flat. He asked if enjoy doing DIY or if it is a financial decision to do it myself. Then last night I went to Michael Petry’s presentation about his new book, The Art of Not Making, which looks at artists who work with artisans to produce their art works. So as I sit here surrounded by pots of paint, tubes of caulk, spare bamboo flooring complaining that I don’t have a studio I realise just how much I take on myself. If I had the money would get in professional decorators? Would I commission someone else to fabricate artworks? I know myself well enough to know that I like to be in control, though I am now wondering if this is an efficient way to be working – domestically and creatively. I could be sitting here seeing my flat transformed while I commission new art works.
The financial side of employing people interests me. I am not in a position to pay other people (to make art works or decorate the house) so I do it myself. I was also brought up and educated in a philosophy of DIY. Does working within my own abilities and budget limit my potential? I want to know how artist afford to have things made.
Just found out ferries no longer go to Sweden, I’d have to go to Denmark and then drive and drive and drive. Freight might be the answer.
I’m starting the last of the ‘big jobs’ on my flat. Over the last two months I’ve allowed myself to be totally consumed by decorating and other DIY. Having said that I went to a wonderful talk by Dorothy Cross at Frith Street Gallery the other week. I’ve known Dorothy’s work since a friend (and former tutor) took me to a show at the old Frith Street Gallery back in the 90s. She is a fascinating artist and a great speaker (talker?). It was really good to hear how she works, especially how her focus and projects have developed over the years. I left feeling inspired and encouraged.
I’m desperate to get back to the studio – well, to get a studio! I know that everything I do is a step nearer to establishing myself in Stockholm and taking a studio there. I don’t know exactly what I want to do in the studio I just know that I need to be there.
A local print workshop runs short courses in screen-printing and I’m thinking of doing one. Some friends did a course there and listening to them made me think about what I could do. I’m intrigued by the idea of working on paper and by making something that could (potentially) be commercial. I say that because my friends are selling and have sold the prints they made … my work has never been commercial so why would prints be any different?!
One of things I really appreciate about spending time here (in London) and there (in Stockholm) is how it insulates me from distraction. It is my nature to get involved in things and sometimes this is detrimental to my own practice. It is also my nature to absorb the atmosphere around me and this too is sometimes detrimental to my practice. With all the stresses and frustrations being felt in the arts in the UK I really appreciate the distance that thinking “internationally” affords me.
I feel guilty admitting that, however I want to be honest. Of course the threats to the arts are serious and demand attention, however after years of attempting to do things about it and seeing minimal results I need time out. I also see that I need to approach it from a different perspective. With the phrase “rats leaving a sinking ship” ringing in my ears I’m making my flat ready to put on the market … and wondering why I grew up thinking those rats were wrong. Rats work damn hard to survive. They adapt and evolve but they also know when enough is enough.
Spending time abroad has shown me different ways of doing things. More than that it has forced me to focus on who I am as an artist – an artist in a broader context. As my context has broadened my practice has focussed. Shedding local concerns (distractions?) has enabled me to do what I need to do and as a result I have made art that operates at a level that seems to give people so much more than the stuff I made when I wanted it to be meaningful. The less I ‘understand’ the more I trust the creative processes. The artwork that comes out of this is more than the sum of the parts, and it therefore has more to offer. The most ‘accessible’ art is not necessarily the easiest to explain, it could be the art that’s the most artistic.
Can I really attribute this shift in approach to working outside the UK? To an extent I think I can say that being away from the intensity of the London art scene has given me space to think about what is important to me at a very fundamental level.
Good quality affordable studios
Hidden agenda free children’s projects
Equality between arts and other professions
Time and space to take risks
Faith in the process
