Project Me

Monday 16 February: STOCKHOLM

Monday morning – listening to the radio and even with my very limited Swedish I know that the news programme concerns the controversy sparked by stand at the Market art fair. The stand chose to show work by a recent Konstfack graduate.

The work on display was his final show. The gallery / artist created an exclusive installation for their stand. It featured antique drawing room furniture that still displays its auction house labels, above this and around the four side of the stand the artist has sprayed a continuous ‘tag' in his trademark black. Two large flat-screens amount over the graffiti show footage of the artist tagging on Stockholm's tube trains.

Tagging is a criminal offence in Sweden, and it is taken very seriously (with a possible four year sentence).

On Saturday while the artist was being interviewed on the stand both the Culture Minister and the minister responsible for cleaning up graffiti arrived. The exhibit and the artist suddenly became very big news.

The gallery owner decided to close the stand and on Sunday two white tapes prevented visitors from entering. The installation remained visible though the screens were blank. No notice or explanation was given – none was needed – every news media told the story.

Today the news continues to debate the reactions of the Culture Minister and the Director of Konstfack. The morning radio phone-in programme gives people the opportunity to voice their opinion.

Recently another Konstfack student courted outrage with a performance/live action that saw her ‘attempt' suicide and get herself committed.

In Sweden people take it very seriously when anyone is found to be squandering public money. This is a country where the idea of public and public ownership has meaning. This morning people are asking how an art school can condone a student who commits criminal damage. This is a country that not only funds higher education but also spends a great deal of public money on removing graffiti. It seems incongruous to many people that the state funds both the production and removal of something they are asked to call art. And of course they ask whether it is art at all.

Friends I had dinner with on Saturday evening explained that in Sweden it is not necessarily true that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Would a similar story make such an impact in the UK?

One of things that attracts me Stockholm and Sweden is that very feeling of the city and the country belonging to the people; that people are collectively responsible, that they take their responsibilities seriously, and that respect for each other and what is collectively owned is a given.

How do I – as an artist, as a person, as a British person, as an admirer of Scandinavian ideals – respond to this?

Table has gone and floor is half painted (taking advantage of Jodi being away).

To be honest I’m having a hard time at the moment, I want to stick to my initial idea to concentrate on positively, however I’m aware that it’s already been several weeks since I wrote anything. And I’m now more concerned that if I don’t write something now it will get harder and harder to get back into it.
Perhaps writing something will help shift things ….

I guess it’s only natural that there are less productive, less creative periods. Why am I giving myself such a hard time about having a hard time?

Things to look forward to:
• visiting Supermarket (artist run art fair) in Stockholm
• 3 months in Sweden this summer
• longer days
• getting my website finalised and launched (“launched” sounds very dated!)
• a fresh clean (and clear) studio

Friday: Reorganised studio. Not just physical space but some kind of mental space too. It feels good to see blank white walls. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a large table in my studio – at Dartington I had a huge old dinning table, at the Slade I had at least two tables, when I had the studio in the house there was a large table. In west Norwood I had doors on trestles followed by a heavy metal frame industrial table. Now I want rid of it.
Ideally I’d have a large studio where I could have a table in corner and still have lots of space – this is not the reality of my studio! I will still need a table, but the idea of having space is much more exciting.

I’m also clearing stuff out – materials that I brought to the studio over fours ago and have never used, things saved at the ends of education projects thinking they’d be useful, things left after unsuccessful experiments with new techniques and short lived ideas. I want the space to be clean and clear. I want to be excited by what I have around me rather than having a subtle (but distinct) sense of things un-done, un-successful or un-loved.
• learn from the past
• believe in the future
• live in the present

• successful people don’t have clutter

Went to Kjetil’s opening at Space Station Sixty-Five in the evening. It was so good to see Kjetil and Liz again after my show with them at Nordisk Konst Plattform – they’re lovely people. So are Rachel and Jo at Space Station Sixty-Five. It’s nights like these that remind me how good it can be. I’m also reminded of all the connections and coincidences that exist around me – life as a Venn diagram. On Friday night the gallery felt like the bit where the ‘sets’ intersect – that is always my favourite bit. I’m sure that there used to be a commercial TV company that had a logo that resembled a Venn diagram – the area of intersection was white, just as it would be if the different sets were primary colour light.

There doesn’t seem to be enough time at the moment – the weeks are rushing past.
I want to start doing some serious research into arranging a studio exchange with a Swedish artist for next summer. It doesn’t seem long since I had a year to sort it out, now I’ve only six months.

I’m very aware that I’m approaching the anniversary of John’s death. One year, I think the anniversary is part of my need to sort the studio – re-assessing my practice is part of my mourning process. I want to put away the very personal work from last couple of years. I want to make art that is informed by what I’ve experienced but that is more then that.

Maturity. I started this blog as part of a re-engagement with my practice, now I feel that my practice and I are on the brink of a significant shift. It’s exciting and a little frightening. I know I’m resisting it a little – I don’t want to give up the security of knowing what I’m doing and who I am but I know that it’s inevitable. I’ve out grown the idea that I need to try to be an artist, now I just need to get on with being the artist I am. (It’s a bit like wanting to be an adult when I was a teenager – how desperate and un-adultlike I was in my attempts to be seen as one.) Not only am I coming out as a sculptor I’m going through some kind of artistic puberty too.

I often think of the comment by that young art historian at the Hoffman Collection in Berlin – something along the lines of:

No artist makes meaningful art before 40

Perhaps it is a little crude, however it’s only now that I’m starting to feel adequately equipped to let art ‘happen’ rather trying to ‘make it’ (to paraphrase Donald Judd).

DO IT!
PUT AWAY FOOLISH THIINGS

Business Rates: Council have decided that the bill will be sent to the Landlord. We have calculated what % of the total floor area we’re each responsible for and have sent those figures to the Landlord. Hope that we are eligible for small business reduction.

Had water running down the wall in the storm on Monday. It’s not a good sign. The water appears to be coming in between a concrete lintel and the brickwork above it. It wasn’t just my studio but along the lintel in the corridor and fire exit too. We’re used to the roof leaking, now it’s the walls too!

It was rather beautiful to watch, that's the paradox – beautiful and wrong

I’m a sculptor

I’ve been in denial.
Once again I’m the last to realise something that everyone else seems to have known for years.
It almost feels like coming out all over again.

This afternoon I allowed myself to play with materials and it was GREAT.
Making and doing – seeing what happens when I put things together.
Perhaps I’ve got to a point where I’m sufficiently confident with my preferred range of materials to play again, to make things that I don’t already know, to make things that are beyond me.

Black glitter on the steps of a ladder.
I can speak of some of the things it brings to mind, but I can’t sum it up in one clear concise phrase – brilliant.

I want a bigger cleaner lighter warmer studio.
I need a bigger …..

Things are going to be alright.