It is just about two months until the show in Uppsala and I think that I might have some idea about what I will do. I say ’do’ rather than ’show’ because I do not feel like showing anything at the moment. This year is not last year! At this time last year I had a very clear idea of what I would show and even where I would place the work on the gallery. One year on and it feels very different, perhaps exactly because that show never happened, it just does not feel relevant or interesting to show what I thought I would show then even though I was very excited about it at that time. I am in a very different place today.
It has been a tough year, tougher than last year. I have found myself questioning what I do and why I do it more than I have done for a good while. I have also found myself in a vortex with far too many other voices and agendas. Time, I mean quality time, in the studio has been hard to come by with the demands of various committees and my employer wanting to get things going again after the disruptions of restrictions and postponements. Add to this that I have not been able to see friends and family in over two years and it is little wonder that I feel a little out of sorts.
So here I am with the memory – if that is the right word – of plans for a show that did not happen, that now seems inappropriate. That is not to say that the planned show will not ever happen, it just does not feel like the right time to do it now. And to be honest it does not feel like the right place to do it either. Over the last year I gotten to know the space where the show should have been better, and that has not been something positive. The space is, to say the least, complex. The architecture is awkward, the refurbishment was clumsy, the space is a mess – an unhappy compromise of historical features, necessary local authority adaptions, and unintelligent design. Having gotten to know the space I think that the show that I had in my head one year ago would not have actually worked in reality. The show that I had in my head was planned for two modest white cube spaces. Gallery 1 is not two modest white cube spaces! It is good that I have come to that realisation.
I have decided, therefore, to do something completely different. Something that has at once both far more integrity and far more risk. For the period of the exhibition I am going to relocate my studio to Gallery 1 and I will be there and work. It is as simple/complicated as that!
The idea of a three week live work feels right, … feels honest, … feels relevant. It also feels frightening! I feel as though I will really bare myself. Perhaps it is that that really needs to happen – I need to make a declaration of who I am and where I am now, not who I thought I was one year ago. Nor who I think I might be in one year’s time.
My hope is that the show will be useful. By useful I mean that it will say something about me – who I am, what kind of artist I am, and what kind of work I really do.
A kind of coming out!
