When I have so much to do it feels a little odd to be writing a blog post … on the other hand if I don’t get down some of the things that are swirling around my mind than I doubt that I will be able to concentrate on what I need to do today … so a quick post/mind-dump is in order …
I have ideas that assistants could make – tie drapes, Mariposa trees/bushes, polished cake-tins, play. I do not have to make these. I remember a comment that M, an artist-curator-writer-lecturer/professor(?) friend, made several years ago it was something along the lines of ’but you insist on making everything yourself’. It was not exactly a criticism, more of a pointed … honed … observation intended provocatively. At the time I did not rise to the provocation … did not give time to consider what they were getting at. Doing everything myself certainly slows productivity – something that I am keenly aware of as four exhibitions/installations are fast approaching.
Then it struck me yesterday that the making is not about me, it’s about the work!
This in turn reminded me to something the artist Nick Cave said in one of the many video interviews I have been watching recently – it was something along the lines of ’ … once I realised I was a messenger it all started to flow’. He said something about not being an artist but rather being a messenger. It’s perhaps not so important … vital … that I Stuart Mayes artist have hand-produced every aspect of a work – the important, vital, urgent, essential thing is that the work is out there doing its work – creating space for meetings, discussions, reflections …
Cycling to the studio this morning after a particularly intense class at the gym it struck me that ’layers’ – which I see that I wrote about this time last year (I looked back at post from April 2022 yesterday … don’t know why) – is a methodology. I had thought that layers was a theme, topic, subject … some kind of content. As I cycled across the bridge and down to the path towards the studio I was thinking about a piece for one of the immanent shows I realised how very layered it is/could be. The piece is layered rather than being about layers – the piece is about status … which expressed through the layers (of meaning) and their intersections.
Today is seems clear to me that my topic … theme … subject … interest is status, and my methodology is layers – or should that be layering?? One of my tasks today is to write a short text about my practice, I feel certain that my mid-cycle revelation and my recounting it here will contribute to that.
