It was frustrating not to have time to write when I have felt the need to write over the past week. I have to believe that anything truly meaningful will re-emerge in my thoughts … at the moment though I cannot recall what seemed to urgent … I just remember that there were things that I wanted to record here as part of the process of working through them.
Departures and Arrivals: Arboga, opened on Friday – though the work has been in plain sight since it was installed the week before. I was … I always am … anxious before the opening … before meeting the people who commissioned the project, before seeing Kajsa again and her colleagues from the cultural department. Everyone was very complimentary about the work, and there were interesting discussions around flags, making, public art, and materiality. I think that when it is time to go back and de-install I will arrive early and have some time with the piece on my own – I haven’t had this yet. I think that I make some sketches of the work … that might be a way to better understand it … to understand it as an artwork … to spend time with it as an artist … to create some critical distance(?).
The workshop on Wednesday prior to the opening was good fun! Ten fantastic friendly, engaged, lively (in their own ways!) children … young teenagers … tweenagers … made their own flags. Each one was unique, some bold and simple, others intricate and colourful. It felt different from the workshops that I run as the arts education worker for Enköping. Maybe because the participants are familiar with each other, but even when I have run workshops for youth clubs in Enköping it has never felt so enjoyable and so appreciated. Everyone was genuinely eager to be there and to make something … and that enabled me to be a better artist/educator. The two staff members who were there were fantastic too and perhaps the atmosphere in the room was a credit to them. I would not hesitate to accept if I was asked to do another workshop there.
Other people’s approval is so very important to me … if I am honest then it is probably more important to me than my own feelings about a work or a workshop. Receiving such positive feedback about the installation and the workshop enables me to appreciate them too. And I am excited about getting on with preparing for the other two installations … just three full-time weeks at Enköping to get through before that can happen!
Between the Wednesday workshop and the Friday opening was a Thursday in the north of Uppland starting to install my pieces in the five person group show that opens in a couple of weeks on the old Lövstabruk estate. I thought that we were all going to begin installing that day but after meeting up and discussing where individual pieces might be three of the others revealed that they didn’t have their work with them, and the fourth needed to do some more on-site filming (in the estate’s old library), so I had the Grand Store to myself for the day. I set about hanging Lek. The first time that I installed it I had a specific and predetermined pattern for the individual batons from which the lengths of videotape hang. This time I relied on intuition and instinct … and I am pleased with the result. The work is adapted to the room’s architecture … dominant ceiling joists and a series of pillars are embraced and incorporated. These existing structures create new apertures and sight-lines in and through the work … which will provide glimpses of the other artists’ works when they are installed. I am very intrigued and excited to see how this works. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to see the piece alone in the space before it will be joined by the works of four other artists.
On the Saturday after the Opening in Arboga I returned to Lövstabruk to install my other works there. Once again I was there on my own – the others are installing this coming weekend when I am working in Enköping. I am rather glad that they weren’t there as I was not being my most effective … my tiredness was showing. I spent the morning hanging Nocturne with much going up and down between the first, second and third floors – the work hangs from the third floor to second floor (both of which are off-limits to the public), and is seen from the first floor – the exhibition floor. It was only once the work was carefully installed – much time was spent ensuring that the motor unit was installed as level as possible to prevent undue and uneven strain – that I saw that the temporary joist that I had built would be much more discrete if rotated 90 degrees. So after lunch I took everything down and re-constructed everything in a north – south rather than an east – west orientation. Thankfully that went a little quicker than the morning’s work – I had worked out most of the challenges though there were of course some new things to take into account. Writing now I realise that I could have made a significant improvement to a particular aspect of the piece … I don’t have time to return and make it … I wish that I hadn’t thought of it was now, I wish that I had though of it on Saturday or even in the preceding weeks! Again a sign of my tiredness and having too much to think about.
Perhaps I should start to keep installation notes for individual works … especially now that I am regularly starting to show pieces more than once. Doing so would feel very grown-up and professional!
