Saturday morning and I am at the studio … I haven’t been here enough recently so am taking the opportunity to be here today. I need to be here … ’need’ at an emotional level … this is both where I feel the most me and where I work out (literally) who I am. I feel out of sorts when I am away from the the studio for too long … I lose my sense of self … or at the very least that sense lessens and becomes misty … unclear.
The studio is not an entirely easy place to be. It makes demands on me. It requires me to confront things about myself … things that seem to be becoming more urgent … it requires me to be who I am … or rather to work out who I am. Perhaps that’s it – the studio is a place for working out. Working out in an artistic sense, just as the gym is a place for working out in a physical sense. Studio as a place for exercises and training … for becoming.
This time last week I was on my way in to Stockholm to collect my tie-drapes – which were packed away by the technicians at Liljevalchs after the Spring Exhibition closed, they are in their boxes behind me in the studio. I also picked up A’s unsold painting and delivered it to her gallery (her other two works in the show sold) – I am going to ask her how she came to be working with the gallery. I had a brief and nice chat with the gallery owner/director. He admitted to not having made it to the exhibition. I guess that he wasn’t the only gallerist who didn’t go. He asked if I had seen the show, I am pleased that I, without thinking, answered that I was in it which lead him to ask who I am. Luckily I had picked up an extra copy of the catalogue so I was able to show him my entry in it – which coincidentally is on the same page as A’s (she is Mas… , I am May…). It wasn’t much but it was something … it as me letting someone in the commercial art world know that I exist.
After that I made my way to an opening at another gallery. I had been told about the opening by an artist friend who I met at Supermarket. She is represented by the gallery and I had forgotten that she mentioned this to me some time ago. I recently saw a selection of her work on the gallery’s website when I was looking up information about an artist whose work is in Region Uppsala’s collection. It turns out that the gallery represents two artists whose work has (relatively) recently been bought by the region. Unfortunately my artist friend was invigilating at an artist-run gallery on the other side of town last Saturday so we were unable to meet. My friend has been campaigning for the gallery to get in touch with me … but they have not done so … turning up at their opening was a convenient way to meet them. The long conversation with both my friend’s friend who is the gallery director’s mother and the gallery director herself ended the way all other conversations with commercial galleries have ended – we like you, we like your work, but we can’t sell it so we can’t work with you. They made polite noises about possible future performance / installation opportunities though these were very vague. I understand their (economic) need to work with artists whose works they can sell, however I also think that a good gallerist is someone who sells work that they believe in rather than simply, and lazily, taking on artists whose work is easy to sell . If I am going to work with, have a relationship with, a commercial gallery it has got to be a gallery who are passionate about what I do and who are passionate about promoting artists that they believe in … not just those where they see an easy sale. Even if they were interested in me I am not sure that I am so interested in them! I didn’t get the impression that they know how to generate excitement and buzz around their artists. I didn’t get the impression that they want to make a big splash in the art scene. I didn’t get the impression that they could convince anyone that their artists are among the most interesting, relevant, and necessary, artists working in Sweden today. What I did get was a much clearer idea about the kind of gallerist that I would like to work with – someone charismatic, passionate, and enthusiastic, someone daring, brave, and adventurous, someone just a little bit crazy!
