Random Writes.

All Kinds of Everything Remind Me of You.

Song written by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith-performed by Dana.

Still processing all the work seen at the private view of This “Me” of Mine curated by Jane Boyer at Strange Cargo in Folkestone. The fact that I am still thinking about it requires me to write something and the obvious choice would be a review but I have decided not to do that because: there are too many artists, not enough time and more importantly Jane Boyer has written far more lucidly, eruditely and critically than I ever could. And in any case my writing here is a place where I am free to respond from my gut, less critically-and more spontaneously, so here goes…

An interesting, provoking conversation with David Minton about how artworks “perform” in a gallery where we discussed difficulties inherent in art talk that strays away from or goes beyond the qualitative decision making and formal aspects involved in the creation of an artwork. Mindful of our talk and suddenly wary of words, I challenged myself to be succinct and pared down my initial responses to David’s work: Peripheral Vision (2010, oil on canvas, dimensions: 152.4 x 121.9), to as few words as possible, these are the words I could not do without:

tense(ful)-ennui.

My response to Sandra Crisp’s work The Bigger Picture 2010, Large Format Ink Jet Print 110 cm x 110 cm, I didn’t have to think about, it downloaded all at once like a torrent. Intelligently, sciency The Bigger Picture takes liberties with its densely digital Vuillard-like structure and seductive colour palette suggestive of Elizabeth Frankenthaler. I know/feel that it is saying something about our information gathering/processing age but am more interested in what happens to the surface of The Bigger Picture as I walk past. Myriad, kaleidoscopic potentialities present themselves and I am charmed.

Unfortunately I missed meeting Kate Murdoch by a whisker but recognised her piece immediately: It’s the Little Things is an assemblage of Kate’s Nana’s “stuff.” I find it hard to be objective with Kate’s work as there are so many cross-over points to my own, I suspect we are a similar age and almost every object resonates emotionally with me. One word surfaces and repeats, and that is tender the selection, placement and arrangement of objects seems ritualistic, I am reminded of memory jugs, where a deceased person’s “stuff” is collected and used to embellish a jug, creating a new object with new function. Her work seems to reference old relationships and at the same time suggest and project forward to new ones.

Obsession with subject matter and clever placing of the work Glass Menagerie by Cathy Lomax may have been initially why it attracted me so. A group of kitsch transparent glass animals stand on a mirrored surface, flickering lights are projected through the creatures onto the wall behind. The effect is extraordinary, eerie, Disneyesque shadow animals cavort madly behind the dumb colourful still ones. It filled me with sad happiness, almost but not quite, pathos.

It was strange meeting people that I have only known remotely through a-n and Twitter and looking at actual work seen previously only on screen. The exhibition is an expression of these modern kinds of social and professional relationships and an absolute must see.

http://thismeofmine.wordpress.com/category/this-me…

Pass it On.

Catching up on Elena Thomas’s blog, this sentence immediately resonated and got me thinking…

“The Artist’s Lie is that thing where you are led to believe a person is supporting themselves SOLELY through their art.”

My own feelings are…the cultural value system of success that equates only with monetary gain, seeps in to all our practices. I can entirely understand any artist not wanting to be defined by or even being ashamed of their day job and my own journey has been tempered through balancing artistic pride and making the ends meet.

Sometimes pride and shame overlap, some of the jobs I have done and indeed still do, on some days embarrass me and on others empower me especially when I look back at over thirty years of an uninterrupted art practice, I am still here making art and feel very proud of that.

So in true outing spirit I am announcing just one of the things I do and in fact am really excited about and btw, if you happen to know anyone who just might be interested, please pass it on-and I will do the same for you.

http://www.lovelysgallery.co.uk/news.htm

Channelling Juan

I actually couldn’t sleep the night before visiting the work of Juan Munoz at the Turner Contemporary so childishly excited to really see work only known via the screen. On the first visit, I engaged with the work with my critical artist head on, made notes and came home to write a review for a-n see here: www.a-n.co.uk/p/3184746/ you would think that would be enough but I still could not sleep for thinking about Munoz’s uncanny figures. So I went back to the Turner with pencils, ink and book thinking that this would help me further engage with and process my feelings about the work Conversation Piece lll . After several false starts I focused in on the figure that appears as an outsider to the main group, it was fairly quiet in the gallery and as I worked the light began to change.

Munoz was colour blind and apparently people with this condition are more sensitive to tone; this is born out in these works they are like exquisite tonal drawings made in three dimensions. I also enjoyed watching people interact with the figures, several got told off for touching them. There is no doubt that they are very compelling. After the pencil “portrait” I moved on to ink and made a careful group study, as the light faded the whole gallery began to feel rather eerie.

Once home I decided to put a wash of watercolour on top of the ink to pull the tones together. Disaster! The ink was not waterproof, the ink figures blurred and dribbled. And so it was spoilt/changed/transformed, and I was able to let go of the skill/vanity thing and just work instinctively. I worked until late into the evening, completely absorbed until the paper couldn’t take anymore. It is a strange alien result a kind of “speaking in tongues”. It seems to have done the trick and I think I can move on now.

One Night Only.

Hello campers, I had to come back. I missed the guilty pleasure. This time I won’t let the blog dictate to me, no I will write only when I feel like it, when something needs to be said-is bursting to come out. Only then.

So…at the finish of the last blog: Two Steps Backwards I went off to St. Ives with my paints and a plan. I imagined processing the strange painting experiments in a linear fashion towards greater clarity and understanding and then coming back and working on a disciplined rule-based blog with easily digested bite-size steps to…I am not sure what but some kind of resolution.

What actually happened I could never have predicted. The cottage was arctic which meant spending a lot of time in the one room with heat and in the company of the elderly dog with halitosis. And then quite unexpectedly I started writing and it was like uncorking something. But back at home I would sit down to write and fiddle about with bits of research, write emails, haunt the fridge and generally fall foul of my old friend procrastination. Things got so bad I actually found myself looking at a picture of a two headed cat on Facebook.

And then my fabulous acting friend suggested that I show some work at a one off charity performance of The Vagina Monologues at the Tom Thumb Theatre in Margate, in aid of Oasis the domestic abuse service and directed by Jan Dunn.

At first I felt strangely anxious, in my head The Vagina Monologues meant brash, sexually aggressive First Wave Feminism, but the Eve Ensler play written in 1996 has over the years had a theatrically royal cast list. The star in this case was Rita Tushingham, I mean RITA TUSHINGHAM my childhood heroine, also Pauline McLyn, Joanna Scalon, Amy Lame, Kate Malyon, Nancy Del’lolio and my own friend and superstar Beverly Hills. I had to ask myself Why all these brilliant women would put themselves out for no reward unless it was a very good play.

A week before the performance I met with the new theatre owners and was shown the upstairs room where the work was to be hung. My heart sank, it looked pretty derelict but the enthusiastic directors assured me that all the work would be done in time. It was but when I arrived to install I found that the walls upstairs had been painted a deep Victorian red, amazingly my 6 ft piece of work in various shades of pink red and purple looked stunning. Below is the text written specifically for this audience.

To Fold Wall hung sculpture.

The Verb To Fold To bend any thin material over so that it comes in contact with itself. To fall over-to be crushed To enclose within folded arms (see also enfold) To give way on a point or in an argument. To stir gently with folding action.

Using the verb To Fold as an action and space for reflection as well as a constraint within the work, the action of folding was repeated with personal or found, used textiles that all relate in some way to women’s domestic lives. Each fold is stitched leaving a gap or hole that is allowed to fall as dictated by the specific qualities and history of each textile, echoing the individual and particular qualities and patterns of wear that shape our lives.

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The tiny womb-like theatre created a safe and intimate space in which to fully appreciate the episodic play. For me it was breath taking, (literally) and life changing coming at exactly the right time.

Upstairs the audience mingled with the amazing cast and my work generated curiosity everyone was asking questions. The play had opened minds, relaxed and softened thinking, allowing the art in to do its job.

Somehow an artwork is completed by the audience and this rare and synchronistic coming together of all the elements created a magic moment for this particular piece (To Fold) and I will never forget it. Oh and Rita Tushingham gave me her autograph.

Equation for optimum artwork perception: the right artwork + timing + venue + audience + alcohol= bliss.