Recording, reflecting and extortionate train fares…

Oh, just seen I’m featured in a curated selection on axis…. yay!

http://www.axisweb.org/atSelection.aspx?AID=2391

I have started getting my things together in preparation for the studio move at the end of this month. I’m not going to get a lot of time in the studio over the next couple of weeks so it feels impossible to get down to proper work in there. Can’t start building too much or drawing on the walls, I’ve got to start winding this work space up.

It was rather strange and left me quietly reflecting on the three years I have spent in the space, as I attempted some organisation and gathered up all this stuff. All the things you unearth during a mass sort out of this kind. The piles and piles of photos, cds, slides (blimey!), magazines, half used sketch books, many different drafts of artists statements on scrappy bits of paper, the list goes on! There is evidence of the occasional attempt to organise (dated albums, the odd folder with dividers) but these I can see, although well intentioned, have been short lived. Most stuff has been hastily stashed in boxes, plastic bags, all in no particular order…a sorting nightmare! I took the brutal approach when it came to throwing out and keeping. I want space not old rubbish. New studio, new leaf, new organised Christina……ha yeah right!

A side from this packing up I did get into London to see some good exhibitions over the week too. (have made a firm commitment to myself to dramatically increased the amount of exhibitions I visit) Having my student rail card has helped massively with this new commitment. Over the last few weeks I have enjoyed some great days in London, whizzing around on the tube from place to place. I particularly enjoyed the Roger Hiorns piece on Harper Road, Seizure. I found it completely fascinating, a dazzling spectacle, literally a gem concealed within the drabbest block of flats ever.

Other highlights of the last 2 weeks… John Baldessari at the Tate Modern, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 09 at A Foundation near Old Street and For the Blind Man at the ICA. Next week Sophie Calle exhibition at White Chapel.

Any suggestions for what’s good to see at the moment would be very welcome!

My head is feeling much more together this week. Finally I feel like I have relaxed a little.

We part time students arranged our own crit on Friday so that we could finally get more familiar with each others’ work and share some of the things that are going on with us. We booked out the project space and quite informally gathered around to take it in turns introducing our ideas, showing the work and then had a discussion about it.

It was a good time for me to talk about my work, after the wobbles and general vagueness of the last few weeks I feel I am gathering up my thoughts and working with much more direction and focus. Discussing it with the group was very useful and allowed me to attempt articulating my ideas in a more coherent manner, instead of falling back on the phrase… ‘I really don’t know what I’m doing at the moment’ which I seem to have been repeating for a while now.

The focus this week has simply been searching out places, linking spaces, in between, transitory spaces particularly and collecting images of them. I am travelling quite a bit so these kind of places are in abundance. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about ideas while I’m actually on the move and passing through these places that are appearing in my work. I am really interested in the contrast of these kind of places to the very private home spaces that I have focused on before. These seem to hold all sorts of new possibilities.

I spent Tuesday visiting public car park stairways and trying not to choke on the powerful smell of ammonia that they all seem to come with as standard. It is so universal, Quintin suggested maybe it was pumped in purposefully just to deter people from hanging around in them. Maybe he’s got a point! I managed to get a few snaps whilst out Christmas shopping with my Mum on Thursday. I had to laugh as she cringed bemused by her daughter’s strange behaviour and walked slightly ahead muttering ‘You are so embarrassing’. Oh, how funny to see the years have reversing our roles!

I have since been working on these photos, stripping them down to just the smallest information and playing with pulling out different parts of the spaces signs. I have been doing this on the computer and really enjoying the process. I feel like I have many steps I want to explore with these images, like my domestic images in the past, looking for ways of pulling these signs apart and re-presenting them within new spaces. It has been wonderful to get wrapped up in this process again and go full steam ahead with some sense of direction. I never thought piss-smelling stairwells could bring me such joy and satisfaction.