So, more busy weeks are passing at lightning speed and I’m starting to wonder whether I will ever actually get round to making and experimenting with any of the vast number of ideas that are floating around my head at the moment. I was told reassuringly on Friday that the making side of things with catch up with all the research side in due course and that it is fine to be a bit out of sync and a touch lopsided. With the presentation done (phew) and actually even enjoyed in the end, I am now working to get my essay finished and ready to hand in for this Friday. It is indeed creating an extremely lopsided practice at the moment. I can’t seem to get my head out of a book long enough to make anything. I am pleased with how much I am enjoying the reading and research but feel a bit pitiful as an artist to tell the truth. I keep visualising me doing one thing of another and it almost becomes as though I have done it and I somehow mentally move on but I can’t develop a practice on pure fantasy. I want to do things, try out, develop certain processes better and much more and I need the time for it.
Anyway, I am suppressing the potential anxiety simmering away at the situation and trusting the advice that it will all catch up and start being more balanced in time.
I was sat looking out into my garden this afternoon and what do I see scurrying from under the fence? Huh, two little Mice. After watching them scurrying back and forth for about 10 minutes, I suddenly realised that I really should write a post on my blog. It has been ages.
It’s been ages mainly because although things have been mad busy, I haven’t really felt that there has been much to actually write about. I started another blog…and feel like a traitor. But I needed to do a more ‘proper’ research, ideas, reflection type one for the course. We get assessed eventually on something called a research folio and part of mine, I have decided will come from my other blog. Anyway, so I’ve been neglecting this one…although this one is much more fun to write, but it’s just I don’t think my tutors are going to find the Mice in my garden and what I had for dinner that relevant to the course criteria.
We’ve had our interim show over the last two weeks and it has been a really good experience. It was quite intense, with some fall outs and even a few tears, but the challenge of all working together and attempting to get 50 artists work up that’s all quite different, into a relatively small space and make some kind of show was definitely… an experience. I was relieved to have not put myself forward for curating and instead was part of the hanging team, we just did as we were told (admittedly at times with slightly gritted teeth). It was however very interesting to see how each team of curators handled the responsibility and the power. They each had a bit of a peep talk from Terry Smith at the beginning of the week and I think he played devils advocate a bit. He made them more aware of their role and pushed them to challenge both audience and artist in some quite provocative ways… suggesting leaving things in bubble wrap or hanging things in really unusual ways. Each team reacted to this in their own ways and often fought it out between themselves once he had gone, but obviously some artists weren’t happy to go with their plans and some were quite unaware until they turned up at the opening, expecting their piece to be hung as instructed on the submission form.
This created an interesting debate that went on throughout the two shows about role of curator and role of artist and who should really have the final say. The curator trying to see the show as a whole and seeing the whole as more important than the individual and the artist trying to retain the original intention for the work and it’s reading. The debate continued and remained unresolved.
After the first week on the tech (skivvy) team I started to wonder about my own work and how I was going to approach this dilemma, in the coming week. I decided in the middle of one night that I would instead attempt to reassert some of the artist power into the space. I therefore decided that I would do something site specific and kind of in the way. So I decided to lower the doorways by a few feet. It was a quick decision, but sometimes I find that those sudden jolts in the night are worth running with. So I did and it was fun, watching everyone over 5 ft ducking in and out of the room and it felt really relevant to where things are going with my work at the moment. One of those tasty little starting points.
Anyway, so that’s over with and no time to breath it’s on to thinking about my presentation that is this Thursday. It has been such a hard process putting it together but slowly, slowly I can feel it helping me to get things a little more focused. Everything has gone on overdrive since Christmas and all the information in my head has been mixing around into a great mush. In fact this whole thing feels like wading through porridge (the kind you get when you’re just a little short of milk)
