rolling my dung, in four acts

I am inching my way closer to a clear view..

This weekend I attended Markus Sokoup's Binary Jam at the Static Gallery, which I arrived at really quite late, but still I think I deserve points for crawling out of the comforts of my warm home. It was good to see some locals (Sam from the View Two Gallery, Virgil Shakira who has made much experimental/abstract soundworks although he may hit me for probably mis-describing what exactly he does… Jay Yung who just closed her Paradise Stories at Riba, and a few others… Good to see them.

I went to hear Steve Boyland and Magie Nichols perform their improvised voice work at the Bluecoat on sunday. It was inspirational to see them work and encouraging to see such a strong audience.

As about my own progress: I have had a meeting with a friend who is practical and we worked out how I will construct my '7 Giants' in time for the exhibition in St.Luke's in Liverpool. I am looking forward to it now and am actually just about to to and get a few of the necessary materials and some advice from the DIY centre. (I am constructing all 7 "giants" out of corrugated cardboard, which I will laminate until I can make 2inch batons out of it for the legs of the giants and 1inch or so sheets for the sides… I promise a drawing soon to clear any confusion I am causing you…)

Hopefully tomorrow I will have a meeting with Ambrose from Urban Strawberry Lunch about dates and then the show will finally be 'in the bag'..

Which leads straight to the project that I propose for Cologne: I have been invited to do a performance and I am planning a project on idioms and how people say what they don't mean in order to say what they do mean and how this can be confusing at the best of times but how it becomes potentially humorously confusing and tangled up when I bring other country's idioms into the mix…

How exactly this will become a performance I can't tell you, I am having a little stage fright when I think about it. The original concept was for a photography and film piece, not a performance. But I spoke to Steve Boyland about it today and we are considering to work on this project in collaboration. With his voice work potentially being the exact perfect link to tie together my ideas for the project.

Now I need to appease the man who invited me by sending him a better project description, he is cross with me for having responded with such delay..

Rightly so. I deserve a slap and half an hour in the corner for that.

I will go now and clean my toilet while I repent.

I posted my proposal to 'Fred' in Cumbria and am quite pleased with myself…

A light anticlimax took grip of me around 4pm but I beat it down with a swift panini followed by New York cheesecake..

Tonight I will sleep and know that it is well earned and tomorrow I am sure is another arm-long list of things to do and follow up.

More inspirational stuff when I rise from, what I predict will be a 14 hour long, sleep…

Finally here is a partial project description, it is for FRED the exhibition in Cumbria to which I am sending a proposal tomorrow.:

Project:

Drawing room intervention with Rick Creed at the Tate Liverpool next week.

9.30am-12 and 1pm-4.30

come along…

contrast between life model, long poses and the resulting marks with short, sometimes flowing movement between postures you (VERY) rarely get a chance to draw.

Contrast the mark-making between the static model and intervening artist who offers reversed/contracted/acrobatic body shapes that can at times lead to an abstract, at times be in fluid dialogue with the model.

Come, explore, come, think about your approach to drawing. A fresh lively class, with Rick Creed one of the most inspiring and positive teachers I have met, and with myself offering headstands, splits and unusual backbends, twists and more…

It has been quite a week of sitting bowed over applications. I do wonder why the anticipation of forms is always so completely different to the actual experience of them.

I tend to quite enjoy myself once I get going. Opportunities to define my practice, my ideas, opportunities to refine ideas, catalysts for coming up with ideas. And I always end up finding myself stuck somewhere deep between internet pages describing the geological, social, historical facts and fictions of the various places to which I enter applications for projects, exhibitions, residencies..

So my application last year to Art Gene may not have been successful, but now I know that it's town hall stand's on the site of a former clay pit.

I find out about the Kendall – Lancaster canal, about the only active pottery in Cumbria, about Cumbria's pottery history, the move from bread kneading bowls andbutter churning dishes to plant pots..

Rivetting it may not be for everyone, but you know what it is like, suddenly something catches your eye and your inspiration comes on in leaps and bounds and behaves like yeast and warm water with sugar… expansive..

I tell you what made me see so many clay related topics: I am interested in Sisyphus, and in dungbeetles. they both roll large boulders, one of clay and one of rock. One's act is eternally fuile and devoid of hope and resolution the other's action fertilizes every field on the planet and bourishes his off-spring and also makes his wife happy. (That is if beetles have wifes, maybe they just co-habit without vows.. not that it really matters…)

One story goes: that the dungbeetle was asked by god to roll enough dung and make a man out of it..

Some people feel that their life-s actions are an endless droning, futile drum. That their labour is sisyphean.

(on this note: I discovered the existence of a fish called: drum-fish…)

Other people are more optimistic, more like the dungbeetle…

Eloquence fails me. I will return once I had coffee.