Simulacra And Simulations

This week I have been taking a break from the Doll Gallery while I gain further advice to clear up a few niggles I have before applying for funding. It's my first application, and things have seemed so slow, but there are many reasons for that.

I've been assisting John Newling with The Noah Laboratory installation at The Collection.

I've been working in the new Curtois gallery where I've attended many exhibitions before as a visitor, now it's good to finally get actively involved in one myself and engage with The Collection.

Wednesday was the first wave delivering newspapers to people in Lincoln city centre.

The newspapers detail the project and once read are returned to the gallery to be made into compost, a special soil for the anthropocene era.

John then hopes to grow a plant in the soil.

My colleague was dumbfounded by the ignorance of people who thought we were there to take their bank details for some kind of charity or something like that. You know how it is when you're out shopping and you're approached by chuggers… I know how annoying that is, but this of course is for a piece of art work, and I wasn't as fazed by the apparant lack of interest as my colleague. I'm sure people have more important things to do than engage in art, or a brand new art gallery in Lincoln…..

There were also some people who asked if it was religious…. luckily they didn't attempt to expose their religious intolerance in front of me otherwise I would've had to word my objection to that very carefully…

Next week however, John's putting something in the press, so we will be recognised for what we're doing hopefully!

The project is going well anyway, and is creating networking opportunities. The LAN is gaining momentum, I'm getting a positive input from people for that, and we had a meeting of sorts after the Private View last night.

In the mean time I dropped by the faculty of fine art, where one of the MA students is exhibiting her own "doll's houses" in the gallery at the moment.

For the next two weeks I'm helping resident artist John Newling with his installation The Noah Laboratory at The Collection, Lincoln.

I've also set up The Lincoln Artist's Network, a free group for Lincoln, Lincolnshire and East Midlands artists. It currently consists of a Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44932174666&ref=mf

Peripatetic meetings soon to be planned at the headquarters, currently Widow Cullen's Well, Steep Hill, Lincoln.

I may be found in Lincoln city centre distributing newspapers for The Noah Laboratory, which John is recycling into soil for the Anthropocene Era in continuum with his work.

I've now started to play with bits of foamboard and have painted a few toy boxes to build the mini Doll Gallery.

The materials I'm using are leftovers from my degree shows – in this time of David Bowie scapegoated credit crunch poverty and so far no funding, I have to make use of whatever resources I can lay my recycling little fingers on. It will be an eco friendly gallery!

I'm also planning a trip to London in March, for the purposes of taking my eldest son to the premiere of a Hollywood film he was in, in Leicester Square, and as such I am keeping an eye out to check any exhibitions I may catch whilst there.

I found this http://blog.tate.org.uk/unilever2008/?p=51

amazingly exciting – it definitely references my research areas of Baudrillard, and there's even an A-ha The Sun Always Shines On TV mannequin moment, all very sci fi and exciting, again it's being taken into consideration with regard to my own gallery building; this mini doll gallery being a simulacrum in many ways.

I've lived in Lincoln for 3 years now, so why does it never fail to amaze me when I see The Red Arrows fly over the city in formation?

Today I read that props from the Monty Python musical Spamalot were auctioned on Ebay. Including a "lovingly recreated" model of Damien Hirst's Mother And Child Divided, so off I went to have a look- just check Ebay La Vache (aka The Cow) from Monty Python's Spamalot and you should find it.

Whilst on Ebay I saw a doll, and it turned out to be a Sindy doll.

I used to have a lot of Sindy dolls as a girl in the 1980s (showing my age!), I had a massive doll's house, which I then realised needed constant dusting. This I realised was ridiculous – I would have enough dusting and housework to do when I grew up, why would I want to waste my time dusting a fake house just because my Sindy doll was not actually capable of doing it – I had to do it for her!

I quickly realised what an evil form of voodoo dolls were, and said doll's house became a bookcase instead – it was big enough and sturdy enough, but it got sent for jumble a long time ago.

As research, I decided to look it up, and found it – again, got to ebay and search for 1980s Sindy house. My original one was sent for jumble a long time ago! Incidentally, Mum also sold her clock at a car boot sale once, and I spotted the exact one on Dot Cotton's mantlepiece in Eastenders! It must have been bought by the BBC props dept!

Damn me for sending it to the jumble!! I could do with having it and painting it white now!!

I've been researching ideas to construct a Mini Doll Art Gallery, and I realised that I know nothing of designing and making doll's houses, art galleries, architecture, modelmaking or anything which might remotely be included in designing, building and making a gallery. I knew that with Christmas being very busy that I wouldn't be able to sit down for more than five minutes to make anything without being distracted by over – excited children, and besides, being Christian, I disappeared to church for a Christmas Carol Concert, where the orchestra played Mozart's Toy Concerto – this amused me, and is typical of the kind of serendipitous occurrences that happen to me :-)

I was advised to speak to someone from the University about my doll proposal, but this has been rearranged for next week now, and I've been considering dolls whilst out Christmas shopping, deciding to utilise toy packaging as an architectural feature for my gallery – those boxes with acetate fronts should form features in my proposed gallery, and as such, I decided to wait to find out what toy packaging would be left over from Christmas before playing around with models. Strangely, the boys didn't get many of those kinds of boxes, but someone bought me one of those macabre looking jewellery holders – those headless doll bodies with metal trees coming out of the neck. The box from that is perfect!

The jewellery holder itself is this bizarre thing that I am contemplating with deep suspicion at the moment.

I find its motives unnerving, its existence sans tete most disturbing, some kind of H.R. Giger vision of horrific womanhood that I find uncomfortable.

I've been looking at the architecture of various art galleries, including the architecture of Lincoln's very own Collection, which was opened in 2006 and was designed like a white cube space but with the historic Lincolnshire stone of its surroundings. I've looked at designer doll's houses, revisited Archigram and Superstudio, who I've looked at before, and imagined a Doll Gallery enlarged to the full scale of a lifesize gallery. I went to Toys R Us and imagined it as a toy product. So will it be a maquette for a real gallery, or a toy? Hopefully both and more!

I've also applied for a residency at The Collection. I'm hoping I'm successful, because it will benefit the whole Doll Proposal and enable me to realise some larger scale works hopefully. After a few more business meetings next week, and once the kids go back to school, I hope to start work on the doll gallery proper. I might make a freaked out head to go with the freaked out jewellery holder!

All my thoughts about architecture caused me to notice that in the film E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Elliot's room actually occupies an impossible space in that house. It would take too long to explain here, but believe me, the architecture of Elliot's house in E.T. is impossible!