Simulacra And Simulations

I am trying to break the economic exile I have found myself in, as an artist, unable to work for free, without funding.

Last year, in the midst of another economic crisis, I was offered the opportunity to participate in an experiment in the sleep lab at the University of Lincoln.

I was paid £50 worth of Amazon vouchers merely for sleeping in a laboratory and having my brain waves measured for two nights.

I wrote a blog about it at the time.

I have six tracks created from my sleeping brain waves, and am at the stage where this would form a sound art installation.

I’m researching How Art Made Pop, which details how UK art school graduates became pop and rock icons, which has provided me with a few ideas about how this might develop.

Alongside my current exhibition and Kickstarter campaign, I was interested in visiting Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the KAWS exhibition.

Fellow LAN artist Sam Bartlett and I discussed it, and he texted to suggest Sunday to go.

So, wading through the huge pile of Valentines Cards…. not, this was our first visit there. It’s a bit of a distance to get there, and would be impossible via train / bike, so it was nice to be offered a lift.

We were particularly impressed with Bill Viola’s Tristan and Isolde inspired video installation, and it was good to see BobandRoberta’s art manifesto opposite what appeared to be an abandoned research facility straight out of a Kate Bush video – here’s a link to some pics: http://helend-blackbird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/kaws-exhibit-at-ysp.html

I uploaded images of “Organon” to my Illustration blog here: http://helendearnleyillustration.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/organon.html

I like to pretend I’m artist in residence there, building Cloudbusters all day long, but of course, the government have already destroyed my ability to conduct my research by way of the fact that I would not ever be able to travel there, realistically spend any time there either, never mind lack of funding.

An old school friend tells me this was where she did her teacher training, but it was closed down and moved to Leeds Met. I now understand the context of BobandRobertaSmith’s piece nearby, and next to the schools learning zone.

If any of you go to YSP, we missed the Bill Viola works in the Underground gallery, sadly, but you can imagine me in my Lab coat illustrating Cloudbusting with my colleague there.

Cloudbusting, the exhibition, is still ongoing, and there’s also a Kickstarter campaign coinciding with this – you can find it here:  http://ow.ly/Y425u

Star twitterer Lisa Muggeridge, who was recently interviewed by The Artist Taxi Driver, has been kind enough to offer to retweet it every day!

This is the kind of support needed – if everyone on here did this, I won’t have to pay all the spammy PR people that message me on Kickstarter instead of actually pledging….

Today’s the day for my ILLUSTRATION exhibition. It’s ILLUSTRATION – a graphic novel I’ve been working on for the past few years. I have several fine art proposals that haven’t been successful with funding, and it’s interesting that having sent a press release out, I’m getting invites from the art world still expecting me to pay for stuff. £20 to join some other arts promo site. I haven’t sold anything yet. I’m still heavily into my overdraft, and I still have several unpaid roles, especially that of a Carer.

Unless my work sells, I’m currently £200 short on the rent this month due to issues I have no control over. Such as everyone wanting a piece of the pie before I’ve even gone to get the ingredients.

Thanks to Kate Murdoch for sharing something about pricing – in pricing my ILLUSTRATIONS, I went for a day preparation time, 2 hours exhibition set up / install, 2 hours for the private view, and calculated my day rate for the time, then added materials for the prints / cost, and split between the amount of prints to give an amount for each print. Then I added on the 20% asked for by the shop.

It comes to £40 for each A4 print. For some reason smaller prints are the same price. This is because when I divide my time between 8 of them, compared to 10 A4 prints, it works out the same. I also printed the smaller ones, and that actually actually took longer battling with the printer.

Tomorrow I will be relaunching the Kickstarter campaign in the hope that it’s third time lucky.

Meanwhile, I was watching something on BBC3 about vloggers. Some vloggers refer to themselves as “artists”. The only artists I’ve ever known to use vlogging as a medium have only ever made parodies of themselves or taken a wry look at the phenomenon.

I thought about it. What could I vlog about? I used to have a Youtube channel at Uni, but my animations only ever received negative comments, so I abandoned it.

I don’t think I’d feel comfortable sharing my expertise online unless I was definitely receiving recognition, respect, and income for it.

And some vloggers still spend all their time doing it and still not be able to pay the bills. All those selfies of shopping trips…….. I’m not really the kind of person to share my darkest moments online either. These youngsters must think no one else has ever gone through what they’re going through or something.

I’ve probably lived several lives before I was 30, but I still wouldn’t feel comfortable vlogging about it. I can barely blog anything at all. I can’t claim to be too hard up if I can afford an internet connection, so if I’m really hard up, I won’t be online to vlog about it, will I???

Anyway, there were some weird clouds over Lincoln last night. Cloudbusting ;-)