Simulacra And Simulations

Earlier last week, the Paying Artists campaign was at Metal in Peterborough. I didn’t go, because the gas bill was due that week, so I don’t have the spare cash to buy train tickets/subsistence and there was no offer of payment to artists taking part.

Contrasted against this, was a Bikeability Instructor meeting in Sleaford recently. There was lunch provided, and I will be paid for my time, which was why I made the effort to visit the National Centre of Craft & Design beforehand. It was quite difficult to visit somewhere that I applied for a much-needed, but unsuccessful job, to speak to those that got that job, but at least there was free tea.

I really enjoy my work teaching cycle training, it’s very rewarding, and despite this, I still get paid. Not as much as I’d like, but that’s how it should be.

I have the dilemma that I’m doing everything that Tom Godfrey from Moot Gallery did in Nottingham – running an artist-led space, curating our own shows – fellow MA graduate James Sheer-Phailly and I are currently planning a house exhibition for Hallowe-en – Tom spoke of how he continued to do this without funding, which I’ve done for the LAN. But there comes a point where you just want to be paid, you have bills, and you can’t justify inviting artists to do things for free because you’ve applied for funding and been unsuccessful, when it goes completely against your own principles. http://www.lincolnartistnetwork.co.uk/apps/blog/

Maternity leave – that’s a start: http://www.businesszone.co.uk/topic/staff/miliband-pledges-equal-rights-self-employed/58072 But I wonder if we’ll now be able to pay ourselves according to our artists’ day rate fees?

It’s all a bit new and different around here, now, so to test if I can actually upload a photo without resizing it first (which I never have to do on blogger) is the first test.

Yesterday, I took advantage of a train ticket refund and went to visit my new nephew (who has apparently already been on local news Look North for wearing a yellow Le Tour t-shirt – famous at 2 months old already!) and to see some of the art going on as part of the Yorkshire festival and Le Tour de France. I had hoped to see the bicycle bell statue, but I was a couple of days early. Instead I was impressed by Cassandra Kilbride’s Woolly Bike Trail, and the Yorkshire In Yellow t-shirt designs blogged here http://helend-blackbird.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/le-tour-sheffield-2014.html

Since I last wrote in here, I’ve been struggling to get anything done at all, although I’m still trying, it feels as though I’m just banging my head against a brick wall.

http://helend-blackbird.blogspot.co.uk/

I recently undertook British Cycling Skyride Leader training, so that I will be paid to ride my bike! Probably more than anyone pays me for my art work.

I have a cycle art event that I’m currently looking for funding to do at some point.

I eventually made it to speak to the curator at Ayscoughfee Hall, so I’m putting together a proposal for a project I’m working on for that, which we hope to exhibit there for 2015.

In the mean time, I’m glad the Paying Artists campaign is now making headway.

As much as I appreciate all the efforts being made to challenge galleries and arts organisations that do not pay artists to exhibit or produce work, I’m still anxious about how we can ensure that we are appropriately paid.

Only recently, I attended a lecture, and once again, comments were made “when I was on the dole I made my best work”. Imagine how much better that work would’ve been if they’d been properly paid!!

Excuses are made: “no one is giving out any funding until the new financial year, or waiting for the election”. Which implies that there are people sitting on top of pots of money like Scrooge or Smaug. Money that could pay off my overdraft / wages.

Already, half term is coming up as I’ve been putting together proposals.

Fingers crossed something positive happens financially and creatively sometime soon!

Between job interviews (I was glad to be invited for an interview, this is progress, but realistically, I was overqualified for the role, so of course, I didn’t get it), parent’s evenings, family visits, bike fixings and doctor’s appointments, I somehow have found time to illustrate the graphic novel.

I’ve uploaded a couple of recent illustrations for this to my blog: http://helendearnleyillustration.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/cloudbusting.html

I’m in discussion with a local museum – the EMVAN funding deadline passed before anything could realistically be achieved, however, I’ve continued an email exchange with Ayscoughfee Hall museum, who have said there is some other funding for artists to make new work, and I’m rather keen to come up with a new body of work in connection to the collection of taxidermied birds I know they have there. At this stage, I need to arrange to come and speak to them when in Spalding.

I notice that there’s a talk with Jeremy Deller at Nottingham Contemporary on 15th April, which falls in the Easter holidays. I’m hoping to go to that.

Meanwhile, as today is a teacher’s strike, I made this: http://www.redbubble.com/people/blackbird76/works/11728606-teachers-strike-card

After six months of financial chaos, stress, and mostly chaos, things have started to return to normal, after my prodigal son returned home again, escorted by the police.

In short, his living situation was atrocious, never mind the fact that his absence was putting us at risk of homelessness and destitution.

For once, the benefits department have re-instated the correct level of income for the household, so I’m no longer facing increasing debt and paying the bedroom tax, and I can now return to planning ahead and doing the things I normally do at this time of the year – applying for funding and failing, applying for work and getting no reply, and mostly complaining.

Last week I went to an EMVAN event to discuss funding for new small-scale work working with museums, which seemed interesting and useful, and something I’d be interested in doing to renew my fine art practice, however, email inquiries to local museums elicits no response.

After having to decline the invitation to Jeremy Deller’s private view for All That Is Solid Melts Into Air at Nottingham castle, I finally went to see the exhibition.

http://helend-blackbird.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/emvan-and-jeremy-deller-exhibition.html

This week I went to a lecture at the UoL, and spoke to Paula Crabtree from Bergen Academy of Art & Design, which was very informative and interesting considering that I’ve been wanting to do an MA for a year or so, but have been restricted by no one accepting me for a job to support such further study, and the fees.

In Norway, education is considered a human right, and is free. Not only this, but lecturers and research students have their own studio spaces, which happens in some UK Universities, but not at Lincoln – it was something I always lamented as a student, that here are practicing artists not sharing their own practices or research in a tangible, visible way. One of the problems in the UK is too much bureaucracy, as evidenced by my inability to maintain my practice due to its constraints, and the fact that we don’t complain enough.

Which is why I’m increasing my complaints threshold. At some point I will be directing my complaints at the DWP and their distinct lack of career support for artists, but for now it is that I still feel excluded from many opportunities in my own city unless I take on another job that no one will give me, or unless I pay a £10 admin fee to enter OPEM – even though no one ever thinks of paying me an admin fee for entering anything, and even though paying this admin fee does not guaranteed that my work will ever be shown anywhere, ever. Not that I have any work to exhibit anyway – I haven’t been able to afford to live, never mind create new work over the past few months.

It’s highly recommended that I go and study an MA in Norway, and do it now – I can take my son to do his G.C.S.E.s as a Baccalaureate in English alongside – if he’d be up for that.