Tales from Brighton

On Wednesday, I went on a trip to London galleries with other MA students, and tutors Charlie and Megha. While some were trying to fit in as many galleries as possible, I had decided to limit myself to two major shows for the day, which seems to be about my limit for being able to give proper attention to what I see.

Steve had mentioned wanting to see Pippilotti Rist’s work at The Hayward, and I was quick to agree, remembering the name from hearing my friend Joanna Austin talk about her as an influence. I love Jo’s work, which is joyful, mischievous and subversive, and the work I’ve made in collaboration with her has been some of the most fulfilling work I have been part of. Despite this, I’d never actually seen anything by Pippilotti Rist, so I’m very glad we did go to see it. The exhibition, Eyeball Massage, was exactly what I needed to see – it filled me with excitement about using video installation, and the urge to try out different ways of doing it. The darkened space helped to make the experience feel enveloping and immersive, and the works were interactive to just the right extent for me – they made me feel physically involved as well as mentally, but did not put me in a situation where I felt compromised.

I am never entirely certain how I feel about feminist art practice which focuses overtly on the female body (vaginas, breasts, menstruation, childbirth – while I certainly don’t advocate a stigmatised view of the female body, making it the focal point of an art practice does sometimes feel to me a little like pigeonholing oneself. I think perhaps I am from a somewhat confused generation of women in Western culture, who are aware of how much we owe to feminism, but uncertain where to position ourselves in relation to it. Wanting to be seen as people first and foremost, but aware that we are relatively lucky to have any say in the matter), as quite a lot of Rist’s work does, but in this case I can’t deny it’s done well. Besides, I think that much of Rist’s work addresses issues relating to the body in general, male and female, so it’s natural that her work will come from the perspective of her own – female – physical experience.

The thing that has really stayed with me about this show is how immersive the experience is for the viewer. There was so much to take in, I think I will need to return to see more of it another day – I would like to spend longer watching some of the videos. I’ve bought the exhibition catalogue, which contains several essays, so it might be interesting to return for a second viewing of this show with the benefit of having read these.

A neglected blog sits in the corner of my room, glowering at me resentfully, as it has been for some months. Tonight I finally resolved to face it head-on, and wrote a respectabley sized post to update. Then I tried to save it, and it got lost.

So this will instead be a more picture-based dash through what I wrote of in the lost post.

In brief… I have spent much of the summer in Hertfordshire with my family, allowing the metaphorical (and probably literal) dust to settle, and this seems to have had some success as I feel I now have a clearer idea of the direction I want to take my work in for my second – and final- year of MA. This will probably last precisely until I speak to a tutor about my plans, when the course recommences officially, later this month.

I’ve also managed to spend enough time in Brighton during the summer to miraculously reorganise my kitchen, an achievement which fills me with disproportionate pride.

This week, instead of being zapped with a laser, I have been blasted with tiny crystal particles, then pricked with a tiny needle. The glycolic acid has remained the same. I’d be sceptical about all this, except that my skin no longer resembles that of a toad, as it did back in October. Though it was never green, I don’t think.

Since the de-toading happens in London, I also went to Camden Arts Centre and saw the exhibition they have on at the moment: ‘…a multitude of soap bubbles which explode from time to time…’: Pino Pascali’s final works 1967-1968.

I wondered, not for the first time, where my work is in relation to Arte Povera – I have similar ideas in terms of choice of materials, but my work looks quite unlike what is generally thought of as Arte Povera. I wondered about this previously when Sam Smith talked about the influence of Arte Povera on his work, during his presentation last term – I felt there were many parallels in our attitudes to artistic practice, and we were both reading The Savage Mind by Levi-Strauss. But our work looks very different, and his is undoubtedly closer to Arte Povera.

So anyway, I bought a book about the movement, which seems to mainly focus on its origins in Italy. I’ve read about 3 pages so far.

(Written on 18th April)

Re-reading my last entry, I find myself wondering about the term ’emerging artist’, which I see so frequently I had not thought enough about it as a term until now. What are we emerging from? Obscurity? Education? Does the continuous present tense imply that we are definitely going to complete the process and emerge as art-butterflies (or moths, probably), ready to fly around pollinating gallery-flowers? Is there a limit to how long we can take to emerge, and if we take too long, are we written off as deformed and stunted, limping round with the remains of our chrysalis hanging from our partially developed wings?

This is all probably very silly. But it has made me think about a project which would involve portraits (video?) of artists emerging from a physical place of their choosing – their house/bed/studio, etc. I realise this is somewhat at odds with my usual ‘rule’ of not making art about art…but maybe it’s worth breaking. I don’t know, maybe I’m just in a strange mood today. I’ve had two coffees, that probably explains it.

Brighton is a lovely place to be in the sunshine. I’m excited that the part of Brighton I live in has its own carnival in June. And I got a flyer through the post the other day about May Day celebrations Queens Park, not far from me.

On Saturday I went to Bexhill, to the De La Warr Pavilion to see Every Day Is A Good Day – an exhibition of visual art by John Cage, and the accompanying exhibition A Nod To Cage, of artistic responses to Cage’s work and philosophies. The latter features work by some of my fellow MA students – Hugh Fox, Steve Thompson, Joseph Long (I did send in a proposal for this, but was not selected – I’m not bitter about it, though. I mainly sent in the proposal, which I was aware was probably a most impractical project, in order to know that I’d given it a shot.) as well as a piece by Charlie Hooker (MA course leader). I had wanted to go to the opening night on Friday, but was unable to as I was waiting in (and madly cleaning the flat) for a visit from my landlord. So I made up for it by going to see the exhibition, along with a discussion on Cage’s work, and a concert of some of his music by Margaret Leng Tan, a pianist who had worked with him in the 70s/80s. It was, all in all, a very good day.

6.30 pm. I’ve just arrived back in Brighton after a week away with family, and am feeling particularly dazed, even for me. I spent most of last week in the Sussex countryside, where my parents had rented a converted barn, which belonged to a garden centre. As luck would have it, the garden of the barn backed on to a field, where there was a horse. He’d been nipped repeatedly by another horse, and had iodine lotion on his wounds, which resulted in him looking a little like the surface of the moon. I’d been planning for a while to take my cut-out of the merry-go-round horse from the pier on a trip to meet real horses, and had brought all my cut-outs along in the hope of finding one. I’ve made a video for my Brighton Series, I’ve put on Youtube as a work in progress. Haven’t checked yet whether I’ve had any barely intelligible abusive comments of the type that seem to be the standard response on Youtube.

While I’m on the subject of social media, I’ve recently started using Twitter, after resisting for about 3 years. It must be 3 years now, since it was first mentioned to me by an artist/friend, who was describing how he’d had what ended up being a very heated debate with a friend of his, who was trying to tell him about Twitter, and how good it was, and my friend wasn’t interested at all, and he remarked that ‘the name says it all’. I remember thinking at the time that id did sound rather pointless. Then it got really popular, people I respect started using it, but I still resisted. I think put off more by the name than anything else – I think my friend’s opinion on the matter must have influenced me quite a bit. But I’m glad I overcame this absorbed prejudice, because I’ve really enjoyed my experience of it so far. It’s helped me to feel more a part of a community of artists, and is very good for keeping in touch with events, blogs, etc.

Anyway, I shall leave you (whoever you may be) for now with my horse video, as it is at present. It will have sound at a later date.

Victoria, a horse from the Merry-Go-Round on Brighton Pier, feels a little out of place in a field with a horse called Fizzy. Work in progress, and part of my Brighton Series.