Hooray! it’s friday! As I’m finding with most things in my life – this is a double edged sword.
GOOD I can lure my horrible children off the computer with the promise of TV (mean mummy that I am, I only let them watch on Fridays) and reclaim it as my own
BAD After a couple of weeks break, normal service has been resumed….. #FridayFail. Yes, it’s another rejection letter with a feedback refusal.
I am currently in a funny position – I seem to only be able to make a success from failure. This is as stupid and impossible as it seems. And this in itself I find both amusing and frustrating.
Like INVASION a failed artwork which was successfully chosen for ‘Artefacts of Failure’ at Derby Quad, a performative collaboration (SSoCiaL) which Sally Lemsford and I have been working on for months has finally been successful. We will be at ‘Tempting Failure’ in Bristol in April.
http://www.thomasjohnbacon.com/2013/02/tempting-fa…
Failure, it seems, is my lucky word.
Several years ago I made a work which was a ‘chindogu’ – something which by it’s essence negates the purpose for it’s creation. I have made several of these since but the first is a set of pre-counted worry beads with a bell on the end. I mention this only in that it is a peculiar object to create in that both has purpose and is pointless.
By being successful at failure does this mean I no longer can be?
Failure surely is essential to my practice. If in addressing the duality of an abject object I am then successful this would jeopardize my work so that it could no longer genuinely continue.
Perhaps I have finally found the space in between. It is an un/happy place to be.
Just before Christmas I received two unwanted pieces of news. Firstly my ACE Grants for the Arts proposal, 21st Century Fetish, which I had been working on for 6 months, had been rejected at the second stage. Secondly, my second application for Axis had been rejected. Not a good start to the Christmas holidays.
Keeping up a positive frame of mind (not letting the Bs grind me down) I resubmitted my proposal (fingers crossed for second time) and wrote to Axis asking for feedback. Although I am still miffed that I was rejected, happily they appreciated my (lengthy) frustration and granted me some very helpful advice.
Being used to having responses on here and by other artists I know, it was VERY useful to have an external professional opinion from someone who doesn’t know me, or the history of my work – especially as it brought up many issues that I was unaware of but that may have been causing my continued flood of rejections.
Whilst I have no intention, (and no ability) to change my work in any way, it did make me question how I address it and how I portray it in a professional context. This, I know, I have talked about before but I think through these set backs I feel that I am getting closer to the heart of the problem and it is making me SERIOUSLY consider every little tiny thing. And feel that I have to (and mostly can) justify everything. This I need to be able to do ON PAPER, TO STRANGERS.
At the moment my work seems to be saying all the wrong things to all the right people, even if it doesnt mean to.
So now my head is really hurting.
I have started working on several projects at once. Whilst this is not new – I don’t normally have so many personal pieces on the go at once. I normally have a couple of personal things and then some where there is the looming figure of a deadline making me FINISH.
This is the DANGER ZONE I know. However, as I seem increasingly to be working on things that require a sustained and very long term commitment I’m not sure that there is any other way to do it.
I have just come to the end of my current supply of labels for SPECTRUM and must take a new photo – the last one was a year ago – and as it now holds 1152 labels it should look different. I wish I had logged how many there were last year.
With new works in progress – one is waiting for lots of cardboard (not quite sure where to get this without making a spurious purchase of a new washing machine) another is waiting for me to go to RS Componants (can’t really justify a special trip) and the third was waiting for me to rescue my rusty and dusty dressmaking dummy from the loft (tick- hurrah, one at least).
As I have previously mentioned, I appreciate the meditative aspects of making these things but I am starting to think that perhaps I am creating these works as my own personal version of shoe shining and pencil sharpening – am I avoiding making things that need constant decision making – am I hiding from my own ideas under the guise of ‘labour’?
I am coming close to the point where all shoes are sparkling and all pencils pointy – what can I do to divert me now?
Apologies to Shakespeare but it may be time to ‘screw my courage to the sticking place’….
A year or so ago I gave a talk about my work at Beacon Bimonthlies 7.
http://beaconbimonthlies.blogspot.co.uk/2011_10_01…
The basis for my talk was about how I have found that it is impossible to get away from yourself – your ‘core being’ will always somehow present itself and it was that I found that I was wearing a pair of red Mary Janes at the talk just like the ones in the picture of me wearing my ‘Face Dress’ when I was 17 a long time ago.
This theme seems to also be recurrent for me. It is not that I exactly want to escape, but that I would like to feel that I have the option. I would also like to feel that I have grown up at some point and progressed a little from things that interested and appealed to me as a teenager. Sadly this seems not to be –
THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
So the other day, whilst sitting in my studio, sewing on my daily quota of labels onto SPECTRUM (I have to do this, it is a sort of ‘treat’ – otherwise I would do nothing else for days) my mother came in with something amazing.
Whilst having a bit of a sort out, she had found this label. This was the label from my very first school cardigan when I started infant school in 1974. Fearing that I might be bullied for having a cardi from the archetypal ‘posh shop’ she cut it out of the garment, and for some reason saved it for 39 years.
Suddenly my work makes much more sense to me.
At the moment I feel both busy and at a gloriously free and loose end – enabling me to grant myself a bit of time to actually PROPERLY consider what I am doing, whilst at the same time making things which take time but require no headspace.
SPECTRUM now has 1085 labels. Which equates to 54.25 hours of meditative stitching.
I realised that much of my work is like this – there is an awful lot of preparing materials. Selecting bits and rejecting bits, ironing bits and sorting bits. All of which, theoretically, if I had an assistant, could be done by someone else. The thought of this horrifies me.
At quite short notice I am now showing one of my SOCKPAINTINGS in Leicester next week and had to deliver it today. I had forgotten what they were like and quite how much I enjoy intereacting with them. I think I will have to add to my list to explore making some more, as I don’t think I am quite done with them yet.
I can definately feel my boat going just a teeny bit faster……..
