The echoes we hear and the echoes we make.
So lovely to end a fortnight of madness and find some time to write this blog again. It’s been a very busy time: taking down one show; sorting out two others; showing at the art fair (thank you Castlefield Gallery for representing me)… add to that a family wedding and the onset of a cold and it’s a recipe for knackeredness. Anyway, it’s all ended with some proper good music to soothe my achey self and thanks a million billion to St Philips, Salford for hosting The Walkmen. If I could do just one collaboration with results as good theirs when they play live, I would be a happy lady.
And so with three weeks to go to our show at the Harris Museum, Tenneson and Dale are under pressure, but enjoying it. Our piece – Hung Parliament – is coming together, scalpel blade cuts and hangovers permitting. This new work is certainly our biggest so far and bold enough that the museum initially had slight qualms about it (the title seemed to cause them unnecessary worry), but they get it now and it’s not as sinister as they had feared. In fact, it’s not sinister at all, it’s just cheeky (which is what T&D do best).
We’ve turned ourselves into a two part machine for making this installation, because, as usual, it involves finicky, repetitive elements. We know each other’s working methods well enough now that we almost instinctively know who should do which bit, without really having to discuss it: that’s why we had a great day in the studio the other day – just got in there and worked away quite contentedly, not as two solo artists, but as a single unit. It’s also why The Walkmen were so good – each musician was given equal weight, there was no “star”; they were tight, purposeful and restrained and though they may not be visual artists, this structure was an admirable model for collaboration.
