How we Met
I met Ruth and Pete on an AA2A residency at Nottingham Trent University which started in November 2009. I had graduated in 2008 but had to move back to a small market town with little artistic activity whist I recovered from some of the debt that I had left art college with.
So at the time of the residency, I was feeling a bit out of the loop and some what creatively isolated.
From the offset, it was suggested that it could be a nice idea if we considered working on a project together for Sideshow (the Nottingham fringe to the British Art Show) which kicks off this autumn/winter. This sounded like a good idea, but not knowing each others practices, we had no idea how or if this could work so we started meeting regularly to discuss our ideas.
In the end our meetings ranged from dinner dates to studio/ crit sessions to occasionally one too many in the local pub. However we found that we were still quite cautious with our project ideas, wanting the opportunity to work together but also worrying that things should not be forced.
So with the deadline for commissions fast approaching our meetings became longer more frequent and although this could be hard work, I found I was involved in a supportive structure that I think is probably quite difficult to find outside of education.
In the end after much exhaustive juggling of ideas, I think we realised that we had spent too long looking for similarities or feeling that there should be similarities for us to work together. When we accepted that we could see conversations between our practices, but that essentially we worked in very different ways, we came up with the formula for The Heuristics Laboratory: a three week exhibition in which we each take an experimental week to explore acts of learning or discovery.
