Happily I have an opportunity to continue to make new friends through the work 100 GREETINGS. I will continue the work as part of the current show at Outpost Gallery in Norwich. I intend to carry on from the 51 greetings already made at A Foundation in Liverpool in a second attempt to reach the magic 100. This is home ground for me as I am based in East Anglia and I am keen to see if there is a difference in response between people from Liverpool and those down south.
The piece has the potential to be very different since I will perform it in the market place to a non arts audience who may well be more concerned with purchasing Christmas gifts during late night shopping than being part of a performance.
Similarly my attire of different gloves (rubber, cotton, textured) may not affect my future friends with their tactility as they are very likely to be wearing gloves themselves in the cold evening weather.
To keep the work in mind here is another image from Liverpool
I thought a few images of the performance at A Foundation in Liverpool might be interesting .
In the event I managed to complete 51 greetings over the course of the day and as a result now have 51 new friends from Liverpool. All the greetings resulted in interesting conversation with visitors to the gallery, some taking quite a fascinating discursive journey into the area of public and private space, personal comfort zones and the nature of relating to our fellow human beings.
The gallery space is sizeable, there are several large areas for showing work most on an industrial scale. Perhaps because of this, there were four exhibitions showing – Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Artists Anonymous and the photographs of Manual Vasson plus the Fantasy project showing Eastern artists. Here are some images of some of the greetings.
Today I am about to leave for Liverpool as I will be performing at A Foundation on Saturday 22nd November. Trying to ensure I have not forgotten everything I need for the performance and also making sure it all fits into one suitcase.
The work is called 100 GREETINGS and is based on the simple act of greeting our fellow human beings. The piece will last for as long as it takes to make 100 greetings – potentially all day.
Quite apprehensive at the moment, which is unusual as I normally look forward to live pieces. Still, they say adrenalin and nerves always result in a better performance so maybe its a good sign.
Flights now booked so it's off to the States in mid January! I am now thinking I must get down to writing the outline for my lecture since I know that time will slip by very quickly.
On another issue entirely, I went to a symposium at the University of the West of England in Bristol at the weekend entitled All Over the Place. It accompanied the opening of a drawing show of the same name in which there were pieces by several of the speakers at the symposium. What I found interesting was the tendency for the symposium title to be explored in relation to landscape rather than the wider interpretation of place. Of course the particular interests of some artists was landscape and this came through strongly in their talks. Nevertheless it seemed to me that place was frequently taken as the grand 'Caspar David Freidrich type' location. For me, equally relevant works are those of Idris Khan and Bernd and Hilla Becher, that do not use the 18th Century landscape idyll as the way to explore place.
If I can venture about my work in the same paragraph as the above artists, the sitting room drawings are for me very much about place, even though these are as far removed from rolling hills and crashing waves as can be.
I have just logged onto Artists' Talking and realised my blog was selected by Inez Schrader as the blogger's choice – thanks Inez! And just to reassure you, video clips of the work from the first Inishlacken residency will be on my website soon so they can be seen without the need to travel to Ireland or the States.
Today I have been booking flights to America for the opening of the show at Redhouse Arts Centre and to deliver a lecture at SUNY – the State University of New York. I am hoping to spend some time in New York city looking at galleries and maybe making some contacts there. It seems logical to make the most of the trip in every way possible.
The Inishlacken drawings are progressing, albeit slowly so nothing to see yet, but in order that visual withdrawal doesn't set in, here is another sitting room drawing.
