It has been a month of sudden invitations and travelling. I have spoken in Bedford, Cardiff and Bath (facts altered for narrative convenience) I have been invited to show work in Basel, Kansas, Southend, the Hague and Valencia. I have also met some very interesting people (especially in Cardiff). But recently it was at the private view of another artist that I met the most interesting person of all. Mariele Neudecker has just completed a residency at the nearby Snape Maltings in Suffolk. Last Saturday her video installation ‘Stay Forever and Never Come Back’ was unveiled in a small building that, apparently, had been lowered by helicopter into the ruined shell of an old dovecote. While trying not to drink the private view wine my companion and I were engaged in a conversation by a retired scientist who had specialised in the workings of the brain. Apparently he was able to show that experience changed the efficiency of synapses to transmit information suggesting that this change was a possible explanation of how memory was stored. He also described very clearly, though I fear I have failed to grasp it fully, how synapses responding to electrical stimuli fire chemical packets to each other across tiny gaps.
A confused post
I arrived early at BCA gallery. This was mainly because in order to save money I had had to catch a train, which would arrive in London Liverpool street no later than four twenty nine. Bedford was much as I had remembered it, little seemed to have changed. At the gallery however things were afoot. Both Laura Pottinger and Katie Walton were on maternity leave, Sarah was moving on to a new job and Dawn Giles was the new power in the office. The office itself had been rearranged seeming, as in fact it always did, in a state of flux. It wasn’t long before I found myself helping Mira to fit spotlights and angle them in order to illuminate Dawn’s desk. Then I was carrying a coffee machine down into the gallery slopping the contents of the overflow tray onto my trousers. Next I was arranging chairs and trying unsuccessfully to connect the laptop to a projector. I took on all these tasks willingly and largely unbidden. By seven the guests had arrived, taken their chairs and turned their faces expectantly towards the three speakers of which, unfortunately, I was one.
I had met Simon Munnery (our chair) before this ‘in conversation’ but I hadn’t recognised who he was. He had seemed familiar and jocular but it was only as we seated ourselves to begin the ‘in conversation’ that realisation came upon me. I was on Simon’s right hand and the extremely tall Chris Dobrowolski on his left. Both began by talking fluently, telling jokes, funny stories and looking extremely interested and interesting, while I, feeling my strength ebbing away, began to think about easing myself out of the audience’s field of vision. I began to rehearse lines in my head while Chris embarked on a hilarious soliloquy about a very serious Russian researcher and a toy penguin. I noticed that Chris’ work was very like mine, that we had similar experiences and responses to the Antarctic and that we both felt nervous, undermined even, about each others position. I was thinking that perhaps I should have travelled to those frozen wastes, he was thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have. Then Mr Munnery swivelled his whole body around to face me, moved to speak and I remember no more.
The Antarctic is now a distant and rather romantic dream for me as is that evening’s conversation.
Listening to radio four slip in and out of focus on my elderly radio has reminded me of the sound effects on my copy of Murnau’s Nosferatu. The Vampire is framed in the window of his dilapidated house using his powers to attract the attention of a young lady. While he waves at the window we hear the sound of radio waves go weeeoooooohweeee. In my youth I remember feeling that I completely believed that communicating with women would be equally unlikely. Many years wiser now I write exhausted following a gruelling visit to London. Truly I cannot conceive how anyone could actually live there! My companion and I spent the weekend in our Chelsea lodgings our intention to visit Zoo at our leisure. Unfortunately we made the mistake of first taking a tour of the new Saatchi Gallery. I have never felt quite so alienated in my life. The overwhelming brashness of the painting especially depressed me. We found Zoo much more pleasing and my companion met an old friend Paul who was running the Workplace stand. There was, as usual, much to see glitter balls seemed to the leitmotif du jour. So much so that I felt vindicated in my use of one in one of my recent films. Our favourite display was that of a Swedish artist named Jensen. Displayed in a faux wattle and daub interior his little creatures had quaint names but appeared rough fellows who haven’t perhaps lived as they should.
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Today, after many years away, I returned to the place where I first began my lecturing career. The High Street Art School has been unused by art students for twelve years but now, because of the failure of the air conditioning in our (windowless) new building, we have returned. The airiness of the grand octagonal cavaedium stood in stark contrast to our new rooms whose opposing airlessness has induced fainting fits and nausea in staff and students alike. This was to be the site of a day’s drawing and although the morning chill caused us to shuffle our feet and clap our hands together we were grateful. Once the students had settled to their task of drawing dead insects and birds I proceeded to make a thorough examination of the stairs and passages leading off the atrium. My intentions were partly nostalgic but also that of the scavenger on the lookout for choice items. One or two of the small rooms near the hall were open, but there was nothing to see in them except old furniture, stationary and electrical goods, dusty and discoloured with age. At last however I found an old door at the back of the building that, though it seemed locked, gave a little under pressure. With only gentle persuasion the door soon swung wide to reveal a leaky corridor from which three doors opened. I was now in an older wing of the college. Proceeding down the corridor, I noticed stacked against the left wall were four two metre square relief maps of the town revealing warehouses, domestic housing, a devilish one-way system and the gentle curve of the river. Moving on I entered each room in turn hoping to find equal delights and curiosities. The first had been put over to storage containing racks of boxes each holding paper records penned in a strange language. There was also an array of surveying equipment and rejected plans for the new building on the other side of town. To the right, piled haphazardly on the floor were a number of foot-long sharpened stakes. With increasing excitement I passed on to the second room however it contained little of interest being yet more storage for files. The third room however is much more interesting and here I am surrounded by furniture of all ages sitting at an old oak desk writing this journal. Next to me, propped carelessly against the fireplace, is a glass fronted key cabinet its double doors ajar, some of its contents spilled onto the floor. I shall compose a text to my companion she loves glass fronted cabinets…
I write as I am awaiting delivery of 25 “Black Flag Game”, compendia intended for my show in Bath. The work is nearly complete and packed in my large traveling trunk. My only remaining issue is whether to rerecord the sound on one piece and how to chain two telescopes to the walls of the gallery. I have been warned repeatedly that the intelligentsia of Bath are not to be trusted and will carry off anything that is not nailed down. As I wait I am reviewing some of my correspondence particularly rejection letters.
Commissions East recently invited me to apply for a residency at the HMS Ganges museum in Shotley, I was informed that I was part of a selected long-list and so I replied forthwith with a small packet of goods including a DVD, C.V., etc. It was a bit of a rush as the deadline was tight but buoyed with hopeful confidence; I had gone some way towards spending the £17500 budget (in my head).
Dear Alex
Please find attached a letter regarding the shortlisting for the HMS Ganges Museum residency. Unfortunately on this occasion you were not selected by the panel.
Any materials submitted will be returned to you shortly along with a hard copy of the letter for your files.
I hope another opportunity will come up for us to work together in the future.
With best wishes
Siân
I feel that telling me I have failed in an email, attaching a letter telling me I have failed and posting me another letter telling me I have failed is a little like being repeatedly pummelled by a wet pillow.
Nevertheless I am not downhearted though I was looking forward to recreating John Noakes’ failed attempt to reach the ‘button’ on the top of HMS Ganges’ infamous mast.
