Money seems to be my overriding thought at the moment…mainly the fact that I have none, severely limiting my thinking in a number of new and irritating ways.
After talking to a friend, I decided I should at least measure up the wood for the unwanted items cabinets before concluding I could not afford it. Yesterday saw me cheerfully arranging masking tape on the floor in an attempt at crude furniture design. When eventually satisfied that this was a sound concept to continue with, I worked out that the cost of the basic frame alone would be £300 and hurriedly left the studio in a sulk.
So, it looks like its back to the cardboard boxes idea with a hint of Christophe Buchel and a large dose of underfunding.
Funding has also affected Beacon. Despite gaining Arts Council funding, it will not arrive in time to fund the East Midlands Venice Biennale Pavilion and budgets are also making it more challenging to arrange Kelly Large's project. Kelly plans to create a concentration of colour throughout Sleaford by giving the 3500 teenagers high-viz vests as they leave school. Even at 50p a vest, this cost becomes enormous! How amazing it must be to have a limitless pot of money to create art with!
Perhaps it is this lack that drives me to despair of consumerism? The collection of unwanted items is steadily growing, creating a real sense of claustrophobia in my home and studio that I want to translate into the gallery space; a monument to nihilism and the replacement of god with purchasing and possession. In theory this means that however I arrange the objects, it does not matter: the objects are as meaningless as life itself and the only way, according to Nietzsche, to give life a meaning is to act as though your life is art itself. Simple enough, all I have to do now is stop worrying!
Normally I'd say that a good day is the product of a good mood: the usual happenings happen but your mind chooses to remember the positive, framing the day better than others. The last few days, however, seem to have actually had fantastic, out-of-the-ordinary events in them!
It began 3 days ago, when I was half-way through a productive day of interning for Beacon. Our PR advisor had suggested we ask Sir David Attenborough for a quote to advertise the Kelly Large event and ask if he would launch the documentary film of this in June. I had had no response from the BBC, or any other contacts and was beginning to lose hope when I accidentally found the address and phone number of Sir Attenborough's production company. I dialled the number and quickly repeated my Beacon schpeel while it rang. A familiar voice answered, "Hello?" I'd stumbled across Sir David Attenborough's home phone number and he'd answered! He didn't exactly agree to launching our event but he agreed to read my letter!
A few more social encounters involving various drunken artists, crazy people on trains and conferences about foetal alcohol syndrome made my next few days interesting until I checked my email today and discovered I'd won third prize in the Focused Eye Awards! While this means more expense at a time when I'm about to lose my job at the council, it's an opportunity to travel to another part of the country and another excuse to visit the Baltic!
Yesterday I laid out all the unwanted items I had collected from various friends and colleagues to see how many I'd got and how much more I would need to fill a room. The short answer was: 25; lots more. This concise answer then grew into an enormous tangle of panic-tinged questions: how should I display them? what do they mean? how an earth am I going to collect enough to fill a room? why did I set myself this ridiculous task?!
…and breathe…
I set myself this impossible goal as a trigger for re-engagement with the vast social network of people around me. The impossibility of a task that began life as an idea to meet every single person in the world is designed to place perspective on the size of the human population and my place within it; to stimulate my interaction with these individuals as an antidote to becoming isolated, both as a social being and an artist.
As my creativity is driven by experiencing, so my art should be an experience, influencing the viewer viscerally. However, I do not want to create contrived pieces that crassly impose feelings in order to force a reaction. My first thought with the unwanted items was to make a cabinet with a jumble of different sized pigeon-holes that would create a small room within the gallery space, effectively trapping the viewer so that the objects bore down on them through the darkness. In making the installation slightly overwhelming, I hoped to reference my feelings on consumerism and the potential for attachment to possessions to impede on your freedom. Effectively, this would give the objects a paradoxical meaning: statements of reckless capitalism and the human potential for greed that act as symbols of a positive interaction within society, reflecting my concerns that consumption is at the heart of modern society and the basis for most human interaction, a basic human need.
Their display is secondary to the concept, so perhaps simple and cheap would suffice? Plinths made of upturned cardboard boxes to create a maze of objects at varying heights certainly sound more appealing than creating a very expensive, very labour intensive display unit! My inner capitalist and outer perfectionist are clouding my judgement with the thought that perhaps the most polished solution will command the most respect whilst my overarching sense of imminent poverty is desperately pushing the idea that this concept demands simplicity and an anti-consumerist statement…I shall stop by Asda on the way to the studios for a few boxes, and maybe while I'm there I'll pick up some out-of-season vegetables shipped from far away in an unnecessary amount of plastic wrapping.
