Week 1 – Part 1
A great lesson in letting go of expectations this week. I spent a lot of last week preparing myself on many levels for this weeks installing in Bristol. I worked on visualising how it would go – I would arrive at the museum with everything in place and ready to start hanging with my team. We would have a swift, trouble –free, joyful time, with everything falling into place effortlessly…
When I did arrive on Monday I was told that, due to a major defect on the councils ordering system, the main frame from which 900 of my objects will hang had not actually been ordered and a key member of the museum installing team was off sick. I did almost burst into tears, I had such an expectation and adrenalin ready to go, it felt like a punch in the stomach. I had had to juggle so many things to be away for all this time, with two children and Leo working full time. The frame won’t get there till Thursday, which put me, four days behind in my head.
Then I reminded myself that I do believe in a broader way that the universe has its own timing which is, overall, much more effective –if less comprehensible initially – than I as an individual can control or manage. And what ensued was some invaluable time considering and focusing on detailed aspects of the installing that I had not been able to allow for. I have had this projects layout either in my head, on paper or literally all over my studio floor (see previous blogs for photos of mapping work over xmas) for such a long time and yet the gap between this and the actual hanging of the 900 pieces still contains unknowns. With the gifts 1-99, I had suspended them in my studio and know how they work in three dimensions.
But the larger piece is a different creature. David Singleton, one of the main conservation people took Julia and I up to his office on Monday morning to take a look at experiments he had been doing with different weights of fishing line and weights on smaller objects, as issues around coiling wire, safety and visibility etc were coming up. Thank god he had done these, as well as knotting tests to see how the type of knot affected the slippage of a given object. From these we decided to go with a lighter weight wire than I had planned as well as a different knot and a decision to do some hanging tests with objects to establish which is the optimum wire to use as well as how the air conditioning and door opening will affect the movement of objects. Boring but essential, so thank you council, for screwing up to allow us time to do valuable, if tedious preparation.
