>>>Thorseby Street Thursdays>>>

The opening of the show is today. I have spent a lot of time up ladders and intend to spend more time up a ladder this evening..3 hours in fact.

I have stuck all the reviews published in Summer 1998 – in art magazines – on the wall in the gallery. I’ve put them across two windows in an orderly way (will post an image next time i post). I will be reading all the reviews tonight – up a massive wobbly ladder – and highlighting things that are repeated a lot and making a graph of these things. It will be a sort of seance – like a data seance. To try and re-connect to the thoughts of that specific time by channelling the data of these art reviews.

I am showing 3 drawings of gallery spaces all exploding and flying about – like big versions of the image in my first post. I’m not sure if I’m trying to say too much and make too many connections at once …perhaps so.

I’m trying to think about an attempt to connect with a past moment through the medium of the gallery space, and it’s architecture, and it’s furniture. There’s something about it all that all seems to connect but we shall see if that goes over or not.

When I’ve been planning the performance tonight I’ve been thinking alot about the Lucy Gunning piece from 1993 ‘Climbing around my room’ in which she climbs around her room in a red dress… using all the nooks and crannies.

Also thought I’d add an image of the priest’s room in film The Omen – which was partly why I wanted to put the reviews across the windows. The priest has covered a whole room, including windows, floor and ceiling in pages of the bible to keep the devil out. They don’t tell you in the film if it’s effective or not – I think he dies so I guess …not.

oh my word – i completely imagined there was an extra week before the private view – there are actually 4 days until the opening – including today!! What a calamity! It should be okay though.

Here’s a couple of pictures that I’ve made before I work on my work for the exhibition.

Sometimes I find it hard to switch from emailing-admin brain to drawing brain and drawing a picture at the start of a working day seems to help. It seems to help switch off the inner critic also. The inner critic is a loud beast – once when I was working on some props for a performance piece my inner critic was Stephen Fry. I wasn’t actually hearing his voice but couldn’t stop thinking what he would think – and for some reason he didn’t like it! Will report back on who the inner critic turns out to be today.

12 days to go until the opening of our exhibition at One Thoresby Street in Nottingham. ‘Thoresby Street Thursdays’ are a series of exhibitions showing the work of artists who have a studio here or used to. Each exhibition features two or three artists. They’ve been running since March – with approximately 2 exhibitions each month. Our show is the 2nd to last. They are quite exciting, off the cuff shows -in which people seem to be showing work they are trying out.

Alexander Stevenson and I have been given an exhibition – which is interesting because we’ve never seen any of each other work in real life – only on the internet!

We began by talking about the idea of reading reviews and imaging the artwork discussed in them. When I was in college I read a review that I thought sounded incredible, then saw the work and was terribly disappointed that it wasn’t what I imagined. I then realised ‘ah ha! I can now make the work I imagined… that work is still to be created!!’.

I’ve often wondered about curating a show in which artists remake work from reviews of work they’ve never seen. Which I imagined to be playful, almost like the game ‘consequences’ in the way that the results would be a bit arbitrary, but interesting anyway because of the process of it. Perhaps the original work could be behind a screen the whole time – to be revealed at the private view like Blind Date!!

What had not occurred to me is that while I was trying to draw exhibitions from reviews that I could end up feeling so much like a thief in the night! I thought I had a good intention but somehow it felt more like I was glibly touching on someone else’s concerns, in a one off way, that didn’t sit right with me at all – like i was drawing sarcastic drawings – no one wants that! or do they?

Anyway, there’s still something that fascinates me about this idea though so I will perhaps return to it.

Alex is going to be doing a durational interactive performance from the 2^nd August to 9^th in the space. He will be asking audience members to try and draw pieces of work – I think largely sculptural work – from reviews – and then amalgamating those drawings as the piece goes on. I’m really excited to see all this play out!

I have taken a slight side step and photocopied all the reviews published in art magazines in August 1998 – which was the month that I originally started art college. I had been inter-railing and my mum had opened the letter I received from Leeds College of Art and Design that had a suggested reading list of art magazines. When I returned there was a stack of magazines in my room, magazines that I’d never seen or heard of before – like a new previously unknown continent – full of magic, wonder and loads of stuff I did not understand at all… not even nearly.

So at the moment I am thinking there will be some kind of installation of all these photocopies and I’ve been making some drawings of gallery spaces from the images in the reviews.