Threads

While I was making the work for Five, Six, Pick up Sticks, it was very important to me to collect real twigs, pick them up from the ground, consider them carefully for wrapping. I still have all these wrapped twigs, and I am using them in all sorts of other contexts, making them work in different ways, say different things.

But also, I have recently been making twigs out of recycled packaging paper. I think this is a continuation of the residency with Stuart: considering materials and playing with their inherent properties… seeing what I can make them do. I know they are not real twigs, and when you handle them you know they are not real, but they do have enough twiggishness about them for me to continue the experiments. They are waste materials, bound tightly from the huge reel of linen thread I bought in the second hand warehouse in Örebro. The scrunching and binding is different every time, so the individuality can continue. By tearing the paper differently I can get different shapes, sizes and forking arrangements. It is another quiet and meditative activity, that at the moment has no real end-game. Another one of those activities where the multiples play a key role. I haven’t got enough yet to know what they can do.

I am usually a bit of a stickler for authenticity, a twig should be a twig… and then I make that twig signify something. So why can’t I take it back another step and make the materials signify a twig?

Thank you again Stuart for pushing my thinking in a different direction by allowing the time and space to play.

Those who read this blog, or who follow me on social media when they meet me they say “You’re SO busy aren’t you?” And yes, it does appear so, and I am tired so it must be true! Some of that is the pressure to produce “content” which I outwardly abhor, but inwardly I still feel the need to succumb to. But I am attempting to slow myself a little. For one thing, this Busy-ness is unsustainable. Also I find myself stepping back to analyse my need for it. Is there a need to be SEEN to be busy, as well as a need to FEEL busy, that one is producing work?

Good Question…

I am making arrangements for the RBSA’s Professor of Painting, John Devane, also of Coventry University, to visit me in my studio, to talk about all this activity, product, content… and cast a fresh pair of eyes over it and take stock a little. 

Just as I am thinking about this, I have started reading a new book, lent to me by my son, called “The Disappearance of Rituals”. I am still only in the first chapter, but I am gratified to read something that chimes with my own thinking, at just the right time. Author Byung-Chul Han talks of rituals being the means humans take to make themselves at home in the world. We need around us familiarity, repetition, recognition. “Recognition elicits the permanent from the transient” (Han quotes this from Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful p47).

Instagram “content” is the most transient of media. Instead of scrolling endlessly for the new and fresh, what I want actually, is something familiar that I can ponder. Something to ponder is reliable. The act of pondering is comforting. One should linger, tarry and dawdle.

One can watch the cycle of annual feast days and seasons and hold the rituals they are tied to. These mark out the year and give it structure, stability and meaning. They slow things down so we can appreciate the year and the seasons, and repeat the same old rituals, be they religious, or social, or familial. These things endure. 

While creating content, for others to consume, our communication becomes meaningless, it passes, does not endure, we don’t linger over it, we don’t ponder the existence of it. Our connections are EXTENSIVE but not INTENSIVE.

So, while I tarry a-while and contemplate… linger… ponder… maybe I can appreciate more the things I have achieved while I have been “SOOOO busy!” And actually take the time to review what they mean.

This has been illustrated perfectly by the time spent with Stuart in Sweden. Instead of the emails, collected and read when convenient, and the photo on Insta, that we click “like” and move on, we had the opportunity to take our time with each other, and each other’s thoughts. 

In the five days, we established a few rituals: rising early; eating breakfast together; discussing the day ahead; me washing up while Stuart gets ready; Stuart preparing food while I sit and watch him… hahaha!; small seemingly insignificant habits that soon become fixed and speak of home, settledness, comfort. These things are INTENSIVE.

Our working together in the project room was also intensive: establishing a common language and pattern of working, a repetitiveness derived from the need to sit back and ponder, and drink tea. 

We talked a lot, and as Stuart said in his post, not always about the work, but often about these things that make our lives what they are, the rituals with friends, with our work colleagues, our families.

So, yes, I agree, going to Sweden for a residency does seem “busy” … but actually, once there, there was plenty of time for pondering, and lingering, and establishing small rituals to add meaning to it all.

Thinking about my own work in relation to what I am reading, I look at the repetition in the way I work; the cyclical nature of it; the pattern that my studio days always follow.

I am always looking at relationships: what is it that we do that creates and upholds them? How can this be fostered when it starts to break down? What do we do to recognise and appreciate the ones that endure? 

So I am going to let this writing stand, as it is, no pictures of work in progress, no fleeting Content… just words to linger over, and reflect upon.