Threads

As well as being a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) I have recently also become a member of ExtraOrdinary People (EOP) at Eastside Projects.

I am hoping that by belonging to both I will be able to satisfy both sides of my artistic personality. 

The RBSA has a 200 year history, is an artist run, traditional group with a gallery in Birmingham’s prestigious Jewellery Quarter. Through this organisation I have access to a city centre gallery, a standard white-walled, large, well lit space. I can exhibit there in group shows one or two times a year. I can also book free space in the ground floor gallery/shop. I can, like I did in 2023, book a larger gallery space (at a cost) for a solo show if I so desire.

This space is run by a small staff, and volunteers from the membership, including a voluntary curator, secretary and president. The members hang the shows, and steward them. The average age of the membership is quite high and as a result of that, a high percentage of the membership is inactive. The driving need is to attract new younger members, from a more diverse population of artists, with more diverse art forms. Other than a small “splinter group” I was invited to join, there’s not much in the way of incidental, casual, critical conversation I have found. Although there are occasional artist talks, and I have applied to the society’s Professor of Painting for a portfolio review. Some of the members have lively contemporary practices, (nothing to do with their age) but many have a more traditional practice. It feels divided…Sometimes it is difficult to choose what to submit to group shows as my work is rarely in a frame, hangs on the wall using unusual techniques, or needs quite a bit of space. My submissions to the shows can be troublesome if I do not install it myself – which isn’t always possible. Despite these shortcomings, it’s a good space, with some good people I have been glad to meet.

Anyway…

Because of my need to engage with a different audience, I was drawn to Eastside Projects in Digbeth, across the other side of town. For those readers who do not know Digbeth, it is a tatty, post industrial area, known for venues like the Custard Factory, full of trendy bars and creative people… more recently priced out of the building for those who can afford ever increasing rents. The artists are pushed out to find as usual the more derelict spaces. Recently there has been more investment in the area, buildings are being snapped up and refurbished, newly paved areas are planted up with low level landscaping and the occasional tree as cranes hover overhead and the new station/interchange gets built for HS2. You get the picture…

Eastside Projects is the classic abandoned warehouse gallery space, concrete, girders, white-painted brick walls, and factory ceiling skylights. A high space, light and airy. The contrast to RBSA is not just in the space but in the way it is run. It is a NPO, and gets funding from the Arts Council, and is supported by Birmingham City University (although I’m not sure in what way). The curators are young, vibrant and have great, imaginative ideas on how to install the work. They have members exhibitions (selective) (I was selected) which include a crit chit chat on the last day. There are also opportunities for one-to-one mentoring with experienced people – artists and curators. I went to one of the crit events on Saturday and found it to be really informative, inspiring, to hear about other artists’ work, and to have mine also discussed in a way I haven’t experienced since doing my MA. I met a few people I’d not seen for years!

I did feel like the oldest person in the room, taking a chair round with me and hobbling about with a walking stick (I’m sure I will feel ten years younger when I get my new knee). But my work was respected, in its handling, its curation, and in the way it was talked about at the crit. It had plenty of space around it. (The downside sometimes with the RBSA is because of the need to bring in revenue the group exhibitions can seem a bit crammed). I talked to lots of interesting people, swapped instagram details, showed photos of other work… I came away buzzing.

I am back in the studio today, having taken the exhibited work out of the box, and hung it back on the wall. I recorded my bit of the crit and I play it back while looking around the studio. The new work I was unsure about, I now see with a different head on. It is a bit of a departure, but a departure worthy of time to explore what it might mean amongst the work around it.

On Sunday I did a stint as a volunteer steward at RBSA and was able to see the differences in sharp relief. Each group has its advantages and disadvantages. I think my practice probably sits half way between the two. Hopefully by having a foot in each camp I can take the best from each and achieve a balance that supports my practice.

(But most of all: collaboration)

I’ve had a week when I intended to concentrate on songwriting. I had in my head a sort of Immersion Week, as championed often by Dan Whitehouse. I started the week well, with a day with my friend Joe Bayliss, another singer songwriter. We had a morning of gossip, swapped some music of each others, and other people’s. Always good to hear new music. We then had a bit of time in the afternoon to write a song together. This was fun! We did come up with something… not sure whether we will decide it is worth pursuing, but the act of making a song is always good, and it did make us laugh. I think we both enjoyed the process.

I had thought at the beginning of the week that I would spend some time trying to get some musical ideas of my own down. I do this occasionally, but it always feels forced. I think really my strength lies in lyric writing when on my own, but musically in collaboration. I can find a top line melody over chords, and I can figure out the phrasing and delivery, and I can usually find a harmony. I can rearrange things once they exist, I can hear how things could sound, but I can’t invent them… at least not quickly, easily, or to a satisfactory standard.

So by mid week, other than a zoom call and some swapping of files over WhatsApp, I stopped, and packed away the music gear. Maybe I need to value and accept my strengths and recognise and accept what I can’t do. (But sometimes it is good to challenge yourself, right?)

This morning I had a bit of rehearsal time with one of my band-mates, Andy Jenkins. The difference in how I felt was noticeable. Even though I was rusty and my voice croaky, I love the rehearsal process, trying things out, practicing the songs, perfecting the harmonies, tweaking the lyrics… That’s the creativity for me, being in a room and making the song, from the words on the page to the words in my mouth, being sung. Witnessing the music being born from the heads and fingers of others. Bouncing it around, until it falls into place.

We are practicing before a live recoding session towards the end of the month. We are very much looking forward to this, a new venue, a new way of working with a new person doing all the technical stuff. I actually quite like the discipline of doing things over and over again, either in the live recording way, this time in a church with Dave Shaw, or in a studio environment with Michael Clarke. I do like the minutiae of the repetition and performance from a small box with a microphone in. I enjoy the careful listening that goes with it, and watching people who know what they are doing, do their jobs really well. I also feel I can give my best when I have the option to drop a line in again, or re-do the chorus.

Andy and I were talking about the importance of documenting our songwriting. It’s not necessarily that we feel we must release an EP or an album every year, but we three have written some really good songs, so we should record them, (not just on our phones in my dining room) whether we keep them for ourselves or put them out in the world, for posterity. We have been writing and performing together for almost ten years, that’s a lot of material.

Performing is a different beast. I like it, but I think I like the writing and recording bit more. I am an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. Gigs are a buzz, but exhausting. I am the front person… interestingly I find it far more relaxing doing backing vocals with Ian Sutherland’s other band than doing the main vocals for The Sitting Room.

But performing is fun, it’s all about collaboration, harmony, reaction, connection… and I often think, and have said so, that visual artists could do with a lesson in collaboration from musicians, and even improv comedians! Some artists (I have spoken to people who really think this, it’s not idle imagining) think that if they work in collaboration, their work will be “diluted” in some way, so they hold back the best ideas for themselves. Musicians and improvising actors and comedians know that what really matters is the piece. If the piece is funny, we are all funny, if the song is a good one, then we all shine. Rob Lane told me this in an improv workshop I did with him and he’s right. And what you get when people truly trust in the collaborative process, is work that you could never have imagined, and it belongs to ALL of those who collaborated. 

However, I have been very lucky. I have found band-mates that really get it. They are generous with their time, patience and talent. And more recently I have also found a small group of artists who know how to do it properly. Stuart Mayes, Bill Laybourne, Helen Garbett and Rick Sanders know what they are doing. It makes all the difference in the world having good people around you. That’s why I have unashamedly name-dropped throughout this post… thanks all!

Following my last post, I am back in the studio making.

I’m using waste paper, mostly the brown paper of the type used to fill the void in parcels. I’ve got people saving it for me.

When I have done a batch, I then make a vessel to contain them. I now have about a dozen of these vessels hanging on my studio wall. Alongside a few extra large ones that are hanging independently.

While the pillow cases full of wrapped real twig “children” were being installed at one gallery, I delivered a vessel full of paper twigs to be installed at another. This second is a new gallery to me, so I was unsure about what to submit. So I thought the work in progress paper twigs were the way forward, less risky because I don’t have that emotional connection to them. Maybe I will, but at the moment I don’t.

So in my head I obviously have a hierarchy of materials. These don’t matter because they are not real twigs. They are imitations. Even though a couple of people so far have thought they were real, until they handled them. 

At the moment, to me, these twigs are only about their materiality. I’m working with the signifiers, but don’t yet know what they are signifying. Or maybe they won’t ever signify anything. Maybe they will always be just paper wrapped in linen.

In other thoughts, and in another post, I wonder about telling people what these things are to me. Do I have to inform the viewer of the significance of the pieces? Can I just put it up there and let them decide? Either they have their own ideas about the meaning, or they can just enjoy the materiality, unfettered by any emotional content foisted onto them by the artist. I have actually myself been put off works of art when I have them explained to me.

Aesthetically, these two works are similar … twigs in pillow cases, or “twigs” in “paper bags”. I’m not fed up of making them yet. It will be interesting to see when I do, how many have I got, and has any sort of meaning turned up? At the moment I can’t imagine getting upset about them getting damaged… but who knows… they represent an awful lot of time, even if not materials.

https://elenathomas.co.uk/2017/06/26/once-more-with-feeling/

I make no apologies for referring to an old post from 2017.

To save time if you can’t be bothered to read  it, I talk about my very personal and emotional connection to my work, how I anthropomorphise objects, how the signifier so very definitely becomes the signified in my head.

You’d have thought, given the above instance, that I would have learned my lesson… but no… apparently not.

The lesson being that these sort of works should not be left to the vagaries and hurly burly of the group show, and certainly not if I am unavailable for installation. I totally blame myself for this one. I should know better. Someone installing hundreds of works from dozens of artists has not got the time for it. Or the concentration to spend an hour on just one piece. My own fault. This was not the work for this show really. But it was selected, and I was pleased. It is out there now for weeks for people to see, and talk about. I talked to quite a few people about it at the opening PV.

Despite me leaving detailed notes and photos, it was not installed as one piece, it was on two plinths, far apart. At least in the same room, but not really easily even in the same eyeline. The twigs I had used for this work were the ones I’d used for Five, Six, Pick Up Sticks last year, so they all had little brass hanging rings stitched to them. I placed them ring-side-down in the pillow case, and packed into a box. At some point in the installation which really only required it to be lifted from the box and placed on its side, it was obviously tipped over and the twigs had then been rammed back in. In this process some of the twigs had been snapped inside their wrappings. And many of the rings were showing. So two hours before the opening I was negotiating with the curator about the position of the pieces. I needed them together, on their own plinth. I got them together, but they still share the plinth. At least I moved them round so they made a bit more sense to me in the context of other work, as did the other piece. We came to a friendly agreement but it still isn’t right. But in this context I now realise it could never be. So I’ve come to terms with it.

The damage done does not show. The damage done to children does not always show either. When the work is deinstalled, and I have it safely back in the studio I shall tend to them. I feel I should whisper “I’m so sorry” to them “I’m so sorry I left you on your own” it makes me feel very sad, and it highlights again to me how important the metaphor is to the work, how I should take time to explain to people:

“These are children, they are having a hard time, please treat them with great care, we need them, and they need a bit of love.”

And that, dear readers, is where the art is.