Threads

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.

I find Facebook memories a useful tool in reminding me what I’ve been up to in previous years. It is useful to see what I was making one year/ three years/ six years ago.

Yesterday a post popped up from 2018 of a drawing I was doing then as part of the Cause and Effect body of work. There were similarities to the work I’m doing now, making twigs from bound waste paper. I could say that the current work is a three dimensional version of the drawing.

This is interesting in that it is completely unintended. I have explored many avenues in the intervening years. But here I am, not “stuck” exactly… but still fixated on similar forms and lines, finding different ways to render them. The drawings were more abstract that the making is. These I think are more definitely twig-like. But it does lead me to the idea that they need not be.

The work I do always seems to have an element of push and pull about it. I like this. An elastic thread between representation and abstraction. The work with twigs started  after the intense hard work of producing Drawing Songs, which was a funded project with all the stresses that involves. I wanted to get back to basics, back to something I didn’t want to have to think about too much. I just wanted to “feed” myself with some observational drawing. Old art school basics: if in doubt, draw what you see. But after a while my natural tendencies took over and I was able to push away from the observed into the conceptual. I am still exploring this stretching… and I think each thing I do pulls and pushes away and against those initial observations.

The reminder of the drawing has prompted me to step a little further away from just making representations of twigs, and to explore these three dimensional forms in a less referential way…

It is also useful to remind myself that I can be trusted. I don’t need to worry about WHY I’m doing things. I just need to keep turning up to do the work in front of me, then every now and then, the WHY turns up of its own accord, when it’s ready.

Still reading The Disappearance of Rituals…

The urge to Produce, to provide Content is rife. But the problem is with the sort of art work I do, if I am too intent on the product and not the process, I miss things. It’s too fast. It’s too target driven. 

I wrote a couple of posts ago about the benefits of lingering. It could be argued that lingering creates time and space in which to play and think, and that being obsessed by outcomes removes the thought required to make meaningful work. I only ever write here about my own work, my own thoughts. I am not at all saying this is the only way to be. I’m just trying to find the best way for me.

“Thinking has the character of play” *

Free thinking is playful, dancing. 

What I shall try to now do intentionally is to resist the urge to produce and post, resist the urge to tell people what I have made, in order for the meaning to find itself.

I shall stick with playing around with my signifiers, and leave the signified under wraps… it doesn’t need to be presented with written instructions all the time.

Why do artists feel the need to explain? Is it the desire for validation and understanding? It takes a certain level of confidence, and some might think arrogance to let the work speak for itself. I had a conversation with another artist recently about titling work. What is a title for? Identification? To signal cleverness? To provide clues? To give a point of access? I do like to title my work. I do think I use the titles to provide clues or a point of access for the viewer, or a starting point for a conversation at least.

But instead of explaining myself, why not stick with those signifiers: those wrapped twigs signifying the children living in poverty? I could either leave the twigs unexplained. Or, why not head straight for what I am trying to signify and present the raw data? If I am going to explain it all, why bother with the twigs? And if I’m going to present the twigs as an installation, with a set of particular rules and aesthetics, why bother with the statistics?

If I am concerned (as I am) with how much I can do, how deep I can delve by using signs and symbols and metaphor in my visual works and in my writing, does it not ruin the whole thing if I reveal it immediately?  Is it like blurting out the punchline before we tell the joke? Premature ejaculation?

Is it not more seductive to keep the signified to myself for a while? It gives me more space to play and think before committing myself.

Does the luxury of non-revelation only arrive after ten, fifteen, twenty years of working towards (or around?) something ignorantly, while not really knowing what I’m aiming at?

Having laid out all the clues, enough of the clues, and, let’s face it, blatant statements of what my work is about, can I now not bother?

Am I by privilege of age and experience now allowed to not write an artist’s statement on all of my work? Surely I don’t need to write what it is all about if I have made what it is all about? Is this a matter of a lack of confidence or insecurity that makes me add words?

Is it arrogant to not allow my audience a way in? And am I bothered if people think I am arrogant? Yes. I probably am.

I may have confused myself. This requires more thought. And play.

*The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han p82