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.
