Since Wednesday the dismantling of the studios has been attacked with a real vigour that’s buoyed us all up, but it’s wearing off a little now. I’m tired. Poor Xanthus is exhausted by the amount of work still left to do with mounting his 420 paintings, and as the only one of us with any training in construction, he’s ended up doing a lot in the studios. I’ve been going to the college for the last two mornings and then driving over to Stour Valley Arts’ gallery to do my afternoon shifts, and trying to finish my work in the evenings. I’ve also been prodding everyone to get their cards printed for the catalogue, which has meant performing a bit of late-night photoshop surgery on others’ photographs. As long as they all arrive before the show opens, it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.
Although I’d had enough of dismantling walls and marking out new ones, I did go to Jon Adams’ talk at the gallery on Wednesday night. I thought it would be interesting in itself, and also an interesting insight on the delivery of artists’ talks in general. I wasn’t wrong – I was very surprised at just how much the exhibition came alive for me because of the presentation, and very glad I made the effort. In fact, it might have led to other things as well. Beforehand, I was speaking to Dan, SVA’s curator, about Goldsmiths (he’s an alumnus) and my plans for writing, and today at the gallery, the acting director asked me if I would write a piece on Jon’s talk. After that, I managed to tell her about my idea of SVA holding an open submission exhibition – I was chatting about this with Kate L. a few weeks ago – as a way of forming links with the local arts network, and y’know what? I think it went down quite well! Since I won’t be disappearing down to Portsmouth any more, I’d better see what I can do to stir things up close to home.
I’ll need to divvy up my time carefully in the next few weeks though. Even though the show will be up by this time next week, I’ve got quite a few things to fit in after that. The piece on the talk/exhibition, first of all, then scheduling a few regular articles for two culture blogs I volunteered to write for a few months ago which have just come back to me, and of course, rehearsals for the band projects. I’m only sure about one of them going ahead because I seem to have lost the emails from the new group, and can’t quite remember what I said to them or even when I said I’d say something to them.
There’s still a firm offer from the original band, an offshoot of the 10-piece I temped with last year. They’ve got a fantastic bass player from a well known 80s band (whose biggest hit always gets played at all the weddings I’ve been to – I’ll say no more) so they won’t be needing me for that. However, I did get an email asking if I could play guitar. I said yes. A week after getting that email, I finally got the guitars down from the wall with their mocking, dust-encrusted headstocks, and tried to get my fingers around their six teeny strings when what they really want is four fat ones. Well, I’m pleased to say that the results weren’t as crushing as I thought they’d be! I can still find B7 from C without too much trouble, but there’s no way I want to actually have to do this in front of a professional musician. The days when I’m not invigilating at the degree show until the rehearsal on the 23rd are going to be spent in intensive practise sessions until I’ve got some level of confidence up.
It’s fairly important that I give these groups a good shot, as worryingly, they’re my only promise of paid work post-graduation. I’ve been applying hither and yon, but admittedly, only for jobs that I actually want. Of course, everyone wants them, and there’s the issue of experience. I’m experienced, but probably not in that minutely specific way each one seems to expect. Soon I’ll be going for more generalised office-type gigs, I suppose. Still, a gig’s a gig.
