I’m spending my time at the moment on the dissertation part of my degree course as the deadline of 4 May suddenly feels not far away given that the University’s resources are closed for a month during the Easter holidays – we have 3 choices in this module, a thesis, a critical commentary or a praxis project – I have elected to do the Praxis Project – this is less words than the thesis (3000-5000) but must include a practical piece of work that is separate but linked to your main practice -I am doing an Artist’s book about artistic failure called ‘ A catalogue of Failures’ – and have approached it as a mail art project and invited 30 artists to submit one piece of work on the topic of FAILURE all work will be included in the catalogue – there will be no selection as I feel that is part of the failure process – there will be no exhibition as that is one aspect of the failure (I have failed to get a venue for the exhibition) -so the catalogue will exist in it’s own right. I now have 23 artists taking part and feel honoured that they have trusted me with their images and words. I feel the weight of responsibility and don’t want to FAIL!! Today I have been experimenting with the cover of the book and YES there have been FAILURES but I now know what I want the cover to be like -I have been trying the blind embossing technique on black card – soaking the card did not work and so I have used a dry emboss – here are some images of today and the beautiful old press that I’m using at the University
I feel very fortunate that Lisa Le Feuvre, curator of the British Art Show 2011 and writer of several articles on the topic of FAiLURE agree to give me an interview for the catalogue. Thank you Lisa.
I feel excited about the project and will post more about the work to be included in the book – I’d love to hear about your own views of artistic failure too!
