So, I spent 3 very packed days in Berlin. It was beautiful bright and sunny, but very very cold and snowey. It was as if I had left yesterday and returned a day later and someone had added winter to the scene.
I instantly felt at home and as if I had not been away at all. Another collegue from London is situated in the studio just now and it was very strange to visit her there. It all felt so familiar, but there was some one elses toothbrush, and someone elses work! However it was lovely to see the studio again and to meet up with some of my German collegues.
I also enjoyed walking through the winter streets and trying to visit as many galleries as I could, in between socialising. There are just so many galleries in Berlin, it is crazy, for such a small city with such a small population.
However, the main purpose of the trip was to discuss showing in the Milchhof Pavillion, I had a great meeting with one of the artists in charge of the panel about possibilities, and partly due to seeing the space again and because of his input feel that I have some really concrete ideas of where the work is going. Very useful. So there is a plan afoot, and I am aiming at having a full proposal in place for September and showing in the spring next year. Let us hope the weather is more clemant by then.
All in all I feel very positive. Some decisions were reached, for example that the sculptural ideas are seperate from the video ideas. I think they should be kept for another space, I still remember the orangery at Charlottenburg Palace. This would be ideal. Also I need to get better footage from inside the palace and maybe I can do that in September.
It would also be good to have a pre showing somewhere in London, just a kind of work in progess affair.
Meanwhile the dolls are burgeoning in the studio and demanding exhibition space and I am off to Morocco in a couple or weeks to fire up a couple more projects. I need a couple more blogs!
I am re igniting this blog, as I am off to Berlin next week for a few days. Partly because I am missing it so, partly to see if I can get some more concrete plans for an exhibition in the city.
I have been unable to leave the work on the large scale drawings alone. I have been trying to finally resolve other work started before the residency, primarily the doll work. But the drawings are progressing in strange and wonderful directions and it is very exiting.
I had a visit from some curators at my studio on Tuesday and they were very impressed with the increasing army of dolls marching across the studio floor, but they were also very exited by the large scale drawings. This was encouraging. I feel unable to gauge the success of this new departure in my work, so it is great to get some feedback on them.
I was sorting through my plans chest a couple of weeks ago and realised that these drawings are not just the product of the residency, but that I have been making drawings consistantly over the last 3 or 4 years. Not sculptors drawings, but first life drawings and then more abstract developments from the life drawings and sculptural works. Berlin just allowed the drawing to become the focus of all my creative thoughts, not just a contingent activity. It was a kind of release from more conceptually bounded work.
I have been made aware of what a time away from normal routine and environment can do for ones practice.
I am exited by the thought of going to Berlin, it will be strange to be there as a visiter again, just for a few days, not months. It will also be cold!
It really is a long time since I added a post. In a way I feel that I should put this blog to bed for a while. The transition back to making work with the dolls is nearly complete and, whilst I am still developing the drawings other things are taking preference now. Berlin recedes into the mists of Autumn.
The open studios went well and I got some very good feedback about the drawings. I then had a piece in a group show, a piece that is about 2 years old, this revived interest in that body of work, with the possiblity of organising a show. So the policy is to get the head down, finish off and resolve the Doll work, develop show ideas for the Water Bottle Label work, finish off the website and keep the Berlin ideas developing on the side.
So I think that there will not be any posts in this blog until I start working for a show in Berlin.
Perhaps I should start a blog dedicated to the Dolls.
Busy times, getting used to being back in my own studio after such a long time. It is wonderful. Despite the fact that I thought that I would be revisiting the work I was making with dolls, I am continuing with the drawings I was working on in Berlin. I realise that focus is something I struggle with, this has meant that I have decided to “Focus” and develop the new work while it is still fresh.
This activity has been driven in part by the fact that we have our annual Open Studios this weekend, this year we are once again part of London’s Open House Weekend. In short it means a lot more visitors than usual, Open Studios become very tiring after time, loyal as friends are they do not want to troop along year in year out. Therefore an extra effort is required to bring the latest set of drawings to some sort of conclusion. I know that those people who come to see what I have been doing in Berlin will want to see this work. Also, to be perfectly honest, in addition to the larger drawings, I have been making a series of smaller drawings in the vain hope that some of the architectural visitors feel like opening their wallets.
Any way preparations are under way and photos of beautiful drawings presented in a beautiful space will follow.
I have also been putting together ideas for the Pavilion back in Berlin at Milchhof. As usual fiddling about trying to arrange these ideas clearly and in a suitable emailable formatt took more time it should have, let us hope that we will all be using cloud technology soon. But like all writing about and collating of work, it has been very useful in trying to find out what I am actually trying to do at the moment. This process included trying out some mirrored video ideas, still very early days, but there is a lot of potential with these I think.
But it is the progress of the drawings that fascinates me, it still feels new to be working in this way, allowing the work to develop in along a less intellectual path. But I feel secure in the knowledge that there is a strong concept underpinning the work. It is also interesting to see how drawing has been fundamental to much of the work that I have made in recent years, rather than earlier works in which I feel as if I had been creating a sculptural illustration of an idea. Work becomes really exiting when the conscious mind takes a bit of a break.
Anyway FOCUS is the word driving the work this week.
Speigalshaal, experiment superimposing images from Charlottenburg and Sans Soucci
I have been looking at the photographs and video that I shot in Charlottenberg Palace. When I looked at this material in Berlin it seemed OK. Now I have been home in London for a week it all seems quite extraordinary. The opulence of that palace appears even more absurd from this distance.
I was struck when I was shooting the video that all the rooms contain a lot of mirrors and so most of the video is footage of tourists moving around rooms reflected in mirrors. Those of you who have read most of this blog will know that the concept of mirroring appeared in the work I was making in Berlin quite early in my residency. A lot of the video that I shot towards the end of my stay was composed with the idea of mirroring it through projection. However this footage of actual mirrors in the palace is very successful. I am particularly pleased by this as I shot it using my SLR camera rather that the video camera. This does mean that it is lower quality. The people entering rooms and moving around between actual presence and reflected presence seems choreographed and performative rather than banal. They all sport headphones as if on a sound walk, in fact it is the audio tour. Who knows what they are hearing, instructions, information about Frederiech II? They are absorbed in their own worlds, absorbed into the baroque decor.
In Berlin I started to make drawings in 2 and 3 dimensions from the map diaries that I kept throughout my stay. Having stuck these up on the wall in London I decided that these drawings have potential and can be developed further. So far the experiments in the studio are still quite basic, but as I was looking at the details of Roccoco stucco from Charlottenberg I was reminded about the way in which I thought I could reflect these arabesques and reflective curves in the drawings. I should take that thought to the studio today.
I am finding it really hard now that I am home to keep focus and to try and hold on to all the thoughts and sensations from the last 3 months. The time spent in Berlin was so intense that I feel a little like I am half asleep now.
Ballroom Neue Flugal. Some raw footage from Charlottenberg, shot on Nikon SLR Camera.
