Frustratingly my perspex box frames arrived a day late meaning I didn’t have everything framed in time for the planned first day of hanging the show in the barn. So after lunch in the shade of a tree Louisa and I were only able to hang two pieces and plan for the remainder, which I shall try and hang on Monday. It does always take longer than one thinks and the heat made it more frustrating than usual. On the positive side I was given a whole box of nails for free by VJ Technology when we realised the ones I had were too short …
I had mounted all the work initially but then decided not to mount it and to put the work into the frames using magnets wrapped in archival linen mounting tape – a low-tech DIY version of some techniques I’ve read about on the internet for mounting delicate Asian/Chinese work. Frames have always been a problem for me and I think I am now getting near a solution.
I started to install yesterday and like all first days it was a process of trial and error, dealing with things forgotten, making do with what one has and capitalising on chance ….
I had carefully set aside some paper to project onto but on arriving at Boldshaves found that I’d forgotten it. Louisa Love, who was helping me to install, turned on the projector anyway, and we both realised that projecting onto the wooden boards making up the wall of the shed was absolutely perfect! Still need to block out the light from the window and door more effectively but I am hugely relieved. I think it is going to work.
This residency has opened up all sorts of new directions for me. I could have made lots of other films….but this is the one I’ve made and it will have to stand as such.
So, I think my video is done …
I’ll be testing the projection next week on site and the good news is that the potting shed has been cleared out and is ready to function as a space for the screening.
A couple of quotes from the blurb I’m writing:
My work, which consisted in a return to observational drawing, collection of video footage and photographs, was mirrored by the work done by Duncan, the gardener, both of us in some sense engaged in shaping, creating, structuring and constructing visual pleasure.
…..
you can mark a space off and surround it with barriers all you like: borders are habitually crossed, defences breached: rabbits break through the rabbit proofing, weeds establish themselves….
Well I thought I was getting on really well and went from this …
…to this
I spent hours this afternoon trying to get this right and ended up scraping away a lot of the paper. Funnily enough I rather like the end result and think I can still salvage something.
Wow! Not quite all change at the top (yet) …
When I started the work for the festival I had a strong feeling that I couldn’t go on working in the same way as before so the opportunity came at a good time. It was hard to identify the exact reasons but I just didn’t feel able to work as I had done before. Even though my work is not political as in polemical, what is going on in the world has its effect; immunity isn’t an option.
My work is much more about the real world around me – there has been a figurative turn which I’ve felt coming on for a while, although there is a sense in which it also lies between representation and abstraction, as in this piece. For ages I’ve fretted about presenting work on paper and the need to frame it. Because of the way I work, I tend to just make the work and then think about how to present it and it’s always a problem. But, I am now trying to incorporate those considerations into the process earlier: so I have tried collaging a re-worked ghost print onto aluminium and then working into it with printed markets using slow drying acrylics. I think I’m finding a solution….
