June 7, 2009
This is how I chose to present my work during my interview for Chelsea College of Art and Design. I couldn’t decide whether to put the work in a really slick portfolio for them to leaf through, or whether to put everything into a powerpoint presentation. In the end the deciding factor was that presenting the work like this is the only way that I felt comfortable. It was much easier to chat through the work – which was much more fitting.
June 6, 2009
Apparently I’d made it just in time – this was Gary’s last lab. But I am so so glad that I did and was not at all disappointed.
It was really relaxed, unpretentious and just a group of people exploring some ideas that were never going to be made into great pieces of work. It was really refreshing to get out of my head, away from my notebook and onto my feet.
It brought back so many memories of ways that I used to work. Exploring ideas in groups without fear – something that i think being in an art college took away for a while. I miss group workshops and never took to an artists studio properly. No body was judging anyone and no-one had anything to prove.
Admittedly, working in a group of strangers bring challenges with it. Learning how to communicate with each other, differences of opinions etc. But i really enjoyed those problems.
We showed mini performances that we worked on in the morning of the second day. That morning was stressful in a way. Nothing stuck with my group. Nothing gelled at all. We’d try something and seemed to have an inability to stick with it. We’d change tact and not be able to bring anything to a conclusion. In the end we decided to stop being so serious and do any idea that anyone came up with and just see where it went.
We decided that we would start in a neutral manner and begin to ‘learn’ behaviour, gesture and sound/speech from the audience. We copied their sitting actions whilst standing (so obviously accuracy was unachievable). We copied sounds, pitch, gesture and repeated and repeated it as if we were artificial intelligence.
The other group then gave feed back, and redirected us. We then re-performed the piece taking on board what had been said.
The ‘artist’s talk’ was Gary – which was very fitting for his last lab. I always love hearing other people talk about their work as it gives a real insight into process and thought patterns.
We of course ended the workshop with a drink in the pub! Naturally.
June 6, 2009
The trail of my new ideas went a lot better than I’d expected.
It was exhausting and possibly not the best time for me to do a trail but I wanted it for my portfolio so went for it…
I tried Trafalgar Square: No body took a blind bit of notice of me. I was practically shoving my newspaper in people’s faces – but to no avail. It is amazing what people can ignore, even when you begin to invade their personal space out of shear desperation and fear that your project is about to fall flat on its face before its even begun!
Into the National Portrait Gallery. “You can’t take photos in here love”. Of course not! Strike one. Strike two – nobody is giving me the time of day… but its still art… Strike three: New tactic! Give someone my card without drawing any attention to myself, without speaking – just hand it to them then look at my newspaper – surely that will make them look and understand the context surrounding what I am doing – I would get it.
I see a young woman sat seemingly alone on a bench looking at a painting. I approach and sit next to her… easy does it. I give it a minuet – she hasn’t noticed the writing in the paper. Right – try the ‘New Tactic’. I nudge her without making eye contact and slide a card towards her. She takes it. I’ve got her attention now surely. No – she doesn’t appear to be looking at the paper, infact she seems to be fidgeting!?! Quickly I angle the paper more towards her – nope she’s getting up. I decide to stay seated and hope and pray that she will notice why I gave her the card. I don’t look up from the paper. I hear an American accent behind me say “What? What the fuck are you poking me for? What – what the fuck is that? Who the fuck gave you that?!!? What the fuck!” I dare to glance over my shoulder and realise that it wasn’t a young woman at all but a girl of about 14 on some-kind of school trip!!! Strike three and I was out and running as fast as I could before I was escorted out on suspicion of soliciting young girls… open public spaces obviously don’t work to my advantage with this project!
Feeling a little more than disheartened at this point I headed back to the tube station. On to the tube! It was a much better place. The close proximity and lack of anything else to look at or do worked to my advantage. People began to read what I’d written whilst blatantly pretending not to – exactly what I was aiming for! I’d give them my card, get off the tube and on to the next one.
I received a real mix of reactions. Some people were out right scared and refused to take the card. One girl said “Oh My God! Did you find that paper?” I said “no” and turned the page for her to read the rest – she wasn’t overly interested in that then… “are you an artist then?”
“Yeah I suppose so”
“Oh cool – I’m an illustrator. What’s this about then? I love it. What kind of reactions have you had?”
And I began to chat… it was at that point that I realised that the whole carriage was listening and more people were reading my paper than I realised – which was a good thing to note for future reference.
At the end of my day I wasn’t sure how I felt about the project. I went home deflated.
When I got home I had an email waiting for me.. just the one – but it was the start I’d wanted. Someone agreeing to help and write me part of a story to do with his life or someone he knew! Brilliant!
March 26, 2009
This image more-or-less sums up where I am starting with my new project tomorrow…
Last week I was on the tube and the woman sat next to me, in a genuine manner, asked if she could turn the page of her news paper… had I finished reading it!?
It is such a bad habit of mine. I read EVERYTHING – usually over someone’s shoulder. I listen to conversations on public transport and make up fictional narratives for the people without turning round to look at them. Usually, both of these activities are just ways of entertaining myself, but it has got me thinking… I don’t pick up the London Newspapers on my way to work, yet I always know what’s in them and can participate in a conversation, based on Rihanna, in the staff room because of it.
How do we form common knowledge, common experience, opinions, an understanding of ‘what’s hot and what’s not’; I don’t have a choice but to participate because I take it all in involuntarily.
A police notice in a tube station has stuck with me recently “If you’re reading this then you are on our beat.”, the point being that we all are, because we automatically read when words are in front of us. We take it in – it might not stick, we might not care, but we’ve read it.
Where does our information come from? How much do we participate in society, often without noticing that we are doing it? There are a few other issues that I am trying to work out at the moment to do with this project. But for tomorrow – I just want to see if people will read what’s inside my newspaper.
I really want to know / or get a feel for how people respond to knowing that they are supposed to be reading my newspaper. Does it make you think about the information that we take in? The way in which we receive our information? How does it feel – a spontaneous performance that no-one else can see. An involuntary participant.
March 19, 2009
My last show, ‘The Art of Taking Tea’, was all about the journey that I undertook whilst trying to recover my Grandma’s memories, as she had seemingly lost them due to Alzheimer’s Disease. I’m really sad to say that my Grandma passed away this week.
I had applied to the Accidental Festival to try and get T.A.T.T on there. I’m kind of hoping that they turn me down now, as I don’t think that I will be able to perform the show again – at least not this soon and not without re-writing the whole thing. I don’t want to leave the performance alone forever, I just don’t think that now is a good time to be performing it.
I was playing with the idea of opening ‘T.A.T.T’ back up again and doing more tea but I feel like maybe it is a show to let go of. I don’t know. I loved the show so much and find it hard to think of never performing it again: I don’t like work that talks directly about death or grief very much and wouldn’t feel comfortable changing the show to reflect that. I feel like the performance was something positive created out of something negative; I don’t want it to become final and gloomy.
I suppose that that is one of the hard things about creating work that talks very honestly about elements of your life – sometimes things are too raw… that’s it really. I just felt like it was worth mentioning.
March 11, 2009
I was off work sick. I got sent home yesterday afternoon with the bug that has taken the school by storm. I am so tired. I found out that I got an interview for a PhD at Chelsea College of Art and Design. I was excited. I rang a friend to help with my design and have a natter. I began to set up an Art Theory Reading Group. I started to plan a portfolio. I panicked that I’ve not done enough to get through the interview. I worried. I brainstormed about my new project. I felt ill and had to have a nap. I couldn’t nap. I collected some references to look up. I cleaned my flat. I cried a bit. I updated my blogs. I had a friend over to dinner. I was convinced that I’m not going to be able to get through the interview.
I’m back to work tomorrow. Not sure I can pay the rent – I don’t get sick pay.
March 9, 2009
After some careful consideration about the nature of the paper that I wanted to write on, I decided that it is important that you can recognise that it is newspaper that has been regurgitated.
My initial idea was that I would find a way of removing the print from the paper, hence thinning it, then layering it to make it thicker and writing over the top… Do you know how god dam hard it is to remove print from a newspaper!?!
I tried everyway possible. I got a headache, felt sick and then gave up! I have also tried nail-varnish remover – it also failed to remotely remove the print. The paper just goes into holes before anything really happens!
March 5, 2009
Recycling. Not really an environmental issue for me I have to say, but the context of what it once was and now is – another space inbetween.
I was moaning recently about money and the cost of materials when i can’t pay the rent… just make your own stuff, there’s always an answer was the reply I received.
I’ve always liked my ‘enthusiastic child’ aesthetic. I love craft…but am reallly bad at it. This makes me do it even more. At school the kids think I’m great at art!
I’m not 100% sure if this is necessary yet for my new project. I might have a play with paper anyway. It might take away from the project by injecting too much time into the process, but what draws me to making my own paper is:
I like the destruction of words. The removal of one story to replace it with another. A layering. A shredding. The time and focus that goes into the process transforming it back into what it already was, purely to painstakingly erase part of its history.
Despite this arising from my money rant – I would still need to buy materials to recycle the paper! Maybe I should just buy a ready recycled pack of A4 :o)
February 19, 2009
I want to start off by being really cheesy and dedicating this – my first post on my brand new blog, to my dearest Stevie, Sally and Ema! They have all spent a fair bit of time recently persuading me to get over myself enough to “just start… do something… ANYTHING”!!
I work, like lots and lots of people do, in a full time (not very well paid) job, to support an art practice. This practice is rather unsuccessful – in that I don’t put my work anywhere. It sits in my head, or I get something off the ground but then lack the skills to promote myself or my shows. This is not uncommon.
When I am not sat around doing nothing because I fail to see the point, I am usually obsessively doing some theory on the point of performance to try and understand my compulsion to waist time and money that I don’t have, on creating unknown art… yet I can’t stop myself! I constantly think about performance, the world I am swimming through in a 9-5 daze (or in my case 8:30 – 4 daze), how to express what I feel or interpret, what I interpret (if anything) and why… what’s the point, what’s the point, what’s the point:
Why did someone like Nic Green decide to carry around a chair for a month and call it performance? What gave her the drive to conceive of this project, think it was a good idea, with a point to it, and carry it out? Now please don’t miss understand, I really like Nic Greens work… I like that she carried a chair around for a month EVERYWHERE she went… but why? What is it for? What does it do? What’s the point?
I have had it said to me that these questions are important to ask yourself, but I am finding them less so. They are stopping me from doing any work at all. This happens to me a lot. I did an MA last year and the same thing occurred… I did bugger all until the last possible moment… only then did I get over it enough to work because I would have failed if I had continued doing bugger all… no matter what theoretical spin I would have been able to put on it!
I no longer have the pressure of failing the £3,300 course that I spent a long time scrimping and saving for. I float. I get up, I go to work in a primary school, where I love the children and spend lots of time and energy persuading them that they would like learn to read. I travel well over an hour to get home exhausted with an empty bank account and potter. I go to bed. This is how I float. All the while thinking. And all the while I still haven’t cleaned my flat, washed my clothes, or cleaned out my pet rats (who currently stink by the way)… this is symptomatic of me. I think and struggle to do.
I’m not sure that this will change but I’m giving it a go. I am assured that by “just starting” things will take shape and I will understand more. I actually think that this is true which goes part way to explain my obsession with process. I strongly believe that the process is performative. It is temporal, occurs in the moment only to be discarded and undocumented if it doesn’t make the final product. Process as a form of interpretation, of understanding. blah blah blah I’m sure that this will all crop up again sooner or later so I’ll stop going on and leave it at I’m starting!
Process Through To Performance 