No more titbits!

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Sleep-drunk I dance

in the future, but if you'd like to leave comments here - I'll be checking and receiving/answering with pleasure!

And: 
Miranda Vane‘s piece about my work, written after her art-visit at my studio-home has been published on rookie creative. Thank you, Miranda!

Titbit 13

... Another pleasure was to be contacted by Brick Lane Gallery – it was gratifying to be found through axis-web, have my crochet work complimented on and found good enough for a solo-show, but it’s an offer I had to refuse although I’m endlessly anxious about not exhibiting. I don’t have the dosh, not even £ 500,- for part of a curated group-show, no matter what professional services are included. Something else will come along, won’t it? ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Titbit 12

preliminary sketches for my foundlings (there are loads)

... Some nights ago when I couldn’t sleep I longed to creep into the garden and howl at the full moon, but my limbs were heavy with fatigue and the bed warm and while I lay immobile my foundlings woke up and made a din in my head: make us, make us, make us… Time to go back to them. It’s too easy to fall from one idea to the next when my brain revels rollicks ruminates rouses and reveals new directions. ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

New piece!

Posting here and there with new work:
Just when I was thinking about how to put into words what compelled me to make my new work without explaining it away I re-found this piece of limpid writing which delights and pierces me every time I read it through: “One day a few years ago my mother took out of her cedar chest the turquoise blouse she bought for me on that trip to Bolivia, a miniature of the native women’s outfits. When she unfolded the little garment and gave it to me, the living memory of wearing the garment collided shockingly with the fact that it was so tiny, with arms less than a foot long, with a tiny bodice for a small cricket cage of a ribcage that was no longer mine, and the shock was that my vivid memory included what it felt like to be inside that brocade shirt but not the fact that inside it I had been so diminutive, had been something utterly other than my adult self who remembers. The continuity of memory did not measure the abyss between a toddler’s body and a woman’s. When I recovered the blouse I lost the memory, for the two were irreconcilable. It vanished in an instant, and I saw it go.” 

Rebecca Solnit: A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The quote is from the chapter The Blue of Distance, can’t give you the page as I’m reading on a kindle.

The ‘living memory’, of how it felt to wear the little garment, becomes a memory of a memory as she struggles to grasp the otherness of her own two year old body/self. How beautifully she expresses it. And it occurs to me that with my work I try to do something that operates the other way round. I’m now trying to move from childhood memory to memories before ‘I’. I have to let myself fall into another time, during which I was not alive, but of which I carry imprints in me. So no ‘living memory’ here, more the attempt at something I’m tentatively calling ‘empathic memory’. I see the dress as a kind of live-in environment, the container of memory which maybe? can be accessed by the viewer through falling a little ways with me, through a memory of their own childhood self, and on, imagining the feel of the woolen dress and its shape on their skin, on their body-in-process.
A friend visited and said ‘cute little dress’ without realizing it was a dress with a difference. Not sure if I’m too subtle. No, I want people to look again. And again. Or miss it. First piece of a new project, while the foundlings are scurrying around at the back of my brain.

LR's girl (2012)
Materials: hand-me-down wool/polyester mixture 
Dimensions: 41 cm x 31 cm

Tidbit 11

...I remain highly ambivalent when I post here with details about how M.E. affects my life and art-practice. Almost as soon as I press ‘publish’ I want to suck the words back in – partly because illness is such a private/personal thing, partly because I worry about it becoming the main prism through which my artwork is viewed, and - not least - because this is a forum for visual arts and I feel like I’m bringing in something that is out of place here. Last week I came across a broadcast* and a piece of writing** which explore the issue of secrecy around illness, in this case M.S., and the terms used – disclosing, coming out, passing for a well person – give a clear indication of how difficult a decision it can be to tell – not even all, but just to say: I’ve got this. It’s hard enough to adjust to one’s foundering physical functions, with all the unpleasant and undignified symptoms that may entail, but what about the fear of consequences say at work, the fear of being judged, embarrassment, even shame, as if illness was a personal failing? Combine this with a process of mourning around all that you can’t do anymore and you can see how all aspects of being are affected...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

And another foundling

Posting here and there with new work:
May I introduce you to this newest Foundling, probably no. 6 in a series of 7, although it’s the third finished one. The others are still jostling in my head. I’m playing with shapes (not so easy to make perfect curves in crochet) to get to different characters and emotions – this one has a nice line in pathos and pluckiness. Is it strange to feel affection for one’s creations?
Evoking bodies in order to express something about the psyche has become second nature to me. It’s not entirely new – I can see elements of this in my video-work – but something has turned: I did not imagine altered physicalities before, the strangeness was in the perception of the ‘normal’ whereas now the ‘real’ is in the strangeness which doesn’t need to stretch or strain towards an unattainable norm but just is, if you see what I mean. I think the changes in physical perception since I’ve had M.E. have heightened this sensitivity. The fatigue does peculiar things, as does the pain, which tends to rise exponentially with the level of tiredness. I’m not one who believes that illness is sent to us in order to help us grow, but I take what I can get from it. Certainly my body demands more attention and in turn offers the occasional insight. I know what my limbs look like, but when at my most tired their sensations change: arms like tree-trunks or limp celery stalks; pain and pressure in fingertips as if they were about to shoot off, bullet-like; legs dispersing into a million particles which I might be able to see dancing about like dust motes if I stood in the right light… My whole body sometimes seems to ring with pain (I’d be the bell’s clapper) and the other night my lower arms made themselves known with a vengeance: it felt as if my skin was being pulled away from flesh and bones and I almost wanted to tear it off like a way-too-tight glove, be done with it. Trying to find images can help, makes the pain feel less overpowering.
I’ve been watching the Olympics, athletics mostly, admiring the athlete’s force and grace, and their sense of focus. Think I’ve got some of that myself: at the moment I may only be able to walk to the end of the garden and back, but the ability to focus allows me to pursue my art practice, slowly, steadily, but kind of forcefully too.

Foundling (2012)
Material: Crocheted from cotton-thread 
Dimensions: 18.5 cm x 27.5 cm

Tidbit 10

...This person is art-starving. Apart from on the computer-screen I haven’t seen any art since my delirious visit of the Louise Bourgeois-exhibition at the Freud Museum in May. Driving back from an interesting if challenging hospital appointment the other day we passed Peckham Space and just for a moment I caught a glimpse of Julia Vogl’s HOME. So near and yet so far: if only we could have gotten out and had a look and a listen, but fatigue was ready to tether me to the nearest horizontal plane like Gulliver was by the little people. ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Another foundling

Posting here too as I've got fresh-from-the-hook work:
I’m struggling with writing my proposal – it’s so much easier to find words after the fact. Often I come to see what I want to say when I look at my work, but projecting into the future from loose ideas is a challenge. How do you account for all those things that happen along the process of making, those shifts and turns? So I’m taking a break to show you my newest foundling. Usually the starting point for a specific piece is to zoom in on a feeling, and keep distilling to some sort of (imagined, temporary) essence. I make tiny, sometimes life-size, sketches until I find a shape that interests me, choose a material and begin. A lot is worked out on the way – if it doesn’t look right I unravel and try again.
I evoke the body to speak about the psyche. Looking at my two foundlings I suddenly thought of toddlers holding out their arms to be picked up, and how children learn about the shape and outlines of their bodies through touch, being held, caressed, and what the lack thereof might do. Had the idea of limbs becoming vestigial because of under-use, a regression to something rudimentary: arm-buds. I felt compelled to try the gesture out, sitting or lying on the floor, and found myself falling back into something very old. This interests me, memories stored in the body…
Anyway, this is not something I thought about consciously when I started, it’s something I see now. Not sure how clear the images are for you, but there aren’t any openings for the arms. I make my diminutive outfits as close to ‘real’, to ‘normal’ as possible. It takes a moment, at least a second or third glance, for the shapes to become unsettling and, I hope, something will arise from the absurd, the strange physicality evoked.

Foundling (2012)
Material: Crocheted from cotton-thread 
Dimensions: 24 cm x 27.5 cm

Tidbit 9

...As you know I’m hungry for direct communication with other artists. Two posts ago I reported on conversations with Julia Vogl (you can listen to some of her interviews on Resonance FM tomorrow at 4.30 pm). On Friday Shelley Rae came to my house (two artists in one month!). ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Foundling

As promised I'm posting here too when I've got fresh-from-the-hook work to present:
Meet the first in a new series, inspired by a visit last year of Threads of Feeling at the Foundling Museum, a moving exhibition of selected textile tokens from the 18th century, at the time the only permitted means of identification for the babies left at London Foundling Hospital’s doors.
I crocheted the piece with a thin hook as I wanted a weave of tight, dense stitches, almost unyielding to the touch, like a suit of armour, a carapace of sorts. A shape to grow into or out of… The work is deliberately flat while preserving the potential wearability of a garment. I’m drawn to between-ness - 2D/3D, outfit/image, crochet/painterly, real/imaginary, sweet/perturbing.
Much of my work is about inscribing difference in a subtle, intimate way: something missing, something in excess, something just very slightly other, that catches you unaware, stings you a little and then a little more.
Would you think that crocheting leaves (admittedly small) marks on the body? I managed to get another callus on the tip of my left middle-finger, with a wee hole at its centre… Ouch!
My Acrobat was not selected for Outside the White Cube, alas. No somersaults… In need of chocolate, kisses, spirits, in that order.
But I’m glad I’m writing here about my first foundling, it’s focused my thinking and given me another idea, a new place to take things. Yay! Somersaults after all.

Foundling (2011/12)
Material: Crocheted from cotton-thread
Dimensions: 24 cm x 28 cm

Tidbit 8

...Had some real, by which I mean person-to-person, face-to-face, art-contact this week, hey! The artist Julia Vogl came with a friend to interview me for her project HOME. She has made a conscious decision to make public art her focus of practice, away from the pristine white gallery-spaces where only a limited spectrum of the population actually venture, to more accessible, (at least temporarily) shared spaces. Art that involves people, as contributors and as audiences, in this case in Peckham, Southeast-London. ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Tidbit 7

...With my eyes on the plan I started writing this post right after the first phone-call. In the end I was able to pick up the piece on Friday, just before closing time, luckily with M., who at lighting speed rearranged her whole day to fit in with me, a thousand blessings on her lovely head! The work is shortlisted for 2012 Outside the White Cube Open Exhibition, for which it needs to be framed, which is why I almost bankrupted myself, but I must say, it does look glorious and hopefully it will be in the show and maybe somebody would like to buy it, please pretty please… 

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Tidbit 6

...On Saturday I discovered that my blog has been second on a-n’s list of Top Ten Artists talking blogs for two months running. Couldn’t believe my eyes. I’m not going to be coy about it (although I fully intended to when I thought about posting here today) – I’m chuffed. Quickly grabbed a screen-pic, no: two… Lalala lala lala. I’ve got readers! It seems I’m not holding monologues!...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Just finished!

Isn’t she lovely? She doesn’t know yet she’s a she (but I do). She’s becoming… You see, I see my outfits as inhabited. A compact baby bundle this one, polymorphous pleasurepain-time. Before conscious recall, before language. When do we start knowing what we’re going to be? What we are? Even human? Embodiment as the first instance. Mind/emotions catching up, or trying to. What did it feel like? Does my body remember this? Does my body know more than ‘I’ do? I’m interested in what we can’t consciously recall. What is held in us, our bodies/psyches, from those first months/years that we can never get to, but set us up for life.

Even with crocheting the ultimate format of a piece is not as predetermined as you might think. I made a tiny sketch, about the size of my thumbnail, and started crocheting, letting the shape grow under my fingers. If it doesn’t look right I’ll unravel and try again. This one worked the first time. I was led by the colours – had two balls of the beautiful multi-hued yarn that needed to be made into something curly (a friend’s mom sent me a whole box full of left-over wools and hooks and needles, and chocolates - a cardboard treasure trove!). Bought some off-white wool-polyester mixture on-line to go with it. Used the latter for the base (tight stitches so it holds the form, slightly scratchy, giving damp palms), and then crocheted into it, a furry layer of loops – quite pleasurable to do.

She is lovely! Strangely I feel affection for her. She is cute and a bit creepy, her shape so right and so strange, with its proliferation of limbs and limbic too. A rather tame, organized projection, I know, a snoozed moment before heaven and hell break loose again.

Tonight I would have liked to go to ZAP’s talk with Karl England and Ben Street, but alas… And as I write this and check the link I see it has been postponed until autumn. Maybe by that time I’ll feel better. Time too to find funding for a wireless mic – to make that Skype-connection work at ZAP's end. Any takers? Givers rather?

Sorry: have not been able to read any blogs since I last posted, longing to, but energy needed focusing. The last touches take the longest and require concentration, hems around openings, sewing up of hanging threads. But here she is. 

Working title: Dumpling dixie dawn daredevil spawn’s dream no9

Crocheted from multiple yarns
Dimensions: 28 cm x 22 cm x 5.5 cm

Tidbit 5

...But as you can see I'm 'up' again. And learning. After the twitter-feat described a few posts ago was found wanting it was time for experiment no 2, with the indomitable and ever supportive Rosalind Davis, who suggested to connect me to the talk given by Cathy Lomax and Alli Sharma, artists, curators and directors of independent artist led-gallery Transition Gallery via Skype. Exciting! Of course I checked out their art beforehand – gorgeous: two painters who explore the modulations of desire through popular culture from their different vantage points… Rosalind introduced me to Dropbox and made the artists’ powerpoint presentation available to me: photographs of artworks, exhibitions, locations. Oh yes!...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Tidbit 4

...This is a piece I live with, and although it is utterly familiar its meaning keeps changing, as if every time I look at it anew, really look at it, I find a different kind of focus. Today it seems to touch on the sense a child might have of their parents seeing right through them, of their penetrating gaze following them into the furthest hushful hidey-hole. They see you even when you can’t see them! The overwhelming awe of this, feeling protected and irreciprocally exposed. Subject to. 
Makes me think of an incident at primary school...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Tidbit 3

... I’m not a great tweeter (can’t keep up and my ability to small-talk has shrunk considerably from not very to hardly at all), but now I wanted to see if it would allow me to link into the event. Rosalind Davis, one of the two organizers of Zeitgeist Art Projects’ SHOW & TELL 2012, was going to tweet live-snippets and the occasional photograph. As I would have done if I’d gone I perused FMD’s website beforehand, to get a sense of her work (enjoyed that, very interesting!), think of questions to ask. When Rosalind’s first tweet arrived (I typed in ‘treat’!), I was ready, heart beating. ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Tidbit 2

... I hadn’t been to the Freud Museum before (the shame!), and it would have been a thrill just to be in the house where he and his closest family lived after they’d managed to escape from fascism in 1938. Freud’s study cum treatment room is still as it was when he died in 1939, somewhat sombre with curtains drawn, his glasses on the desk, leather-bound tomes in the shelves, and anthropological objects proliferating on all surfaces. The famous couch is there, of course, with the chair behind, and it might all get a bit too reverential if it weren’t for the (temporary, alas) installation of LB’s Janus fleuri, which hangs heavily happily from the ceiling above the couch. Perfectly, ideally placed, in view of both analyst and analysand. Imagine the conversations! ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Tidbit

...And while I wasn't blindfolded or barefoot (I feel cold by default nowadays and my feet would have touched cement), wasn't in Loughborough with the group and traffic noises underlayed my dawn chorus, I wouldn't otherwise have sat outside, fully alert for close to half an hour in the crisp morning air, and thought about how individual birds' trills and warbles seem to traverse space like ribbons, interweaving and making dense textures. I remembered a song from my childhood (Amsel, Drossel, Fink und Star, und die ganze Vogelschar... which I need to look up) and pondered how in Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation the moment the Virgin Mary conceives is often represented by a straight line from a white dove (Holy Ghost) into her right ear... Then I went back to bed, happy. ...

If you'd like to read more go to Sleep-drunk I dance

Here and there

I've decided that I will only post here when I've got new work to present. Otherwise I'll just put up a note that there's a new post on Sleep-drunk I dance and whoever wants to comment can do it here or there.

Here and there?

I keep wondering whether I should post here and at a-n, as I miss my little blogspot-community. Maybe I should just try it out? What do you think?

Some of you may remember that I posted about Louise Bourgeois before – I just went to have a look, and burst out laughing: on 22 October 2007 I wrote about seeing her show at Tate Modern and I posted the same pic as the one chosen (without checking) for my entry on the a-n site a few days ago!

(Beware if you've read the a-n post - I’ve only changed my text incrementally):

I had long been looking forward to a rather special art-outing with a friend, to visit Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed at the Freud Museum. As you know she is one of my favourite artists and the idea of her work presented in the rooms where Sigmund Freud lived with his family and analysed patients is tantalizingly interesting to me. In this environment her work will be charged anew and I crave to see it.

In her last decade (she died at 98) she seemed a little husk of a woman, but was still fiercely at work. Memory was her draw-well. Night after sleepless night that cyclop eye roved back in time. Greedy for their stir, their prick, the quickening of her, she probed old wounds, laid fault-lines bare, right ‘till the end.

Well, I can’t go. Body says no. Another ‘if only’ on the scrapheap. Am a tiny bit better, and with some help managed this week’s medical appointment, but that’s it. Thought one morning (you see, I’m finding it hard to let this go) – if I went, maybe I could rest on Freud’s couch for a few days and then slowly have a look around. Quite like the idea: during the day I’d be part of the exhibit (I won’t move much, promise!), and at night, when all is still, I’d hear the ghosts of Freud and Bourgeois arguing in German and French-tinted whispers about the place of woman in psychoanalytic theory.

M.E. can seem like a thief. Its booty is your energy, half a sackful of cognitive functions and whatever else it can find. Out goes your profession, your social life, the way you were in the world.

The strange thing with M.E. is, that outwardly you’re hardly changed at all. I’m a bit paler, a bit thinner, and not so much in the vertical, but without obvious marks on my body: no operation scars, no open wounds, no bits missing or growing where they shouldn’t… But to myself I am changed, physically, mentally. Looking at this drawing earlier, made in a different context some years ago, I thought: this is a bit what it feels like, as if one moment I’m looking down at my feet and all is well, and when I look next there’s an extra one and I have no idea how or why. And then that becomes normal too and has its own beauty and you make art from it.

Untitled pencil drawing (2001)
A4

This is not goodbye!

Dear all,
Please look me up at my new/parallel blog on a-n Magazine’s website: 
Sleep-drunk I dance
As ever greedy for your comments. Will keep visiting your blogs too!
The connections I made here over the years, the nurturing and support I received, have sustained and inspired me and my art-practice has benefited immensely. See you soon!
You can also look me up here:
www.marionmichell.com

snap! opens today

I can't be there but a piece of mine is!

South London Women Artists (SLWA) are pleased to present snap!
at Bankside Gallery, Hopton Street, London SE1.
Private view and SLWA Women Artists’ Diary Launch Wednesday 2 May 6 - 9 pm
Open 2 - 7 May, 10 am - 6 pm

Curated by Althea Greenan, Dr Lara Perry and Sarah Sparkes.
This second major exhibition of members' work will also display archived Women Artists’ Diaries lent by The Women’s Art Library collection at Goldsmiths University of London, includes the 1999 edition featuring SLWA member Jackie Brown.
Our exhibition catalogue is a SLWA diary for the academic year 2012/13 (£10)
and this will join the collection in The Women’s Art Library after the show.

Other events:
Thursday 3 May 1:45 - 3 pm: Giant Bankside snap! School Event
Saturday 5 May 3 pm: Gallery talk by Dr Susan Wood
Sunday 6 May 3 pm: Performative event by SLWA members
Free Admission. Wheelchair accessible

Sleep-drunk I dance

I’ve started a new blog on a-n Magazine’s website, trying to widen my audience, to find ways of engaging more and deeper with other artists and art-professionals. Have yet to work out if/how I’ll combine this blog with Sleep-drunk I dance, just know that I'm in need of connection and communication, even if that means my art-making has to go on the back-burner for a bit. So very tired, but: new adventures...

Now open

How near I had forgot
Materials: Crocheted from artificial hair

Dimensions: 16 cm x 12 cm

Collectible

curated by Rosalind Davis and Annabel Tilley
Small works by high profile and promising Collectible artists
from £50-£500

Artists:
Guy Allott, Paul Benjamins, George Bolster, Kate Bowen, Andrew Bracey, Tom Butler, Ben Coode-Adams, Emma Cousin, Graham Crowley, Rosalind Davis, David Dipre, Sarah Douglas, Freya Douglas Morris, Annabel Dover, Charlie Dutton, Karl England, Alyson Helyer, Andrew Hewish, Jack Hutchinson, Peter Jones, Nick Kaplony, Sharon Leahy-Clark, Simon Leahy-Clark, Cathy Lomax, Wayne Lucas, Fiona MacDonald, EJ Major, Amy McKenny, Nadege Meriau, Marion Michell, Clare Mitten, Amy Moffat, Kate Murdoch, Elizabeth Murton, Michaela Nettell, Charlotte Norwood, Wieland Payer, Alex Pearl, Edd Pearman, Gaia Persico, Kate Pickering, Chantelle Purcell, Freddie Robins, Alli Sharma, Gordon Shrigley, Lisa Snook, Corinna Spencer, Emily Speed, Melanie Stidolph, Giulia Ricci, Annabel Tilley, Virginia Verran, Mark Scott-Wood, Boa Swindler, Rich White, Andy Wicks, Jenny Wiener, Rachel Wilberforce, Chiara Williams, Sarah Williams, Jo Wilmot, James Wright, Peter Wylie.

Private View Tuesday 17 April, 6-8.30pm
18 - 28 April (Thursday-Saturday, 1-5pm)
Open for SLAM Last Fridays 6-8.30pm
Artists & Curators Dialogue - Saturday 28 April, 4-5 pm

at
Bond House Gallery
ASC Bond House
Goodwood Rd
New Cross
London SE14 6BL

The stuff of life

A while ago I aired my frustration about not being able to stay for the first (or even try to attend the second) Creative Practice Seminar organized by Zeitgeist Art Projects. Actually I had to leave when Jack Hutchinson began his introduction to digital networking, something I thought I should be interested in. Ideally I just want to make work, but that’s not enough if I want it seen, and given that due to M.E. I am mostly housebound and rarely go to private views, seminars, or workshops I need to find other ways of communicating. So no more agonizing about missing all those opportunities for networking with other artists, gallerists, curators, and how that affects if and how my work makes it into the world – time to try myself out in new ways.
I went home with Jack’s handout, which I dug out last week, intent on understanding what Twitter is about. Yeah, I’ve not tweeted before, felt skeptical about it, wondering if it has anything to do with my very slow, not-much-on-the-move life, but I’m making tentative moves now, as it’s short and to the point and ideally won’t drain my energies too much. Don’t want to use it though to spurt more nothings into the world - would like to find a way of making it meaningful. Torn between doubts about self-promotion and the realization that no-one will do it for me.
Some of my friends wonder why I put so much of myself and my meagre energies into making art, but I think it’s what’s keeping me going. Through the process of making art we connect, explore, question, understand, change and challenge – the stuff of life. And it’s not just a personal matter. In an article by said JH (once you’ve heard a name you find it everywhere, don’t you) in April’s a-n Magazine, Do Artists Have a Duty to Campaign?, Elizabeth Murton says: "I want 'artist' to be recognised as a valid career option and creativity as a valid thinking method. More importantly, I think art should be considered not in isolation, but with other specialisms. It is an enhancement to all ways of thinking and being, and not just a lifestyle choice. It is a tool for enhancing life." We need it. The world needs it.

PS. Tried to link twitter button to blog, but gadget seems broke. Until it works again, this is my twitter id: @marjojo2004. Now I just need to learn how to tweet...

Hairself

How near I had forgot
Materials: Crocheted from artificial hair

Dimensions: 16 cm x 12 cm

How gratifying to have finished a piece of work! I’ve made this for Collectible, the first exhibition curated by Rosalind Davis and Annabel Tilley as part of their ingenious, thriving brainchild Zeitgeist Arts Projects. The artists were asked to contribute a piece of up to A4-size, within a price range of £ 50,- to 500,- So nice to be invited to take part – it is proof of the fruitful relationship arising from working on Extra-Ordinary at Core Gallery (curated by Rosalind Davis and Jane Boyer) which still serves as a measuring stick for any show I’m involved in.
This is not the only piece I’ve been working on, there’s a larger project which is taking rather longer, as, when fatigue is at its worst, I have ragdoll arms, but the wait will be worth it, if I say so myself.

Private View Tuesday 17 April, 6-8.30pm
18 - 28 April (Thursday-Saturday, 1-5pm)
Open for SLAM Last Fridays 6-8.30pm
Artists & Curators Dialogue - Saturday 28 April, 4-5 pm

at Zeitgeist Project Space, ASC Bond House. Goodwood Rd, London SE14 6BL

Wäuwäu

I remember learning to crochet (at school) as an alienated chore – little girls can’t be inspired by making pot-holders. Last year however, at my brother’s house, I happened across the tiny, salmon-coloured and rather close-fitting outfit which I’d made for his favourite soft-toy, a little brown-beige Steiff doggy which he’d had since he was a baby and whose once soft fur had become threadbare and was leaking its filling. With the best intention our parents had tried to replace it with a new one, the same kind, but looking like a gleaming, puffed up version of this love-worn object, lacking its familiar scent and without the hairless indent around its middle (the opposite of love-handles) where his small hands had gripped it every night.
I had completely forgotten about it and wish I could recall its actual making, esp. as crocheting has become my medium. Looking back in time it’s easy to make connections which are rather too neat, but the outfits I fashion nowadays seem to throw an arc to this one: a two-piece ensemble, consisting of a vest and pants which logically allowed an extra opening for Wäuwäu’s stubby tail.
See also Rosie Kearton’s blog, who at the beginning of the year invited artists to participate in ‘The painting in the attic’ – a visual art collaborative project exploring links between childhood creativity and the work we make now.

Back to basics?

Keen to learn about making applications, writing proposals for exhibitions, etc. I went to a Creative Practice Seminar on 3 March, organised by the industrious duo Rosalind Davis and Annabel Tilley, of ZeitgeistArtsProjects. As so often I describe an activity when it’s long past, but every outing (by which I mean leaving the house, about once per week), demands a longish, invisible and incommunicado recovery-period during which I slowly claw back tiny bits of energy.
I went by cab. From my shoulder hung a satchel with a light cushion and a yoga-mat. The event was informative, inspiring even, and during break I briefly chatted to two people I’d met before, which was delightful. But I could only sit for so long and, before leaving early, ended up lying on the floor for a good while, on my red coat, as rolling out the mat seemed too energetic an exercise. There I was, at the front of the small auditorium, near entrance and speakers (I had imagined a room where I could do so unseen at the back) but fatigue dispelled any embarrassment, and after all it enabled me to stay on. Self-consciousness surfaced days later when I started to get over the worst of the exertion, along with useless thoughts about what I had missed.
Why am I writing about this experience when it makes me so uncomfortable to dwell on how having M.E. affects me? Last year I tried hard to focus on my art, most of which I make lying down, and put being ill into the background, of course without ever neutralising its steady, sharp, poisonous sting. My motivation to be evasive about the extent of ‘my’ M.E. was manifold:
• I hate the effects of being ill, how it slows me down so treacherously, curbs control and independence and makes my world smaller.
• I keep thinking improvement is just around the corner.
• I was/am worried that it will negatively affect, even dispel, offers of opportunities to exhibit my work.
• I don't want to be labelled.
• I don't want my art seen through its prism.
• I have times when I judge myself for being ill, as if it was a matter of willpower. (That’s not being helped by the prevailing complacent attitudes towards people with M.E.)
• And last year, which after all was a good one in terms of visibility of my art, I had hoped that my work would pull me bodily out into the world too.
I can’t keep this up. It stops me communicating as I’d like to, openly and truthfully. So this is an attempt at finding a more realistic stance, a valid modus operandi, not just here, blogging, but in my life. I feel I need to acknowledge again, to myself, to you: I’m an artist who has got M.E. It affects everything I do. And here I can and will make a case too: Because of illness I may be limited in what I can do/where I can go, but my art is good and will be out, and I’ve got things to say, and will say them. I will use this blog to write about my art-practice, which includes talking about how my ability to get on in the (art-)world is affected by my physical circumstances and what that might mean for an artist, because there are loads of us.

Last chance to see!

BRAIDED TOGETHER. Hair in the work of Contemporary Women Artists, the brainchild of Charlotte Lindsay and Rebecca Baillie, is a fascinating, and carefully curated, exhibition. In a time when, here in the West, female body hair seems to become ever more fraught, BHVU Gallery feels like a breathing space, where artists push their media to probe narrow (still/again, only differently coded, if that) notions around gender and female beauty.
Go see: Two self-portraits of exquisite delicacy, put together by Tabitha Moses from individual hairs (she also shows her classy hairpurse); a video-piece where the artist Jessica Lagunas can be seen pulling out the grey hairs on her head one by one, excruciating to watch; Jenni Dutton's life-size blond hairdress, which I very much wanted to touch; Mary Dunkins’ photographs of women with very very long hair rippling down their backs, exuding an almost otherworldly stillness; Karen Bergeon's dark and funny hair hats; Wen Wu's gently creepy hairplay paintings; Samantha Sweeting's separation piece, the only work that includes hair off a male head; Marcelle Hanselaar's seductive painting and etchings of women whose bodies grow a fur of hair; Trish Morrissey's photographed portraits of women whose feminity is undiminished by their facial hair; and my Five perfect maidens, plus, for me in a new light, My house of howls, about which I’d been unsure, beautifully presented, on its own plinth.
This show deserves to be visited by a wide audience, as does BHVU, the small, artist-led gallery in the north of London with a strong programme. I wished the work could travel further afield, and be reviewed. Anybody?
The catalogue is an integral part of the whole project, a handsome object in itself, which puts the exhibition in a wider art-historical and social context, with fine photographs (Kiki Smith's Mary Magdalene, 1994, graces the cover!) and thoughtful and well-researched essays by Rebecca Baillie, Shir Aloni Yaaru and Lucetta Johnson.
You can see some of the curators’ artistic and theoretical work here and here.

Photos here courtesy of Charlotte Lindsay – thank you!

BHVU Gallery, Unit A, 2 Leswin Place, 
London N16 7NJ
Open to public: 18 February – 18 March 2012
Opening times: 12 - 6pm Saturday + Sunday or by appointment
Admission: Free

In London now!

Tabitha Moses, Hairpurse, 2004; Wen Wu, Hairplay II, 2011

BRAIDED TOGETHER
Hair in the work of Contemporary Women Artists

From the press-release:
You are warmly invited to attend the Private View of Braided Together at BHVU Gallery on 17 February 2012, 6 – 9 pm

Organised by artist run gallery BHVU, the exhibition is the first of its kind to consider the intricate relationship between women and hair.
Braided Together unites ten international contemporary women artists who each share an interest in the symbolic expression of human hair either as material or subject in their work. Inspired by the work of women Surrealists, the exhibition investigates specifically female and art historical concerns such as fragility, loss and power. Featured works include painting, etching, sculpture, drawing, photography and video, resulting in a truly dynamic exhibition that seeks to reinterpret the symbolism of hair through a multitude of female voices.

Braided Together commenced its tour at New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, and has now travelled back to its gallery of origin, BHVU. All of the art historical and theoretical ideas raised by the exhibition are considered in an accompanying catalogue – this includes images of all works shown, as well as work by artists Elina Brotherus and Hong Zhang and Kiki Smith, and three commissioned essays written by academics specializing in this field.

Exhibiting artists:
Marcelle Hanselaar, Marion Michell, Tabitha Moses, Karen Bergeon
Mary Dunkin, Wen Wu, Jenni Dutton, Trish Morrissey, Jessica Lagunas, Samantha Sweeting

BHVU Gallery, Unit A, 2 Leswin Place, 
London N16 7NJ
Open to public: 18 February – 18 March 2012
Opening times: 12 - 6pm Saturday + Sunday or by appointment
Admission: Free

Ich habe noch keine Vergangenheit

The other week I found a letter my favourite boy, the son of close friends in Germany, wrote to me a couple of years ago. He wrote in English, describing what he'd been up to, and explaining the financial crisis looming in the world with a little diagram (he's exceedingly clever). Floating at the bottom of the letter is the sentence "Ich habe noch keine Vergangenheit!" - I have no past yet. Just for a moment I took it to mean I have no past yet because I am a child, which seemed to make perfect sense in terms of having had no part in bringing about the financial crisis or global warming, etc etc, but of course he meant that he had not yet learned to speak/write in English past tense. Or did he? That moment of mis-understanding (which had not happened when I first read the letter) felt like a kind of epiphany, as it ties in with my second generation project, and now I can't get the sentence out of my head. Nor can I think much beyond it, being very tired, and in any case formulating my thoughts has never felt more difficult. The work is growing, while I grope about for insight. Maybe the work will teach me.

I am delighted to be part of

Tabitha Moses, Hairpurse, 2004; Wen Wu, Hairplay II, 2011

BRAIDED TOGETHER
Hair in the work of Contemporary Women Artists

From the press-release:
You are warmly invited to attend the Private View of Braided Together at New Hall Art Collection on:
Sunday 15th January 2012, from 4 - 6 pm.

Organised by artist run gallery BHVU, the exhibition is the first of its kind to consider the intricate relationship between women and hair.
Braided Together unites ten international contemporary women artists who each share an interest in the symbolic expression of human hair either as material or subject in their work. Inspired by the work of women Surrealists, the exhibition investigates specifically female and art historical concerns such as fragility, loss and power. Featured works include painting, etching, sculpture, drawing, photography and video, resulting in a truly dynamic exhibition that seeks to reinterpret the symbolism of hair through a multitude of female voices.

Braided Together commences its tour at New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, and will then travel back to its gallery of origin, BHVU. All of the art historical and theoretical ideas raised by the exhibition will be considered in an accompanying catalogue – this will include images of all works shown, as well as work by artists Elina Brotherus and Hong Zhang and Kiki Smith, and three commissioned essays written by academics specializing in this field.

Exhibiting artists:
Marcelle Hanselaar, Marion Michell, Tabitha Moses, Karen Bergeon
Mary Dunkin, Wen Wu, Jenni Dutton, Trish Morrissey, Jessica Lagunas, Samantha Sweeting

Dates:
New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge CB3 0DF
Open to public: 15 January – 11 February 2012
Entrance through College's Main Entrance off Huntingdon Rd
Opening times: 10am - 6pm everyday
Admission: Free

BHVU Gallery, Stoke Newington, London
Open to public: 18 February – 18 March 2012
Opening times: 12 - 6pm Saturday + Sunday or by appointment
Admission: Free