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...
Saturday, 14 April 2012
Thursday, 5 April 2012
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
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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.
Thursday, 22 March 2012
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.
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.
Monday, 5 March 2012
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
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
In London now!
Tabitha Moses, Hairpurse, 2004; Wen Wu, Hairplay II, 2011BRAIDED 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
Sunday, 5 February 2012
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.
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