The Love Machine

I have been challenged to make a longer film. This is something I have always struggled with as my tendency is to whittle things down to almost nothing. Why, I say to myself, (I am talking to myself a lot nowadays) would anyone want to watch this for more than 30 seconds? As yet I have't decided much about the content of the film, nor really how I should go about it, so mostly I have been sitting in my studio talking to myself and the cats. Otherwise I have been tinkering and scratching a new wave of flea bites.

This video, should you be able to see it, is a little love machine I have made. 

Flea 3

For some reason the gallery's titular creatures have come back to life. My feet and ankles again resemble those of a late stage plague victim. At the same time I am watching the pre-apocalyptic spread of Ebola across the world. I have always been a bit nervous of this disease. Having watched too many zombie films in my youth I fully expect my insides to liquify and spurt from my eye sockets at any moment. Hopefully this won't happen at the next opening of Flea as Ipswich's artist community could be destroyed in one very messy afternoon. This opening went very well (apart from the re-spawning of the fleas) and a decent number of people turned up, although I singularly failed to photograph any of them and neglected to put a pen with the visitors' book. In fact I could very easily be making this whole thing up. One can see the photos I did take here . Our next adventure is a trip to London to the opening of Annabel's latest show Painting Objects which makes Painting seem a little cross.

Flea 2

The work is starting to come in for the Flea's inaugural exhibition. I am quite excited, I think it will look good and a few people may turn up. If only someone would pay me to run a contemporary art gallery in Ipswich then my life would be complete. At least at the moment it doesn't cost very much. My main expense has been buying a little plastic organiser for my screws and some sticky numbers. I need to nip to Lidl for some drink but surely people won't want to get too squiffy on a Saturday afternoon?

It is raining now so I am holed up in one of my offices making a skinny Latte last as long as possible. It is here that one most often sees blind dates limping along painfully. Today the victim was a blind woman whose potential partner filled the space between them with constant jabber. I distinctly got the impression that she wished she were deaf or that her dog might have an uncharacteristic fit of violent temper.

Anyway the reason for this post, one of our artists Jamie Clements has been tempted out of hiding and has started a blog impressively titled "The Most Powerful Man in the Universe". Have a look here.

www.jamievclements.blogspot.co.uk




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Redaction

I have been expunged from Axis. This is fair enough, I have been unable to pay my subs. I expected my profile to disappear but was surprised that all mention of my very existence has been scrubbed from the site. This was probably not a deliberate act, rather I think I have been edged out by newer, hungrier artists.

Enclosures

I am visiting my daughter in Worcester Park she lives in a strange community modelled on, and named after, the Hamptons. It is a little like waking up on the set of Stepford Wives and I hold myself lucky not to have been stopped as I trundled my flat packed apparatuses along its perfectly manicured roads yesterday afternoon. I must repeat the journey this morning as I am heading to set up Enclosures at Canal in Haggerston. As is usual when I transport work to London it is a little worse for wear and I must first perform some repairs. As I entered the underground yesterday I somehow became entangled in a large wooden stand I was carrying. It's leg snapped off just below the joint. In retrospect I think perhaps I cut a strange figure brandishing a pointy stick and swearing, at least I had a lot of space around me. 

The Thin Letter

Back in the seventies I was in the local Cubs' football team, actually I was the substitute. The first match of the season took place on the day the family Pearl were to set off on holiday. So, the car all packed, my parents dutifully took me to the match in my strip and boots. Standing on the sidelines I was the only sub and, as we were well ahead at half time, I was hoping to be called upon in the second half. Later the score being something like 10-0 with ten minutes to go I told my father I thought we should hang on as I might be needed. I stood hopefully, shivering a little. Then the final whistle came. We had won, of course. I went back to the car where mum and brother had been waiting. It had been raining the whole time. 

Yesterday I received a phone call appertaining to my application for a commission in Bedfordshire. There were eleven artists in the running for eight places, good odds I thought. 

This morning  a letter arrived from Norwich with the results of my interview to become a lecturer (part time, one year, fixed term, hourly). I believe there were four or five of us and two posts. 

It is raining. 

There and back again

I have had an interview in Norwich for a lecturing post. As is usual I have no idea how it went. There were people, it seems quite nice people, and they asked me questions. Throughout I was more worried that they might notice that Annabel had dusted my hands with foot powder in order to make them less clammy. I was concerned I may have left a white handprint on my trousers. It would have shown up well as Annabel had made them blacker than black by running a sticky roller over them outside the building where the interview was to take place. When I remembered this I could only think about the chance that this humiliation had been spotted. 

I did notice that the interviewer that had shaken my hand at the start did not at the end. 

When we got home Annabel made me wear stockings in the back garden. She said it was for art. 

FLEA

I've got an interview - actually I have two, one for an art opportunity (again) and one for a lecturing post at Norwich. I am wondering about having another haircut. I am thinking there must be an ideal hair length at which you become irresistible to employers.

At the same time Annabel and I are just about ready to open our project space. This has been quite a well kept secret as it has taken me about 18 months to paint a room so it looks a bit like a gallery. It is to be called FLEA, which is ironic because we chose the name before being overrun by the little bastards. Our legs have sores resembling late stage plague victims.

So our plan was, in a really relaxed way, to start inviting people whose work we like to put on little exhibitions in a room in our house. We want to invite people who wouldn't otherwise show work in Ipswich and see if anyone turns up. Being naturally introverted we don't really mind if no one does. To break ourselves in gently our first show is work by four friends that might look good together. they are:

Hayley Lock

Justine Moss

Jamie Clements

David Kefford

and the show is called

Our Friends in the East...

more info to come.

oh this is a stab at a poster. The info might be wrong but if you turn up I promise to put the kettle on.

In which I mention Ryan Gander

Oh shit!

I read an interview with Ryan Gander this morning. 

http://www.fadwebsite.com/2014/08/20/interview-ryan-gander-on-useless-machines-art-funding-and-manchester/?utm_content=buffer29331&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I hope the link works, it's very long winded. Anyway Ryan said that if an artist isn't supporting themselves with their work after ten years they should give it up. 

Damn damn damn...

I count this video as the start of my career

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1537248/?ref_=m_nmfmd_dr_1

Note the date, 2004. I have but three months to get my act together! At this point I should mention that I finished university much earlier than 2004, much much earlier, but choose not to count the intervening "dark ages".  

However before I chuck up everything and just clear off I am reminded that just as an artist is able to magically say "this is art" they also have an uncanny knack of drawing a line demarcating "those that should carry on" and "those that shouldn't" just below their own position. So there is hope for us all

The only thing that really upset me in the interview was that Ryan didn't like artists to do a load of residencies because it was a waste of "Tax payers' money". Actually there were a couple of other things too that sounded a bit Thatcherite but perhaps that's my age showing again. 

Nothing to Report

One thing I have nearly learnt over the past few years is that while something in the studio might seem a great idea unfortunately it's utter genius may not translate into a gallery space. My current problem is making a thing that will provide for the viewer the tension of being on the brink of collapse and simultaneously not break down for a month. Even with my tweaking there is certainly more than a little danger of the latter. Mind you it wouldn't be the first time I have spent a private view taping things back together, and while such furtive repairs tend to make me sweat, I'm sure they make interesting viewing. The show in question is due to open at the same time as that great machine Frieze, details to follow soon. I am also looking forward to the reunion this coming Sunday of "The Count of Monte Cristo", an artistic cabal worthy of any of Holmes' greatest mysteries. The group is growing and hopes to cause mild stirrings in a number of locations in the following year. But I mustn't go on. My darling Annabel says she has grown weary of folk who constantly allude to future excitement, indeed she has had to limit her time on Facebook as it is giving her the vapours. 

English Depressive

I never finished reading American Psycho. I think I never got to the good bit as it was mostly about endless high end product purchase and ridiculous personal grooming. No one got killed. 

I left the book beside the toilet on the day I quit the marital home for a better life.

Now, relaxed and comforted in my new home I wonder if I should take it up again or leave it. A clean break. 

Freudian Slip

"I've been worrying about some new work" I said this afternoon. I had meant to say "wondering" but having failed my cbt introductory course, it came out all wrong. I once announced (in a meeting) that I had made a "freudian shit" so this one is perhaps not too bad. In fact, for me, the acts of worry and wonder are common bedfellows.

The work I was worrying about is going to relate to Houdini's famous "bridge jump"escape. The one where he was variously locked in mail-sacks, bound in chains, welded into milk churns etc and dropped into a river. They weren't, as far as I know, illusions but physical acts of escape.

In Ipswich at the moment there have been calls to put up safety barriers on the Orwell Bridge in an attempt to stop the jumpers. There have been further calls not to do this as said barriers will inevitably spoil the bridge's architectural elegance. Obviously these people do not feel that its beauty is affected by the regular sight of a plummeting suicide. I'm not sure where I stand on the matter, will the barriers prevent suicides, or will they just divert them to more mundane locations and methods? Anyway the point of the "bridge jump" is that it is nearly, but not quite, a suicide. This is, I suppose, why people liked to watch it.

Some readers may be worried here that I may be considering some form of artistic self endangerment. Fear not, cycling over the Orwell Bridge was the closest I ever came to a near death experience and it is not something I intend to repeat.

Dove Cottage under fire from flaming arrows

The dreaded email arrived yesterday. I didn't get the commission. The pain has been dulled by the £500 I am to receive for my efforts. Such messages are not uncommon in the life of an artist and I often get  a strange feeling of relief. Meanwhile Annabel is getting angry and is planning to drive our car into Dove cottage. I have explained that it is protected by a rather stout looking stone wall and the chance of our 2CV making any impact is negligible. This said, Annabel's response to most sleights I receive is this lightweight ram raid (reader be warned) and to be honest she hasn't quite mastered the gears yet.

Hindsight

After the interview at Abbot Hall I fell down some steps. I was descending into Euston Square station in the rain. Luckily as my feet flew forward both arms were flung apart and by reflex alone I grabbed the handrails spaced exactly my arm-span apart. I hung cruciform for a few seconds hoping someone had witnessed my fall and salvation. Unfortunately they had not. Today I am reminded of the event by the aching of the seldom used muscles under my arms.

Above is the view I snapped from the train to Oxenholme. I was moving away from the sun kissed hill, not towards it. Earlier I had left Abbot Hall at a run, it must have been an overflowing of adrenaline following an interview with a panel of seven. I am not sure of this number (there may have been eight or six) or what exactly I said, the panic I feel in such situations shuts down so many of my, already beleaguered, faculties.

Before the interview I spent some time lurking in the cafe and meandering round the collection. I think I spied my rivals, one preparing a presentation on her mac, the other circling a little like me. I tried to catch their names, written upside down on the sign-in sheet, but failed.

The morning had been spent making a sort of croupier's stick and model bicycle to push round my map. I sat, again in cafés, shaky from the sleepless night before enjoying the smell of coffee and toast.


This post is dedicated to Belinda, the lovely volunteer who tried to calm my nerves, gave me tips and told me there were only two people doing the interviewing. 

Moto

The first interview is underway, I will be last. I'm holed up in the resource area at Abbot Hall just waiting. One of the applicants, was in the cafe about half a hour ago. She had her laptop and printed presentation notes. My presentation, a map a stick and a picture of a bicycle is in a locker. It's dead centre, number 13. There is a show of Hepworth sculpture in the gallery one room looks very nice in the sunlight but I can't look at it, I want to be outside. 

Last night in the Dun Horse was a sleepless nervous experience. Men shouted in the street, other men shouted at them to shut up. The latter where my neighbours. There was no sink in my room, nor anywhere else save a basin in the toilet about a quarter of a football in size. My room was cell like and clean  apart from the fly on my pillow.

Glasgow Bound

On the train at last I am reading "The Shifting Shapes of Mountains", a chapter from my invaluable "Festival of Britain" guidebook. I am wondering how easy it would be to sculpt them out of mash potato like Richard Dreyfuss. 

Women

I'm reading about scientists transferring memory between people by injecting RNA. It's very interesting, they've already done it with a hamster and a rat. I'm not reading the Lancet not even the New Scientist but rather a science fiction thriller from the 70s. It is a very manly world. There is an hour to go before my train so I am reclining on the concourse while Annabel texts me with ideas for my presentation. So far it is Beatrix Potter and Ferns. She is obsessed by fronds. I suspect that if she could she would sneak up behind me with a syringe. 

I have decided to move on to Mary and Dorothy Wordsworth's diaries. Maybe she got me. 

Departures

Being a bit of a misery and having done it at school, one of my favourite poems about adventure is that Larkin one. There might be at least ten percent of truth in saying it is behind my recent beardy growth. 

Poetry Of Departures

by Philip Larkin

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you ****;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if 
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

Departure

This time worrying about disruption due to the Tour De France I have begun my journey to Kendal quite early. I should be in plenty of time for the seven o'clock train from London. One drawback has been that after leaving Ipswich I discovered an email asking me to give a short presentation about my proposal and enquiring if I need a projector. Not having brought my laptop I have politely declined. Instead I plan to explain my project by pushing a card board bicycle around a road map of Cumbria. 

This talisman arrived in the post this morning. 

Working Through

Returning from London Annabel had dropped off on my lap and I, my phone having died, was forced to listen to the complaints of the woman seated in front. She and her young son had been treated to a day out at the zoo with Granny and Granddad. The boy was now tired and not very grizzly so we were treated to a constant tirade of of dissatisfaction aimed at poor Grandma. Apparently young Sammy should have been in his bath by now and they would never presume to take him out on such an arduous trip again. By now Granddad was feigning sleep having downed at least two cans of Strongbow and poor Sammy was only irritable because his mother wouldn't shut up. In an attempt to avoid getting grizzly myself I tried to do the artist thing and note down a couple of ideas in my sketchbook.

We had enjoyed a pleasant trip to Wimbledon to drop off Annabel's drawings for the Jerwood. The only downside had been my constant premonitions of doom. "Oh God Wimbledon is on, it will be Hell"(it wasn't), "Look at the queue we will never catch the next train" (we did). My pessimism was better received, by Annabel at least, when we got to the dropping off point and I saw the other artist's dragging their work in. "That doesn't stand a chance, its too big" (this was a six foot + rolled drawing), "oh dear, that won't do" (drawings framed in brown, rather than the regulation white), "he should give up now" (don't ask). I've often thought that people's criticisms of others stem from their own insecurities. I am clearly thinking very positively about getting the Cumbria commission.