Spike and Stripe

A few weeks ago, just before the heavens opened and the wrath of some god poured scorn on our West Country summer, I happened to make the long awaited pilgrimage to Bristol.
I say "pilgrimage" because ever since my foundation year this city has loomed large in my conciousness as a place where urban contemporary art flourishes and that conceptual ideas are explored seriously. I used to read the Fine Art course description in the UWE prospectus and it seemed to be even more serious than Goldsmiths, considered and thoughtful reflections and applications of fine art, and my tutor at Croydon had graduated from there, and he was full of conceptual thought, although he was also full of BS. It sounded to me like an area worth visiting, as I had already visited it psychologically. It had everything I want, urbanity, water, creativity, and of course music. Little boats bobbing up and down in the middle of a city. My idea of heaven.

I did my research and decided what I wanted to visit specifically. I decided for my first trip I would go to Spike Island, as it looked like an interesting setup and reminded me a bit of the Pheonix in Brighton, another collection of artists and spaces. The area itself, on arrival, also reminded me of Hackney Wick: sluggish water, vibrant graffiti, concrete and brick and wildflowers mingling tantalising together.
The show didn't dominate the white space, as large artworks usually tend to do. It almost blended in with the planes, looking almost like a giant doodle, lines blending with lines on a big page, like somebody drawing crosshatched patterns with a set of coloured biros in a modular office cell whilst on the phone to someone tedious. Its a daydreaming kind of work, the nautical ropes and pulleys adding to that dreamlike feeling, in the open space it could just sail away like a yacht on an overcast winters day, on white mirror like water with a huge open blank pale sky. Sail away like a mind not quite on the job.

Yet in all this threadlike tranparency there was a physicality in the work, the heavy frames and the balancing weights, as you walked around them, they hung solidly and almost obstructivley, providing a view in but also obscuring it. The moire pattern was effective in the main where the 2d boxes intersected, this was rendered with mechanical precision. By contrast, the crafted pieces of the work had not quite an accurate construction. Some of the lines of rope in the frames were disturbingly uneven, if this had been a doodle on a page this would be where the pen's fluid ran suddenly thick, or if a graph in a school project, the ruler had been badly placed. It did remind me of when I had to draw bar graphs at school, in graph paper books, with fineliners. I was never very neat.

Looking at the placing of these double-thick lines I couldn't decide whether this was deliberate or a circumstance of construction. However, it was a overall a pleasing effect, the way the lines overlapped as your body and eyes moved about the space, a great game of pereception and proprioception, one that I had tried to do with the coloured gel in my MA projects, but with limited success. What I lacked was clearly ambition, something that this work had in abundance. Ambition, but with quiet confidence.

Transience, Permanence, Function and Space

  

If "a thing of beauty is a joy forever", what is an ugly thing?

Can I justify bringing objects and freshly created artifacts into the world?

It's not like music. Or a live performance.

(or the anonymity of coded magnetic tape

or a shiny naked disc

or 1's and zeros)

Once a song or an act is performed, its over. Its gone.

It hangs in the air, gilded in people's memories, in their subconscious.

But a piece of visual art is there, on the shelf, on the wall, on the plinth.

Then it is either bought and valued or discarded or hidden.

Or destroyed.

Or forgotten about.

It could be shown, shared, or stored.

But it still takes up space.

Obstinately.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity

Going through my inbox reveals a variety of artists who promote themselves because they have deep pockets, whether it be a top level advert in an arts website or a self-funded show. Any curatorial sense or talent goes straight out of the window. Its sickening when there are very talented people out there who CANT hire (for example), the Brick Lane Gallery for thousands of pounds for a vanity project, or give a website a big fat fee to have their pathetic painting e-mailed to everyone by Absolutearts (just streaks of blue oil paint that I have done myself and so has everyone else at some point), paying big membership fees to arts organisations and clubs and websites to get top viewing or pay entry fees for competitions while the rest of us are forced to live in the shadows simply because we dont have a rich daddy or a trust fund to help subsidise our hobby! True artists will get ignored while self-important hobby artists who have not scrimped and saved to put themselves through training and pay for materials get all the glory and exposure.
Right now I am using the last of my savings paying for a studio because I cant work in my house any more, its a necessity not a luxury, and I am splitting the rent with other artists. My community arts projects have had their funding cut so I am getting no paid work at the moment and therefore cant fund any shows or attempt any expensive work. Right now I'm having to ask my husband to buy me a roll of canvas.
I'm not failing to be successful because I'm no good at what I do (although I admit I have a lot of developing to do), but because I dont have unlimited supplies of cash to bolster my ego and my prescence...

Watered down ambition

Just on the offchance, I entered some of my urban watercolours for a couple of comps. Now, I dont usually do competitions, because I strongly feel they do little to encourage innovation, usually artists just produce things they think will appeal to the judges. I also dont have a huge amount of self-confidence or influential friends.
Anyway, in the first instance, art competitions being bland and uninspiring, I was right. My work did not get selected for the Royal Watercolour Society shortlist. On the shortlist was a predictable amount of flowers, landscapes, and abstract "autobiographical" scrawls. One or two interesting portaits. Certainly nothing to rock the establishment! What did I expect?
A show that gave me a slightly more positive reaction, at least to start with, was "Pumped Up Kicks" by the Young Curators in Leeds. They were very enthusiastic when I sent them some jpegs, saying it was just what they were looking for, and would let me know. This was some weeks ago, then yesterday I got another e-mail saying they were overwhelmed with work and mine didn't fit in. "Didn't fit in". Story of my life!
I bet the work there is pretty predictable too.. let me see, grainy photographs of yoof in streets, some tag graffiti.. I'll have a look online but I bet it will all look like a First Year BA show.
I dont mean to be bitter and twisted, in fact I'm quite chirpy today, but it all gets so tedious when you try to get in there with something a bit different that you believe in and worked hard with.

The Tulip Bowl and the Heart

In the opening of Das Kapital, Marx makes the observation that within the capitalist mode of production we evaluate materials not by what purpose they serve or what they're actually useful for, but we instead recognize them based on their value in the market.

I have now made several of these concept pots/objects. I viewed them as art for sure, a kind of three dimensional poetry, so got quite miffed when an art teacher friend of mine said "Oh, are they tulip bowls?", the inference being that I had made them for no other ends than to hold flowers. Now, not only is that an affront, but I cant possibly see why something so ugly and visceral could be seen to contain beautiful flowers. She went on to explain that tulip bowls were very ornate and became a whole phenomenon of their own, because of the love of tulips and the obsession that Europe had with them, owning and showing off new varieties of both plant and plant holder. The flower itself was such a rare and sought after commodity that it had become something of a status symbol, so by extension the tulip bowl had also become a wanted and prized item.

I pondered over this a while, and for some time still smarted at the thought that I was a mere artisan, and not a fine artist, simply throwing out mindless empty vessels that most people assumed would have to be filled. Incomplete objects, primitive ones, products off an assembly line to be used and abused. Not items to be looked into in any great detail, not items worthy of a back story or a theory.

However, with art being a commodity, and this not being particular to Post Modern times, twas always thus since Renaissance times and before where the rich would commission or collect, I reasoned with myself that an artisan product was nothing to be ashamed of, and that it was a democratised object. It had Usefulness, because it was Crafted, and was not a Commodity because it was Art. It had some function so therefore it could not be evaluated purely on its artistic quality and therefore monetised as so valuable and rare an object. I shy away from associating myself from Socialism but there it was, an object of mud, almost Arte Povera but as common as a chipped mug; and since I dont sell paintings and tend to work with community arts groups for a pittance, it seems I have fallen into socialism without even trying!

It would be nice to command a high price for an object that I have not only made with my hands but made with my intellect, and be revered and sought after and my work grace the coolest gallery walls and plinths, but in a world so twisted that even staple foodstuff like wheat and corn are traded as commodities, do I really want to fuel a market and become part of this vampiric overblown captalism? At a time where "We are the 99" rallies are popping up all over the place, should I really be yearning to be part of a system that now seems very old hat and rotten by an ever increasing number of ordinary people?

But deep down, Commodity vs Usefulness is not an arguement. Its what I can make that comes from the heart that matters.

The Heart Of The Matter

"Pottery is only pottery, the craftsman stuff of the kitchen and the cabinet of curiosities, and never to be mistaken for a work of art, never to be put on a level with Raphael and Titian. One might well preserve pickled herrings in a Perry pot, drown a Duke of Clarence or even pee in it - none of which things can be done with Michelangelo's David or Rembrandt's Samson and Delilah. Indeed, the very uselessness of a narrative painted on canvas in a frame, or a block of marble carved into the image of a naked hobbledehoy, is the simplest of all distinctions between art and craft." Brian Sewell, London Evening Standard, 6th October 2011

Recently I read an interesting article (which I now cannot find) that highlighted the difference between Art and Craft. The writer hit the nail on the head very succinctly and candidly. They said the thing that distinguishes Art from Craft is that Art provokes an emotional response. That is not to say Craft cannot engineer an emotional response, and I am as guilty as the next craftsperson to make something that wrenches no more than an "Awwww" (internet speak for "Aint that cute!"). Cute sells, I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. Amongst the non-academics, the estate housed, the mumsy or teen (or gay, yes, this is the main market for my little ceramic cats apart from pre-pubescent girls!), if its little and brightly coloured and anthropomorphic its straight onto the mantelpiece or bedside table without a minutes thought. And why not? Are we not biologically disposed to liking tiny fragile baby like things? Things we want to take care of or carry around with us? The advantage of owning one of my ceramic pets is that you can carry it around in your bag or show it off to your friends and not have to feed it or clear up after it. Its like a Tamagotchi without the responsibility!
But as a "serious" artist do I want to be known as a breeder ot cute inanimate pets, or something more visceral or intellectual? Do I want to re-animate pottery with crude drawings, for example, to try and bring it into the realm of Fine Art?

To this end, I have tapped into the most physical and tactile represntation of the ideas that have been lurking in my mind. I have explored what it is to be vulnerable and translated it into a material that is invulnerable (well... clay... its breakable I suppose), I have gotten my hands dirty like a surgeon would, covered in wet and stain. I have created a Heart Of Stone. I call this work "Vena Cava i". It's the first of a series. It started off looking like a strange organism, a fungus or a deep sea creature, but as I added more material to it it became as I saw it in my minds eye: a thing of ventricles and vessels. Maybe its because I am getting older and I see people who were fit and vibrant adults who I look up to weaken and become more fragile, but I really want to explore the fragility of the human body. When the work is fired it will be like the Greek Urn "a thing of beauty is a joy forever".. when THESE arteries harden it will not mean death but everlasting life. And a useless one, at that!

Half the air with added hair...

Great exhibition at the Tate St Ives.. pity the balloons have so much static they attract hair.. so that when I entered the installation there was other peoples hair stuck on the balloons that smacked me in the face. Yuk. Hair-face!
It was an amazing experience. Ok it did elicit the old "a three year old could do this" response from my (non-artist) husband, but I didn't care that we didn't see eye-to-eye on it (I could've so easily lost him in 8ft of aerated latex but I needed the lift back and the the keys to the cottage!). We nearly came to blows. I tried to explain that the theory behind such a supposedly simple idea was very complex and interesting and involved regarding the human condition and all the senses, but he was still remembering the Vorticists theories that were so loud and furious and ringing that he probably still had those petulant voices ringing round his head from when I dragged him round Tate Britain.
The balloon installation could scarcely be in a more appropriate place. Bounded on one side by seaside sunlight and the other by an "audience" looking down from the corridors above, the crescent shaped trench seemed at once open and enclosed, private and watched, free and kept in, authoritarian and childlike.
There may be those who criticise Martin Creed (I will go into that another day), but in this particular exercise he really suceeded in making me think of myself as a lone individual, hemmed in by all sides, listening to the laughter of others but not being part of it and being seperated from it by so much airy bulk. The balloons were like all those things that prevent you from progress, and I realised I was anxious once the novelty had worn off. I was lost, I had lost my husband, and I couldn't find a way out. I envied those who where whooping and throwing their arms in the air with childish glee, scooping the balloons out and throwing them as hard as they could. There was a brief moment when I allowed myself this joy.. and then I became a scared adult again. I wish the joy of being alone within the cells of my "womb", able to think and play with innocence and ignorance, unemcumbered by behavioural or psychological restraints even in a physically trapping environment, had stayed with me.