Saturday 28 May 2011

Lions Den

At present I am sitting in Limerick airport awaiting my bus into the city centre. I have had a busy week helping students install their final year show and have managed ti squeeze in a productive couple of days on work for Ickworth. As plans go, the work is looking really rather slick, much, as ever to my surprise. My practice always seems to contain an element of danger from a personal perspective as I enjoy making varying presentations that I have never done before. The six pieces I have been working on have managed to be successful and on my return I will finish these off, work on the smaller pieces and the objects and then it will be complete. Then onto the work for Harewood. For now, I will however be manning Lions Den, the next show of Monte at Occupy Space. Better run, the bus is five minutes away.

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Ickworth work starts


I am tired.
For some reason unknown to me I am waking at 3am and 4am, wide awake and ready for work. I am however expected to teach long days around this and I have been pushed to keep it together for the last couple of days. I now have two days solid in the studio, so I hope to recapture where I left off at the weekend. I have since got materials rolling and have ordered some exciting things. I have clear ideas on what I am making, I have a certain number of component parts, I just need to get it all together in one place. Relying on other people is always difficult and you never quite get people to work at the same pace and so fingers are crossed that this will work out. I have very nearly completed the first series of portraits for Ickworth which has, for some reason been the hardest to squeeze out through my already full mind and I have been recently hampered by not having an A3 printer. It is my intention to see if I can justify buying one although it does seem extremely wasteful to part with my fantastic relatively new Canon A4 printer. I will just have to see.

I am plotting as to what to take with me to the art fair in Limerick in terms of work in a couple of weeks time. I am only taking hand luggage and I should by then be working on the Harewood work, so fingers crossed my plans work out. I now realise how large this project is in real terms. It is all consuming, both day and night.

I would however just like the opportunity to thank thus far the Arts Council for their kind support with (Now that would be) Telling as well as The National Trust, the contemporary Trust New Art arm of the Arts Council and National Trust, the additional three independent significant houses involved, and to all the people that have been involved in the project to date, of which there are many.

Sunday 15 May 2011

Pairs



I have spent time again at Ickworth today firming up in my head what will go where and how much work I need to make overall for the space. I found today a pair of one of the earls slippers and a dog collar in a box frame which need to go in to the show somehow I think. Work is forging forward for this and I need to go to the framers tomorrow to talk about shiny stuff, so its now feeling very real. While I was there today I managed to grab a couple of the Trust New Art leaflets featuring the Telling project too, so that was a bonus. All is pretty good right now, I just need to push on so I can start to get my head around work for Harewood.

Sunday 8 May 2011

Leg of Monte, silly sailors and dark corners in the bag



Work has been up and then down at Rogue in Manchester with the next leg of Monte happening in Limerick as I mentioned previously. I have offered to help Transition over the latter weekend, the 28th/29th May which will mean a quick dash over after teaching on the Friday, a camp over somewhere in Cambridge that evening and two early flights there and back with just hand luggage, so the work I plan to make there will need to be small. It will involve a silly sailor I think.

The work for Telling is bobbing along with a quick flurry last week to nail my ideas and put them in the bag. I have worked like a crazy thing possessed to get all the other small jobs done in order to clear my path to making this work, so all is looking good right now. I have had two more very exciting contacts this week (this good weather is clearly bringing everyone out of their dark corners). It all looks promising so lets see.

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