A tough start, the gallery was fairly busy and lots of visitors outside of hours, but good conversation and interesting people, and this allowed me to ease into the morning. A coffee in town before heading to the gallery allowed me to sit with workers, business, clients, managers, sellers, architects, they were all there, inhabiting Cafe Nero for an early coffee just like myself and I enjoyed being among them, listening to their conversations and business plans, a little bit of London on my doorstep. It felt good.
The straw had lost it golden colour a little and began to look a bit flat. I had decided over the weekend that I would sweep it up today and possibly return it to its carrier bag, however once I started the sweeping process I began to enjoy this task. I was lost in a realm of emotion and wanted to be busy, be busy with a mundane task, one that didn't finish to soon and allowed me to work up a sweat and keep my head down. I swept the layer of straw into a mound to the left of my desk. After scraping every ounce of straw together I then decided to move it again, sweeping the whole lot across the gallery, slowly moving the mass to a new location- the other side of my desk, it was at this point I decided to start filming. The performance had started, I would sweep for an hour, continuously sweeping the straw into a mound and then sweeping again to move the mound to a new location. The room began to get very dusty and I continued, creating around 7 different mounds in this time. A nice moment occurred when just outside the gallery, through the patio doors a volunteer began to clear leaves using an industrial leaf blower, his action almost echoing my own, but with the difference that mine potentially had no end, no reward, apart from the moments within it that the mound held itself before being dismantled and caught up in continuous sweeping for the next mound. No completion, it could go on. During the course of the morning this durational physical task allowed me to think and reflect on the first week. It had been a hard week, and it ended with me really questioning my solo work. It has been increasingly difficult to move away from Ben and Holly and Jen and Holly, the work towing and throwing between both of these collaborative styles and working methods, either being one or the other and never really something different, something that maybe made up my identity. I knew it would have elements of these processes, but currently it was not a compromised method, it was all of one or all of another. This began to feel disappointing and not very motivating. I mean working in the methodologies of Ben and Holly as just me means the works somewhat weak compared what we had previously done in this collaboration. Likewise with the work currently made with Jenny, working in our way lacks something, it lacks Jenny, and not a patch on what we have done together, making working in this way too not particularly productive. I knew I still had to find my own way.
Working with the straw in this way contributed to this and I feel now I am starting to find this. The performance, sweeping straw, did last an hour and the mound then remained with me in the space. Throughout the day it has seemed to grow an identity for itself, almost human, through its organic form, a mound, rounded edges, breast like. It feels as though we may have paired up, the straw mound becoming a representation of myself or another maybe. I would like to continue this sweeping outside of the gallery and possible moving between the site identified earlier. Possibly leaving it as a mound at these sites or sweeping it between these locations. I'm keen for the straw mound to exist through repetition, seen at the skate park, seen at the lights at St Andrews street, seen at the train station, seen at my flat, at my studio almost symbolising a presence in all these locations and drawing them together. I also like the very act of sweeping, the physical task, the everyday task that it exists as, something universal, but removed from normality by a change in context and material. I hope to go out with the straw tomorrow but feel a little nervous, not sure how the passers by will react.
Alongside this physical task today I also continued to work with collage. Piecing together found or drawn images to visualise my thoughts and performance ideas but as 2D instructions or plans I supposed. It also allows me to work with the aesthetic of what I what my performances to contain. Often in the past I have focused too much on aesthetic in performance on not so much on content. This process of working with combining images together is allowing me to fictionalise my performances and get carried away with the aesthetic and imagery associated with my ideas.
Today I have not written except for this. I am returning to just playing for a few days to gather some content, rather than focusing on a product at this stage. I have attached some of the photographs from today of the mound and of the space in general including the 2D collages, hopefully this gives you a feel for the space as it exists at the moment
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