Monday 12 September 2011

Holidays, Research trips, and upcoming Fictions exhibition

It's been some time since my last exhibition, and I realised I hadn't blogged since then. I've been busy applying for various art events without much success, and it saddens me that these events are promoted as hosting very talented artists, but as I'm never included, that makes me think this is untrue, which is a negative thing. So I keep quiet, rather than post negative experiences, and wait for something more positive to happen.
The main problem I seem to have is having very ambitious ideas for work that require more funding than is available. 
I feel that I possess a wealth of creativity and artistic expression just waiting to be discovered, that needs investment to make it all a reality.

I've been off work over the summer holidays concentrating on my other full time but otherwise unpaid job of being a single parent. I've had the expense of brand new school uniform, as the school has gone to an academy, which is Kafkaesque for making parents spend what savings they've made not on a holiday, but yet more school stuff.
The most I could stretch to in this age of austerity, or as I call it: government sanctioned financial abuse, was a trip to London to see the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Peter Zumthor http://www.serpentinegallery.org/architecture/




The above photograph was expertly taken by my son Brett, 
aged 12



The Pavilion was recommended by Apparatjik via twitter/Facebook, and I also visited the gallery to see 

Michelangelo Pistoletto 
The Mirror of Judgement 

which runs until 17th September.
It was the pavilion that inspired me, as I'd been busy in my studio creating work for the upcoming LAN "Fictions" exhibition this September, for which I wanted to move away from previous work and illustrate the writings and theories of Jorge Luis Borges
However, I've found myself making small scale sculptures, and in particular, the Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude, which is from the essay The Garden Of Forking Paths. 
For this, I imagined the pavilion as a greenhouse, a book, a labyrinth, and a memory. 


However, I did intend to create a series of illustrations, but my concentration has lost focus due to a dispute I'm unfortunately engaged with with the mobile phone company Orange.
I'm considering whether to include this in the exhibition, in the same way that Tracey Emin showed her "Bed" after being asked to exhibit work and being ill. Barbara Walker made work to highlight how her son kept being stopped and searched by police for what she thought were racial motives, so this kind of work can have a powerful effect. It isn't what I intended to exhibit at all, and I'm not entirely sure whether I should give Orange or any of these companies associated the publicity, but I am being adversely affected by it, so I wish to make my opinion clear.

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