Hero Slides

23-9-18

The struggle for trying to (re)present what my work was supposed to be about.
I was supposed to convey the substance of my practice and what was I supposed to say? So I made up a list of good ideas and illustrated them for presentation - they thought I was leading them on a wild goose chase  - well well well !

I was working from a book identifying & analyzing  the various spaces we incorporate into our daily lives.
I'm afraid I can't remember for the life of me, what it was!

My Life 

What makes something more interesting or even desirable?

When you can't quite get at it!

Angels

There was a 9/10s circle high up a studio wall.

It was empty, I always thought that it should have been used for something, so why not angels?

I was doing indoor rock climbing at the time, so I thought "why not make them accessible?"

Clock Tower

Another daft idea which in the end turned into reality.

In a sense it was like being without responsibility again, I mean why not? build something with 25 clocks in it.

So, there it was in a college meeting and, so I hear, all the alarms went off simultaneously at the wrong moment.

First thoughts

trolley to mobilise the clock 

to turn it into a space invader

Crow Table

The crow table was the one that turned back and poked fun at me. In my own peculiar way, I was allowing myself to get lightly irritated by jargon: things like " what underpinned my practice "
Coming across " site specific "
I reckoned what could be more so than a directions table - so much distance between here and the destination specified " as the crow flies "
I hadn't taken on the term " intervention " up till that point.

Two sided silk screen print produced with mammoth help from Sean O'Keefe

A bird I didn't get to show John Russel!

A space to dream in.

I've built "gang huts" since I was eight - since I could "knock a nail in". Maybe a big part of the building was to Create a space to stay, to be by myself. 

(smoke fags)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRBE06gR6KY

Up on the roof Carol King.

Stupa

Mobiles
I suppose I couldn't think of anything more uncool!
I had come across quite a few surviving solo earrings - the other half having been lost.
An exhibition of enlarged solitary mobiles.
Maybe a show for people with only one ear.

Deities behind the scenes.

Again- spaces, but maybe spaces beyond spaces.

I noticed in places like airports and supermarkets often there were temporary ceilings to cover up the electrics and pipework going on up above. To the point where maybe you could never really be sure of what was happening up there. Maybe there could be little workers above making sure that everything was working.

The Looking Tower

Started off as a design for a slender framed glass window structure. (After having made a same scale stained glass window.

It wasn't my name,

Socrates told me (point-blank) that it was a looking tower after looking at a slide of mine when I was filling in an empty space at a "no show" lecture.

One that I later built. 

The Music Box

Thinking of scale again (like the Clock Tower etc.)

A music box sits on a table - or at least could.

How big could it possibly be made, whilst still sitting on the table.

I had been talking to Judy Inglis about making a small room sized octagon.

On the outside covered with wild "fauvist" characters,

& then on the inside minimal grey.

Complete comparison.

Maybe the music box was the nearest design I felt I could make to compare to that.

*

The inside was dark with a small stained glass window, containing the sound of birdsong on opening he door.

Since I have built other octagonal structures.

with work on the wall by John Rogers

- - - notes from a note book January 2001 Egypt

The music box was my first chance at a meeting of different types of discipline: glass, paint, construction & sound.

It was my first go at making a stage to happen in and around, inside and out. As oppose to making a statement or comment on something - a story in 2D.

It was a chance to guide people around my own show. That could be viewed in a circular fashion around the outside & then on opening the door - experiencing the interior.

A chance, as in an exhibition, to choose to view as you like, only in one spot.

Room of my own

Totally regurgitated from The Observer Colour Magazine Supplement from the 80's and collage work I made with Terry Johnson in Cardiff during that period.

I suppose - another space!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-dWhYklqE

In my room, The Beach Boys. 

Strange - reading all of this which was basically a "keep them off my back" public tutorial. And which was, in the end - a large part of what was happening to me, with or without the M.A. And which, often enough - transpired!
*
(Going back)
I wouldn't have swapped this M.A. lightly at all.
It was great to be a bit of a rebel again, have another opportunity to be one.
I learnt a lot about myself & my relationship with art and in fact to the art establishment. And to fit into that space without self damage!