Artists Surgery ooh ouch!

An 'Artists Surgery' (ohh, ouch!) at Smiths Row, Bury St Edmunds faced me again with my lack of courage. Talking through my work with Rosie, the delightful mentor, I saw rather too clearly the elephant trap that I had fallen into the past year. Oh dear, it is not always easy to be confronted by the harsh reality even when the hand that offers the bitter pill of truth is as soft and gentle as hers!

One of the artists that Rosie mentioned was Susie Macmurray

www.susie-macmurray.co.uk/

I could see why when I researched her work as her use of repetitious processes are similar to my own but she has evidently been a lot braver than I.

So it is back to the drawing board for me with a new determination to keep pushing my work forward....fearless experimentation...

 

 

October Drawing Detail
Pencil on Paper

 

 

 

...well experimentation, yes but there is always going to be faint-heartedness and fear...

Lack of courage

Listening to the Radio in the idle way that I do when I am cooking or doing something else I heard someone say that in his opinion beauty would be more highly valued and sought after over the next five years. I found my self thinking about this in relation to seeing a video of Marina Abramovic preparing for an exhibition in 2010 at MOMA in New York. At the age of 64 her energy and single mindedness are extraordinary. Her work moving and challenging.

The video showed clips of some of her earlier performance pieces many of which involved

self flagellation which brutally pushed her body to extremes. The main body of the video however followed the planning and performance of The Artist is Present. This was a work beguilingly simple yet of epic proportions.

Performed over three months the artist sat almost motionless in a chair for over seven hours and invited people to come one at a time and sit opposite her for a few minutes. During that time in silence the artist and the viewer would exchange gazes. The video showed that for many of the participants this was a deeply emotional and moving experience.

There seemed to be in this work a desire by Abramovic to make a vital connection between herself and those who took part. The almost animal ferocity of her earlier works provided a stark contrast with this later work where there is an essence of beauty both visual as well as visceral.

 

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/.../The_Goddess_of_Art_Marina_Abramovic

I feel challenged by that complex mix of beauty and ugh! In my lack,my lack of courage I will learn from this great mistress of her art.

 

 

Constructed Drawing.
 Photo by Robert Taylor

                      

a cicatrice

'a small cicatrice had been made on the memory; a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined'. Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter

I think that in my working practice I am seeking both a way to find relief for the ache as well as a way to explore and identify that ache. An ache which is hardly a searing pain but that nevertheless demands attention, demands to be addressed. A clamorous, insistent noise wanting a voice.

October Drawing Detail

...the thing about edges at the Estorick

Tucked away in Canonbury the Estorick Collection of modern Italian art is a scented haven of fresh garlic, herbs and delicious Italian coffee mmmm! And of course some rather lovely art!

Currently showing is a small collection of work by Bruno Munari, My Futurist Past. The two downstairs rooms displayed a selection of his works on paper, collages some of his 'mobiles' and amusing assemblages. The best however was saved until last, suspended alone in an upstairs room. Concave-convex is a 'spatial environment' created in 1946. A hanging wire mesh object is carefully lit, the shadows creating beautiful and mysterious projections onto the walls. On the far wall, whether by accident or intention ( my friend and I could not agree on this point) the shadow 'falls' off or is cut by the edge of a screen which is covering a window.

http://t.co/oZ1hBwn1

I really loved this. It felt like a moment of shock or jarring which caught me off guard and made the work somehow less visually pleasing and more thought provoking.

Of course I do have a bit of a thing about 'edges' so maybe that was it, intentional or unintentional, like the aroma of garlic which crept up the stairs, this unexpected creeping away of the shadow on the wall.