Dropping all the plates.

^{The works of Dieter Roth currently on show at Camden Arts Centre until mid July are a collection of personal diaries, installations, videos, drawings and assemblages. His works are full of energy and repetition and are described as showing the 'indivisibility between Art and Life.' There was indeed a lot of trivia and detritus,the scraps and parings of existence and the clutter of living on show.}

^{http://www.camdenartscentre.org/}

^{Although I found the exhibition difficult to warm to knowing very little about his life and not having come across his work before it did resonate with me this week as unlike Dieter who made his life a work of art ( maybe this is a man's world) I failed to keep all the plates spinning and simply lost my way.}

check-up (attend, inspect, watch)

A poke in the eye at SNAP Aldeburgh!

^{A winding evening drive to see the SNAP exhibition at Snape on Friday and to the discussion about the art works between the art critic Jonathan Watts and three of the artists involved. http://www.snapaldeburgh.co.uk/}

^{This is Britten's centenary year and the selected SNAP artists were asked to make works that were ' related to or inspired by Britten's legacy'. What struck me most, borne out later by the discussion, was the impenetrability of many of the artworks particularly in relation to the spaces and sense of place which is so uniquely Snape. Although impenetrability isn't such a great mis-demeanour, arrogance is and a little more insight into the work would have been helpful and given those visiting a kindly helping hand. In comparison to The Freud Museum,London where the work was placed so intuitively, so lightly and genially it made the artists in SNAP seem ungenerous and rather mean. Sadly in the discussion when challenged on this point by a member of the audience the artists behaved with total lack of grace and good manners becoming defensive and rude. Such a pity as their lack of humour made me want to run for cover and not go back for a second, slightly better informed look.}

pharming

Dispelling stuffiness at the Freud Museum.

^{Whoever decided to introduce to the Freud Museum, London small exhibitions of contemporary art must have known well the incredible effect that these works would have. The Museum with its thick velvet curtains, heavy odour of old books and dust collecting artefacts is the perfect backdrop for the current exhibition of the work of Damian Ortega http://freud.org.uk/exhibitions/ His fascinating works,rather oddly connected to each other, set up little dialogues with all the bits and pieces which make up the Freud house. The apparent randomness of Ortega's works, both their beauty and their strangeness begin to dispel the stuffiness and make one look afresh at some of these more familiar things. For that reason alone it is well worth the trek!}

freud

Lily

^{In connection with my work a friend handed me a copy of 'Granta The magazine of New Writing' from Winter 2004. This edition was all called Mothers. In it I found a short story by Ian McEwan which tells the tale of the narrator's mother now frail and senile. As he visits her in her nursing home he recalls his early memories of her as a young woman, then in her prime as a swift and graceful swimmer. Perhaps it is her name, Lily that has led me down memory lane this week with both sad and amusing recollections of my own Grandmother who shared her name. Or maybe it is making work from clothing that has brought on this little fit of nostalgia!}

Lily

Two left feet!

^{My daughter doing some research at Felixstowe Docks discovered that the people unloading the containers at the port have no idea as to what is inside them, this is for security reasons one assumes! They also told her that if for example there is a shipment of shoes, one container will contain the right foot and another the left! These absurd little facts feed into the subconscious and then reappear as uneasy oddities, subversions of the truth.}

^{I wonder how many people are walking around with two left shoes! Is this I wonder what might happen to this little pair?}

 

pumps
installation/drawing

Maybe I should put them up for auction on ebay!