After two months I have finally finished repairing all the inner walls / fabric partitions in the Shieling tents. Hooray! And now I can return to my artwork. First task - submitting for a couple of shows for next year, and second task - write a blog before the year runs out!
I think this blog is about repetition and the continuing act of getting up and sewing each day - same time, same process, same challenges (the positive word to describe 'problems'), perhaps with some moody fluctuations in between - frustration, despair, anger, anxiety, relief, distress, happiness, happiness??
I have been working with a polyester satin fabric which is bright yellow - what a nightmare of a material - it is very slippery and frays like hell! The challenges of material and process.
The work has been physically demanding and mentally challenging and I would come in in the evening exhausted having used up all my concentration, so very little 'art' was done during this period, but at least I was 'making'.
I always try to keep up with what's happening in the art world through social media, reading blogs, journals, newspapers etc. even if I am not making artwork itself, and as I went through my notes and jottings that I have collected over these last two months at least five articles referenced the subject of repetition.
In 2003 an article called 'Eternal Return' was written by Brian Dillon and published in Frieze magazine. Dillon describes different types of repetition and I quote:
"the relentless crawl to infinity that is the experience of boredom," i.e. something to do.
"or the equally unreachable horizon of obsession," i.e. a goal, an aim, you never quite achieve, or do you?
and "the repetition that results from forgetting" i.e. you do something all over again, and again.
In the exhibition titled 'Down to Zero', curated by Michael Roberts, he presents a group of artists who start from 'zero' when they begin a new piece of work, setting up rules and boundaries as a starting point for their creations. These rules and boundaries can be broken or altered in due course and often repetition in some form or another takes place. One artist describes using rules and boundaries as a way to reduce having to make decisions on the way and then, what I call 'happy accidents' occur, during the repetitive process - chance, mistakes, improvements, new direction and so on.
There is a twenty one step specification that I have written for how to make a patch for an inner wall / fabric partition in the Shieling tents. This process is repetitive, monotonous even at times, yet with nuances taking place all the time - the cotton runs out, the machine decides not to work, the fabric puckers up, the electricity goes off - oh that's because we had a storm...
I wrote on a post it note a single word one day, date unknown, the word says 'Interference'. I think it was because I was getting frustrated by all the distractions stopping me from doing my own artwork - some my own doing, lots outside of my control. Oh that's called 'LIFE' Emma!
One book that is high up on my list of favourite reads is 'The Poetics of Space' by Gaston Bachelard. I have since discovered two more texts that sound interesting - 'Voyage Around My Room (1794)' by Xavier de Maistre and 'Notes Concerning the Objects that Are on my Work - table (1976)' by Georges Perec. All three authors write about how we and our objects inhabit space. How do I inhabit my space - the house, my route to and from the workshop, my work station in the workshop, mealtimes...?
The text 'Notes Concerning the Objects that Are on my Work - table (1976)'by Georges Perec was discovered in another Frieze Magazine article titled 'In its place' by Declan Long. Long writes about the artist Uri Aran who presents work-tables in exhibition spaces showing his ideas and artworks in progress. Long describes these work stations as 'cryptic bricolage' with a 'general air of mental muddle'. As the viewer you have to work out what is going on - the artist's thought processes, his connections, make your own new connections. Long describes Aran's tables as "transitional arrangements, with transitional meanings". I think that's how my own studio desk is right now - a bricolage of works in progress that I need to re-familiarise myself with having missed them for two months!
When I have come in from sewing all day I have needed to do something to relax and unwind. My eyes were too tired to look at a computer screen or read a book and I was too 'wired' to listen to music or gosh, even dare to sit and do nothing, so I enjoyably stared at the big TV screen and watched a number of classic films - 'It's a Wonderful Life (1946)', 'Casablanca (1942)', 'Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)', 'Millions like Us (1943)', 'War of the Worlds (1953)', to name a few. One of my favourite times at college was our art history lectures and often the tutor would talk about or reference classic films during the lesson and now I have finally got to see some of them. I am particularly struck by the setting, the costumes and props, story line. They seem outdated now, perhaps clumsy, humorous, or 'quaint' at times but what is best is the fact that the films are an interpretation of someone's imagination.
In 'Millions like Us (1943)' it is about a young girl who goes off to work in a munitions factory, all part of the 'war effort' of the second world war and all this made me think about my previous career when I worked in the food manufacturing business helping to produce vast vats of sauce or cake mixture or vegetables and brine to be packed in foil trays or glass jars along the ever moving conveyor belts. And like wise now, the hand - made production of innumerable patches for the inner walls / fabric partitions in the Shieling tents. I'd be good in a factory, that's where I come from. Production, process, repetition, "p p p p procedure" - my friend will know I became to hate that word...!
As I end my last blog for this year I've been talking really, about the monotony of life, the every-day, the banal, and repetition. Next week it will be Christmas, again, an event that happens every year, again, and it is on this note that I'd like to wish all my family, friends and readers of this blog a very happy, if slightly repetitive, Christmas!
Now to the third task - go and assess that artist's 'muddle' on my studio table.