Blog 30

This last month I have had a number of visitors to my studio. It is great to share my work with others though I am a little apprehensive taking them into my private space.

We looked at some of my paper folding ideas and discussed my desire to present paper works that are unframed. It was decided that I am not a frame girl! My work is about the process, and the finished piece is a record of that process. It was observed that I seem to disregard my finished pieces once they are completed, becoming unattached to them, they no longer seem as precious. To frame my work would be to kind of lock it up and raise it on the wrong kind of pedestal. The death of the work.

I mentioned last time that I need to find other ways of working that doesn't involve piercing paper with a needle as it is making my arm and hands ache. Running along side my 10m pierced paper piece for my solo show I have been thinking about my journey from the last two years. There is definitely a project to be created from this.

I have on my wall a series of line drawings of personal maps of our trip and I've got out some drawings that I had started in 2008 of imaginary maps and wonder if this might be the way to go forward. These 2008 ink drawings were created when only I knew that in the future I was going to go travelling. They are imagined places, much fuller in the creative sense, more fluid in their making. Perhaps drawing like this, the real trip that we took will come out in unexpected ways.

I'm still testing the paper folding idea and trying to find innovative ways to present my maps and drawings without necessarily framing them.

Yesterday I went into the studio to make work without any pre conceived ideas or intent, 'just' making.

I was folding paper into three, like you would a letter, and could envisage an imaginary drawing or pictorial message inside, a code. The more you fold a piece of paper, the more creases appear within the folded framework. I love those creases, the natural pull of the paper.

I started to slash paper with a single cut, horizontally, vertically, one, two, three. They are like Lucio Fontana's 'Spatial Concept' paintings of the 1960's, where the artist would slash a painted canvas with one single cut from a blade. My paper cuts were very controlled, a mere momentary gesture in seconds, then over, quite satisfying. There may be violent connotations to the actions that I took, but I like the simplicity of the cut, and the opening produced in the paper by the cut.

On my desk I have a series of post-it notes, objectives for my art practice. They say:

PROCESS (as in my work is about process)

PAPER (as a material, source?, site?, surface)

"Think about paper as the work itself rather than as a ground"

DISPLAY (How could I display my work?)

And ways to hang or present work without framing

DECONSTRUCTION of the artwork (What happens to an artwork once it is made or 'disregarded'?)

I feel cluttered again, and today I re-arranged my space, moved stuff around, put artwork in different places, next to different things, or on it's own, trying to find a context to the different pieces, relationships. This is all part of the making process.

As well as creating artwork I've just finished The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, a writer who takes a series of trips out into the British wilderness. I think I've decided that the fantasy of going out into the wilderness is stronger than the reality of actually doing it, though I have asked my partner to take a night walk with me sometime to see what that is like.

The book seemed too romantic to start with but actually became very informative, full of facts relating to my own interests about maps, journeys, literature, history. The author reminds us of our place in the world.

I've started the first chapter of a book by Rebecca Solnit called A Field Guide to Getting Lost. In it she describes our desire to get lost sometimes, mentally and physically, and the need to loose ourselves. What with A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, which I read a while back and love, you can see a theme running here.

It is just on ten weeks before my solo show starts at An Tobar on the Isle of Mull and I'm almost at the stage of finishing piercing my 10m roll of paper before it will be taken into the gallery to finish off during the show. I've pierced at least 8m worth, well on my way to over a millions holes. The next stage will be to blacken the paper with thick black pastel. This is a completely different process, messy, much more gestural and physical, rubbing the pastel right into the paper and pushing it through the holes onto the other side. I've got to find another space to do this in, because it will be dusty and dirty work compared to what I normally do.

Some filming of my pierced work and me has been done and it is at the editing stage. It is most strange to see and hear myself on the screen. There will be more filming over the next two months as well as when the exhibition is on. A writer has now been commissioned to write an essay about me and my work and this will be available at the launch of the show. Show dates have been confirmed and the exhibition is from the 9th November - 31st December.