.... and that's the name of my next show, at The Deaf Cat (http://www.thedeafcat.com) on Rochester High Street. It starts on May 28th for 2 weeks and is mostly made up of drawings of 'Auntie Renee' my showgirl who just can't get out of the job.
There will also be a few of paintings of her ... if they're finished in time. Here are the works in progress.
There will also be some other drawings in the show, including this one 'Girl Boxer'.
An early warning for later in the year - on July 7th and 8th I'm taking part in the Medway Open Studios (http://www.medwayopenstudios.co.uk/). Opening my studio up will be interesting - at the moment it's full of old canvasses, broken brushes and a wide variety of chairs I never actually sit on. No visitor could get past the door so I'll have to clean up. There will be quite a few artists opening their studios along with me at the Nucleus Arts Centre in Chatham. It should be a really good event for anyone interested in contemporary art, whether to buy or just to take a look.
Then, in September, Mam'selle Fi-Fi and I are having a show at Nucleus. I can't say what's in it because Mam'selle is likely to come up with some incredible and provocative pieces at the last minute but it will definitely be worth seeing! It's current title is 'Cock'n'Bull' but I'll keep you up to date with it's development as we go along.
I've been entertaining myself with two new sets of drawings. There always seem to be women with really fascinating faces at the supermarket. I've taken to carrying my Grayson Perry notebook around with me and as soon as I get back to the car I draw them as best as I can remember. Here are the first few.
Woman with incredibly big hair
Drunk woman trying hard to act sober at
the checkout
At the arts centre where I have my studio they sent around an email asking all artists to introduce ourselves to the resident film maker so we could have little You Tube videos made of ourselves. Now, just as Mariah Carey doesn't do stairs (something I'm increasingly sympathetic with the older I get), I don't do video. When I was studying art I took many photographs of myself and I know the tutors thought that this narcissism was my thing but in fact it was sheer practicality. Having a part time job and a child, often the only time I got to work was 11pm and there weren't many willing models around then. So I captured myself in various guises (cut-price Cindy Sherman) and became immune to the ghastly aging pudginess of my own image. The only ones I like were the set I took of my feet ...
One of my many foot images
Now I have a choice - no more 'me' on camera.
So I decided to make a puppet of myself to star in this video. Luckily I have a friend, known here as Mam'selle Fifi, who is interning at a puppet theatre. I've seen some of her puppets and they are truly magnificent so I visited her house, loaded down with my box of scrap frills and furbelows and a bottle of wine. Wanting a quick thrill she showed me an easy, less messy version of papier mache, using scrunched up newspaper and vast quantities of masking tape. The example Mam'selle had brought from the theatre was a charming little fellow with a huge nose and lovely smooth surface.
This whole exercise brought out the worst in me; the vanity! Fifi started off making my head despite my cries of anguish (Are you doing the double chin? How squinty are my eyes?). I scared her into being too nice so by the end of the evening she'd drunk the wine and made a puppet that looked like a pretty, pop eyed alien. I took it home, made the eyes squintier and added more chin. Sadly, I couldn't replicate the smooth surface or the fine modelling of the demonstration model so mine has deformed breasts and the skin of a leper. It isn't finished yet but my son was thrilled I'd made a puppet of a zombie. Here is 'my' head.
Ahhh! the Zombies are here ...
Although I'm not keen on brandishing my image across the internet this has such little similarity with how I actually look, it doesn't matter.
Hmmm, think I might need to work a little harder at my puppet making skills.
Required Wednesday night viewing is currently The Next Great Artist on Sky Arts? An 'Apprentice' style competition set in New York, it's the perfect combination of trash reality TV and art. It was even better before they eliminated all the contestants who, being artists, railed against the whole process. Yes, you wondered why they'd applied in the first place, but their stubborn refusal to do what the competition required of them, including ignoring tasks and refusing to explain their work to the judges, made for great viewing. I miss heavily tattoed and belligerent Erik most - kicked out a few weeks ago after a standoff with Miles, an angel faced, iron-hearted ball of ambition. Emotional Erik, whose bad attitude clearly masked a chasm of vulnerability, was never going to beat Manipulative Miles. I hope Erik hasn't buckled under the experience but no-one need worry for Miles in the future. He is a charismatic and talented artist who will obviously put his work ahead of anything else, so I think he could be someone to look out for. On screen he doesn't actually seem that awful but he (or perhaps his talent) is obviously starting to get the others backs up - one quietly remarked this week 'I never realised before but Miles is kind of like this big douchebag.'
But, away from the trashy side of the show, the tasks given to the competitors are interesting in what they reveal about the process of making art. Anyone studying fine art will recognise the M.O. of task and critique. It's also heavily biased towards the contemporary obsession with the conceptual. I've only seen one task so far (creating a book cover) hasn't been about making a conceptual piece.
A piece by competitor Abdi Farash
Emotional Erik
Two tasks have been most interesting - creating a work that is 'shocking' and most recently, a piece about what happened in childhood to set the contestants on the path of being an artist. The rubbish some of them produced is the clearest demonstration yet that successful conceptual art is not just someone throwing a load a dirty sheets over a bed. I was amazed at how, when given the go ahead to produce something 'shocking' almost every one of them reverted to sex. They didn't consider the meaning of the word 'shocking' at all, they didn't question whether what shocks them might also shock others, they just thought 'sex'. Perhaps it's their age - they are all quite young. The older you get the less shocking sex becomes....
This cuts to the core of my personal doubts about current fine art education. Conceptual art is, of course, about the concept - thought, philosophy, theory. How many 18 year olds, on their foundation course, have a grasp of concepts that aren't, frankly, trite and meaningless? Only a rare few have enough talent to make up for the lack of knowledge and life experience. My ideal art training would combine strong emphasis on the craft of fine art (those old fashioned things like drawing, how to mix paint, print making) with a broad range of philosophy, history, anthropology etc. Only after at least three years of that would any potential artist be allowed to run free with the conceptual.
Having looked at N.G.A online, I've already found out who has won this series, I won't spoil the surprise but I think they made the right choice. It's an artist who consistently demonstrates the ability to mix skill with serious thought, emotion and authenticity. It's someone who produces work I would actually like to see for real. It shows (spoiler alert) that being an iron-hearted, ambitious douchebag doesn't get you first prize.
If you fancy giving the competition a go yourself at home, here are a list of the challenges:
1. Create a "portrait" of a competitor
2. Create a work from trash found in an electronics graveyard
3. Create a book cover of a classic novel
4. Create a piece of shock art
5. Create art inspired by a visit to a luxury car showroom
6. Work in a team to create an outdoor sculpture
7. Create a work that symbolizes your early inspiration to be an artist using only children's art supplies
8. Work with a partner to create work that expresses opposing words -man/woman, order/chaos, heaven/hell
9. Create a work inspired by nature, including something from nature in the piece
Moving on from my last exhibition 'Nothing Personal' I've been working on a series of drawings for my next show. I did so much research for the last show it's hard to just leave it behind and I've found even though the themes are different, the same faces keep popping up. The next show, which is on at the Deaf Cat at the end of May is called "I just can't stop, no matter how hard I try". One series of drawingstells the story of an ageing showgirl dancer who can't leave the job, despite the stiff joints and saggy bits...
Here are a couple of early sketches. She's called Auntie Renee.
For the show 'Nothing Personal' in November 2011, I became obsessed with these women - Manon Roland, Olympe de Gouge, Anne Theroigne de Mericourt, Pauline Leon and Claire Lacombe. All five of them had played an important role in the French Revolution, either within the political establishment or on the streets as part of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women (S.R.R.W). I began making this work only a few months after Cairo's Tahrir Square protests and the toppling of the Mubarak government. At the time there was a great deal of anecdotal evidence that the role women had played in the square was immediately squashed once the regime fell. 'You can go home now' is apparently what many were told.
This is exactly was happened to the women of S.R.R.W. in Paris. Whipped up by the various revoltuionary factions to protest at the price of bread, laws preventing them from owning property and lack of education, the women of Paris took to the streets in often violent protest.
Model as Anne Theroigne de Mericourt
As soon as the Girondists took power from the royalists, they clamped down on the S.R.R.W. Under the Jacobins (Robespierre) the society was made illegal and the women who led it (Pauline and Claire being two) were as persecuted during The Terror as any aristocrat. Indeed the revolutionaries changed the very fabric of domesticity when they toppled the monarchy - cementing women's position 'in the home' and preventing them from accessing power within the public domain. It may seem like a long time ago, and not relevant to us but in fact we are still living with the repercussions today.
Laura as Claire Lacombe
This was on my mind as I made work for my show and the centrepiece was 4 portraits of contemporary women who, to me, embodied the personalities of those women from the Revolution.
I also created an 8ft long drawing about the Society - these are two fragments from it..
Finally I did this portrait of my grandmother entitled 'Ancienne Regime' - she is very old after all...
My first solo exhibition was last November at the Nucleus Gallery in Chatham. As I'd only been taking my art seriously for a year I was worried I'd been ambitious to attempt to fill a gallery. (OK, it's easy to fill it, just with what? For a while I was very keen on the idea of just throwing all my sketches and scraps of paper into a heap in the middle and calling it 'Incineration).
I'd originally wanted to call it 'Piss like a Princess'. An childhood friend of mine was brought up by her mother to believe that all bodily functions were disgusting. The mother used to stand outside the bathroom door, listening to check her daughter didn't wee too loudly. If she could hear tinkling she'd shout 'Don't piss like a peasant, piss like a princess' at her. There's a whole conceptual show in that.
Well, one day I'll get back to that idea but I was sidetracked by my obsession with the French Revolution. Years ago I read Hilary Mantel's novel 'A Place of Greater Safety' which really obsessed me for a while (to paraphrase my favourite quotation from it - 'Marat has escaped from the building disguised as a human being' ). Then I came across Marge Piercy's novel 'City of Darkness, City of Light' which is about five women who played important roles within the revolution and yet are forgotten.
This novel was the real starting point for my show - the role of women in revolution. The role of women in the Arab Spring movements seemed so close to that of those French women from two centuries before. I started painting and without realising it, this became the theme of my show.
Alan Measles' stunt double who greeted visitors to the exhibition
We recently took one of our regular trips to the British Museum (perhaps more loved by my 8 year old for it's retro hot dog van than any exhibit...). The Hajj exhibition is on at the moment and the museum is heaving with people visiting that but not us because I forgot my ticket!
A few weeks ago we just schnuck into the last day of Grayson Perry's Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. That also toyed with the idea of pilgrimage and I've been inspired by Perry's drawing 'Pilgrimage to the British Museum' - I'm now working on something that will appear here soon.
My son particularly loved Perry's bear Alan Measles, especially after seeing the 'Here comes Alan Measles' song on Harry Hill's TV Burp. I think it just proves what a clever construct Measles is - an old bear who is as at home loftily gazing down at the great courtyard of the British Museum as appearing on a Saturday night television round-up show. Loved by everyone from art world insiders to children to the great Harry Hill.
But on this visit we went to the Japan galleries on the top floor (excellent and underused ladies loo nearby, by the way...) A couple of pieces really impressed us. 'Dawn' (1992) is an exquisite ceramic dish by Tokuda Yasokichi. From a distance is appeared to be glowing sphere suspended in mid air. In fact it's a dish on a stand but it's beauty transcends that to become something you simply want to stare at for ages.
Another piece we loved were the prints by Onchi Konshiro,
In the Africa gallery there was an impressive textile piece called 'Man's Cloth' by El Anatsui. This isn't made from fabric but from the plastic labels that stick to necks of drinks bottles - close up it's an amazing patchwork.
Finally for something completely different - I also loved the beautiful prints by Karl Wilhelm Kolbe, including this one 'Fantastical Tree'.
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