Missing..... Martin Creed

I'm going to do my best not to be that whiney person who never gets over the fact they had an incredible overseas adventure only to move somewhere else in search of other adventures. No one likes that person. Not really.

That being said....

Martin Creed, Work No.200. Half the Air in A Given Room, 1998

Comings and goings

So we’re back. And it feels….

Familiar.

And strange.

I’m just freewheeling with my emotions at the moment – ignoring the stunned, slightly dazed feeling that comes from a cocktail of jetlag, overwrought emotion, uncertainty and exhaustion – and focusing on the minute to minute. And the truly genuine joy at being back amongst the family.

A trifecta of treats

Last weekend saw a confluence of occasions that brought together a few of my favourite things…

ART.

On Friday evening Nina and I went to the Hayward to see LIGHT SHOW. This is a sensory, almost spiritual, literally and otherwise dazzling exhibition of works that all use and explore light as a medium and an experience. 

Dan Flavin, untitled (to the "innovator" of Wheeling Peachblow), 1966-68

The expected big guns were there – early 1960s fluorescent pioneer Dan Flavin, Jenny Holzer with her flashing electronic signs conveying a whirr of political messages. 

Joy in Art (and people)

If the art world had art world-equivalent baseball cards I'd have collected Jeremy Deller this week, adding him to my haul of Mark Wallinger, Grayson Perry, Yayoi Kusama, Elmgreen & Dragset, Hew Locke, Ryan Gander and Tracey Emin.*

Signage for Deller's show at the Hayward

I spoke only briefly to Jeremy, in a quasi-dorky, carried a watermelon/really loved your exhibition kind of a way but before that I'd had the privilege to sit in on an hour-long Q&A he did with 30 young people at the Hayward Gallery as part of a cross-site visit organised by the young arts project.

We had the chance to take a look around his show beforehand and I really, really enjoyed it. I'd never known a great deal about Deller's work - my first major encounter with his practice was the work March 5, 2007, the wreckage of a car destroyed by a bomb in Iraq that killed 38 people on the date of its namesake. In 2010 the rusted, mangled heap was put on display in the grand hall of the Imperial War Museum in London amid a staggering arsenal of impressive military weapons - planes, grenades and rockets. It was the first and only artefact in the atrium to bear witness to the human impact of war and it's now in their permanent collection.

March 5, 2007 in the atrium at the Imperial War Museum.
Image: Anthony Devlin/PA. Courtesy the Guardian

In 2009 Deller took the car on a road trip across America in the company of an Iraqi citizen and a US soldier, hitching it to the back of a campervan, and the documentary about the experience, It Is What It Is (2009), which I hadn't seen before, is part of the Hayward exhibition, along with the car wreckage.

Jeremy Deller, It Is What It Is, 2009 (detail)

I want to call Deller a conceptual artist but there's a realist bent to his work with its explorations of cultural and social phenomena, communities, history and participation and the show brings together work from the past two decades, including a re-staging of the exhibition he held in his bedroom at his parents house in 1993 while they were away. There's a lot of humour to Deller's work and a subtle but compelling mix of compassion and pathos too. The exhibition includes a display of failed proposals including his controversial suggestion for the Fourth Plinth - a mannequin of Dr David Kelly, the biological warfare expert who committed suicide in 2003 after intense media scrutiny over his comments about government documents purporting to explain the presence of weapons of mass destruction.

Jeremy Deller - Fourth Plinth proposal. Copright: Jeremy Deller

And then there's his performance piece, I Heart Melancholy, where a lone performer reclines on a sofa set against an overwhelming wall reading, pondering, wallowing in melancholy.

These are just a handful of works on display - there's also a 3D film about bats and a relocated snack bar serving tea and coffee under a roof full of political banners - but the over-riding impression is of Deller's sincere curiosity about the dynamics of social encounter and collaboration and the nature of people. What's amusing is that despite this apparent 'Joy In People', Deller considers himself a pessimist and actually wanted to call the show 'Animal, Vegetable, Minerable, Pop Music'.

Jeremy Deller, I Heart Melancholy, 2011

His Q&A was lively and revealing and I was impressed actually with the questions put to him by the group. We filmed the whole event, which is good, because I spent a lot of the hour being distracted by the perils of live tweeting. I remain in two minds about the phenomena that is social media. Twitter to me feels like a rolling tsunami of information dressed up as white noise. It's exhausting. And apparently facebook now encourages socially aggressive narcissism so it just gets better and better.

Art has had quite a bit of attention the last couple of days actually (notwithstanding the fact that yes, I work in an art gallery so technically it has my attention every day...) but yesterday Lovely Boy and I went to the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park to buy ourselves a work of art. One of our wedding presents was money towards such a purchase and affordable being a key part of the remit, the fair seemed the ideal place to look for our modest masterpiece. LB was only mildly facetious, dragging out the best bits of his art vocabulary to declare a fancy for buying a piece of conceptual performance art - or else something in his most favourite medium, video.....

Jeremy Deller, Valerie's Snack Bar, 2009 

Strangely all out of video art, conceptual art and bad performance art, we were left instead with swathes of mediocre painting, the likes of which is typically found in bourgeois doctors surgeries and some interesting sculptures, including one of a bulldog wearing pearls.

Thankfully though we did come across several prints that we liked and in the end purchased two quirky screen prints by a British artist called Martin Grover that re-imagine London's public transport signage as sites for distracted, philosophical, humorous wonderings.

A sculptural version of the screenprint by Martin
Grover that we bought - out by the car park at the fair.

We have one at home on the wall already, the other is being framed and we'll have it in two weeks time. We're gathering quite the art collection now, with the delightful Daniel Lehan painting that the gallery gave us for a wedding present and the breath-taking Andre Derain lithograph from Lovely Boy's parents, another beautiful, brilliant gift.

Original watercolour by Daniel Lehan

From the Art Fair to the food fair, we grabbed lunch at Duke of York Square in Chelsea at the food market, proving unable to say no to blocks of cheese and jars of passionfruit curd along the way. And then a detour down a small side street in search of a pub so LB could indulge in a Guinness for St Patrick's Day before home and a late afternoon sleep.

Queens Head pub, Chelsea

Today I've cleaned the house, powered through three loads of washing and enjoyed the quiet delights of the house while Lovely Boy is out on a man-venture for the day.

This week I'm going to Gillian Wearing's private view at the Whitechapel Gallery and on Saturday it's Kusama madness at Tate.

If I wasn't a trained professional, I'd almost be artied out.



* In the interests of full disclosure I technically haven't exactly met all these artists but if I've emailed them, if I've written questions for them for an interview, if I've seen them at close range in some kind of non-accidental, non-everyday setting then I count them. My art world cards, my prerogative.

BE THE DRESS

It's been a turbulent, rather distressing, couple of weeks. I suppose it was inevitable.

Wedding folklore dictates that someone, sooner or later, will become a nightmare. I guess I just always thought it would be me. Family dramas have been centre stage the last few weeks and the consequences haven't been pretty. Those that know me (and those with perceptive reading-between-the-lines ability who don't know me but who follow my ramblings), will concur that self-confidence has never been my strong suit. And that while my pale skin belies what is actually a bloody-minded resilience, it doesn't take much to make me wobble, however fleetingly, and question everything I've spent the last five years consciously counter-acting. Basic instincts that whisper insistently that I'm not special, that I'm not beautiful, that people will reject me, that I'm not perfect, that I don't deserve good things and good people in my life.

I don't regret my choices or paths - they have got me to where I am today in however a roundabout fashion - but the muddy path to this point now, where I am overwhelmed and humbled and excited by the love and goodness and possibility in my life, well sometimes it all still feels freshly trodden.

So let's just say there's been an inadvertent detour back down some of those roads the last two weeks. But I feel like I'm nearly back to me. And us. Poor Lovely Boy has been out in his own wilderness while I've struggled with all this emotional shit but thinking about the wedding, talking with friends and family, ticking fun things off our list like "Buy Lovely Boy A Suit" and "Post The Bloody Invitations Already" are helping to bring things back to where they were. That and my new mantra. Be The Dress.

I had my first fitting a couple of weeks ago and it verged on the disastrous. A make up stain that said "someone else has tried on this dress which happens to in fact be mine already so WHAT THE FUCK?!" didn't help, nor did said missing confidence or the overwhelming reality of wearing this dress during an enormously important, highly emotional, very public, almost certain to be photographed moment in my life. It was all a bit much so thank god for the presence of sensible, patient mothers and the supportive, reassuring words of dear girlfriends. Basically the dress out-psyched me. And now I have to be the dress.

Before I even knew what I wanted I knew I wanted a dress that was several things: glamorous, sexy, different, confident and effortless. It was an ambitious brief and to be honest, one I didn't think I'd ever fill. But I have. Effortlessly in fact. And now, I have to Be The Dress. I have to be all those things for myself. Because I'm never going to get this time again and I'm sensible enough (just...) to not let a frock or a family drama get the better of me.

What's funny though, thinking back over the last two weeks, is how much art I've sought out. Let me explain.

Five years ago I was in a pretty dark place. I was also in London visiting my sister. And one afternoon I traipsed all over the city with an old friend who also happened to be in town, seeing all kinds of art at Tate Modern, in the east end and somewhere else I can't remember and the things I saw inspired me - I felt giddy, happy, sad, uncomfortable, inspired, amazed and curious. And the experience set me free. I appreciate it might sound totally ridiculous but realising that art could make me feel these things made me realise that my feelings were just feelings - and not me. I felt sad, I myself wasn't sad. I felt lost, I myself wasn't lost. These were my feelings but these too would pass in time. They didn't define me and they weren't a permanent part of me. It was a ridiculously small revelation but it changed my life. And I sobbed for hours with relief at the realisation. Much to the consternation of my sister I might add.

Inside Frieze Art Fair, 2011

There's been quite a bit of sobbing the last two weeks too but in traipsing around Frieze, visiting the Pipilotti Rist exhibition at the Hayward, sitting in the dark Turbine Hall of Tate watching Tacita Dean's new commission FILM, well it steadied me somehow. It's not art therapy - it's just another way of looking at and coping with life. For me anyway.

Pierre Huyghe, Reflection, 2011. Frieze Projects

Pierre Huyghe's Reflection - a hermit crab taken up residence in a cast of Brancusi's bronze Sleeping Muse from 1910 - was whimsical and strangely poetic, I like the idea of art as a place of refuge, while Pipilotti Rist's chandelier of knickers was cheerful and intimate and celebratory.

Pipilotti Rist's underpants fairy lights on the Southbank

Video art in the loo at the Hayward...

Pipilotti Rist, Massachusetts Chandelier, 2010

And Tacita Dean's FILM was just a lovely visual balm. Gentle, strangely hypnotic, free of intellectual taxation. The perfect place to sit in the dark with a friend and talk of home and homesickness and the restorative powers of accessories and red wine.

Tacita Dean, FILM, 2011, Unilever Series
Commission, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern

It's only Monday but I'm exhausted. A poor nights sleep meant the imbibing of Red Bull at 9.30am this morning and a Milky Way and a diet coke at 4.30pm but hopefully I will sleep soundlessly tonight. No dreams of weddings, no dreams of drama, no dreams of Downton Abbey.

A few of my favourite things

It's been a difficult couple of days but having resolved that narcissism is only tolerable when it's cheerful I'm going to blithely and merrily reflect instead on some of the lovely, shiny, sunny, happy events of the last few weeks and write myself a list of Things I Like In No Particular Order.

1. Sunshine
The last week of September was unseasonally beautiful here in grubby, grey old London. And by unseasonally beautiful I mean seven solid uninterrupted days of 28 degrees and blue skies and skirts and sandals and sunscreen. It was a gift from the God I don't believe in. Though I have to confess that there was something slightly disconcerting about leaving the house in a t-shirt in early October when it should be covered by another layer or two. I just couldn't shake that strange sensation that something about my ensemble wasn't right - you know, that foolish feeling you get AFTER someone tells you that you've spent the last four hours with your skirt tucked into your decidedly sensible underpants. That feeling.

The inner courtyard at the V&A

2. Art
I am Very Excited about a number of exhibitions here in London - opened, opening and still to come - and have a list (yes, another one) of all the shows I'm going to see in the next six months. Grayson Perry at the British Museum, Pipilotti Rist at the Hayward, Yayoi Kasuma at Tate Modern in February, Gillian Wearing at Whitechapel in March. Excited, inspired, ready to get arty. Recent exhibition loves include Taryn Simon's masterpiece, also at Tate Modern and Ron Arad's Curtain Call at the Roundhouse.

Inside Yayoi Kasuma's The Gleaming Lights of the Souls, 2008
Liverpool Biennial.

3. Art and cocktails
I love great art, I love it even more when it comes with alcohol. The last Friday of every month usually means late night openings at most of the big institutions in London and last month I met my lovely ex-flatmate Katie at the V&A for some sitting and drinking in the balmy weather before a stroll through their new show 'Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 - 1990'. The exhibition was ok. I loved the coathanger gorilla in the 'Power Of Making' show more.

David Mach RA, King Silver, 2011

4. Theatre dates. 
I love a good theatre date and the next day in fact I took in a matinee (and some well-earned air conditioning) at the Trafalgar Studios with the lovely Nina. The play, Top Girls, was a recommendation from my mother-in-law-to-be and it was a brilliant production but I did find it disconcerting that a fucked economy, a post-feminist society and a world class education that has set me up to think I can have it all left me confused about which character I empathised most with. I blame a particularly sympathetic portrayal of the Thatcher-esque anti-hero. I love a complex play. I also love dissecting said complexities at Gordon's wine bar with a cheeky half bottle of pink wine in the warmth. Heaven.

5. Pedicures 
I love pedicures, I love shiny painted toes, I love decadence. I also love, love, love visits from home. Mum and Max had a week in London at the end of a two-week Spanish adventure, and I took the time off work to spend it with them and Just Because I Could, I booked us a day at the ridiculously fabulous spa at Brown's Hotel on Albemarle St. This place manages to be both super posh and super fabulous. Mark Hix has opened a branch of his restaurant here and the hotel is famous not only as the place from where Alexander Graham Bell made his first UK phone call, but also because Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book while staying here.

But it was the 'seasonal pedicure' that really sold it for me. Changing throughout the year (as is generally inferred by the use of the word 'seasonal'), this magical experience sees in-season and other organic ingredients (ginger, rose petals, sea salt etc. etc.) incorporated into each step of the pampering process - the hot milk soak, the leg scrub, the moisturising mask. All this before what can only be described as the best paint job of my life.

6. Pedicures and cocktails
Did I mention it came with a matching complimentary cocktail? Peach bellini to match your polish, anyone?

7. Paris
We had two days in London (which included a traumatic fitting for The Dress that is another post for another time) before heading to Paris. J'adore Paris. Maman et moi adore Paris. Two years ago we had a decidedly girly trip to the city of love. This time we had Max's company and while not as girly it was just as delightful and thanks to Max's graciousness it also involved no less 'window-licking' than last time.

I love travelling with parentals - it means champagne at lunch and creme brulee for brunch. This time around it has also meant lots of cuddles and talk of Nan and home and a summer I am counting down the weeks for (nine as of tomorrow). We wandered about, we ate good food, we took in the Musee D'Orsay before taking shelter from the rain at the delicious Le Cinq Mars. Even though my laptop got left in the taxi from Gard du Nord and there were four hours where my only consoling thought was one of thanks to my brother and fiancee for teaching me about the importance of backing up before it was returned with a 26 Euro fee, it was STILL a lovely three days.

Notre Dame - five minutes walk from our hotel.

The bridge of locks. 

8. Pintxos
I love the kind of travel where you wake up in say, Paris, only to rest your head that night in say, San Sebastian. Lovely Boy joined us for the second leg of Parent Week and we had a flying 36 hours in this totally charming seaside city in Spanish Basque territory where we again ate and wandered and ate some more. We promenaded, we took in the breathtaking view post-furnicular ride and in the evening we partook of a pintxos tasting tour. Two guides, five bars, six Americans, the four of us and some of the most fantastic food and wine I've had in a while. The gin and tonics that came in balloon glasses the size of my head at the end of the night probably were unnecessary but the whole experience was fantastic and just such a great way to get a sense of a city.

San Sebastian old town

Looking down over San Sebastian.

9. Puppies
Ok. I should clarify. I like puppies made of flowers. I like puppies made of flowers made by Jeff Koons. I especially like said puppies when they're tethered to the forecourt of the spectacular Gehry-designed Guggenheim Bilbao. It was like being back amongst friends - Kutlug Ataman's Kuba, Mona Hatoum's Current Disturbance, Louise Bourgeois' big spider and a room full of Richard Serra steel sculptures. This was a favourite. Undulating, perception-altering corten steel structures that swallowed you as you wound your way through and into them but not in an aggressive or threatening way, as you might imagine with such a masculine, heavy material. It felt disconcerting but at the same time familiar and maternal. They were really quite extraordinary - both for their size and the sheer volume of them. It was a puppy perfect ending to a great weekend.

Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992

Richard Serra

10. Lunch with my ladies
Monday just gone and my last day of holidays before Mum and Max left for Sydney. What better excuse than that for lunch with my dear friend and my dear Maman. Another stellar recommendation from Tor, the three of us went to the Ridinghouse Cafe on Great Titchfield Street and talked relationships, eyelashes, weddings and denim. The company, like the sorbet, was exquisite.

11. Weekends
Tomorrow is Friday and I am counting down the hours until the weekend. I have a hair appointment on Saturday, a date to collect The Dress, dinner plans at Gordon Ramsey's new restaurant and a Sunday work trip to Frieze Art Fair. I've always avoided the fair like the plague, there being something unappetising to me about paying 30 pounds to be trampled by crowds looking at art no-one normal can afford to buy. But curiosity - and free tickets - have got the better of me. And I'm quite looking forward to it. And if the need so arises, I may yet write another list.

This week I....

So Sunday evenings appear to have become that place in the week where I sit down to gaze at my navel and spout nonsense and First World trivia about the week just gone.

The week just gone has been a big one - first week of full-time work since 2006. Looking back now it's nothing short of impressive that I've managed to build a career based on multiple forms of part-time and freelance work. The audacity in the face of current economic woes both global and very, very local is breath-taking and I wonder if I'll ever again find myself with a work day that involves pottery classes and morning swims again? Without the justification of god forbid small children..... I guess it's just bloody lucky that if the last week is anything to go by full-time work should be most-parts enjoyable and only two-parts "Where HAS my week gone?"

I'm still loving the little team I'm now part of, still getting to grips with the reality of the project I'm working on - not least the not-so-small involvement of a major international fashion conglomerate - and still very much trying to get to grips with finding where things on the server/organising my desk/remembering everyone's name and packing my lunch everyday so as to avoid the buy-one-get-one-free deals from the petrol station down the road. Oh for an Eat or a Marks and Spencer. Convenient location Peckham is not. Interesting it is.

Not Peckham unfortunately. Rather, Kew Gardens...

This week I got to see first-hand some of the work the education department does at the gallery with the local kids, a lot of whom come from the council estate that is literally in the gallery's back garden. On Wednesday we took a group of kids to the Hayward Gallery for a cross-site visit and on the way there it was all cheeky tough talk and adolescent obscenities. At the gallery it was casual conversation about the suggestion of materialism in one work and the detail of another. Then there was dress ups and ice cream. It was brilliant.

We'd actually been at the Hayward earlier that day with the film production company that we're working with to create content for the site - lots of short films and interviews - scoping locations for a chat with the co-curator of the upcoming Tracey Emin survey. It makes me stupidly excited when I think that these are the kinds of things involved in My Job. I feel so ridiculously lucky - even when my lovely boss is reduced to tears after a particularly horrendous meeting and I'm given a rather salient insight into the soon to be my realities of working on this project. I mean, don't kid yourself, I am still hugely overwhelmed and paddling like mad to look like I'm calmly moving forward but every day offers another iota of confidence so hopefully by the time my contract ends I'll feel reasonably capable.

I have no idea what this week will bring but if last week is anything to go by it will be Sunday evening again before I know it.

Daylight savings started last Sunday and it is amazing. The light has changed almost overnight. It's as if someone has removed the filter and everything is now so much brighter, even with the cloud cover. One part of me is delighted and another part is cowering vainly and avoiding the mirror in our window-heavy, light-drenched bathroom. No one needs that real a reflection at 7.30 in the morning. Every pore, every fine line, every fucking freckle. BAM. Hello, This Is What Getting OLDER Looks Like. And it isn't pretty.

What also isn't pretty is this:

Tights are not pants, girls. I don't care how shapely your legs. Stockings, tights, undergarments - they go UNDER something. They are not worn with converse and a t-shirt. You look stupid and as a consequence I worry about the state of the world. Libya and the Middle East are what can only be politely referred to as pretty screwed, Japan is buried under rubble and sludge, rioters are trashing Fortnum and Masons while more polite protestors take to the Thames and the youth of today are leaving the house without pants. I'm not sure whether or not to be grateful for the fact they left their ugg boots at home but I'm nonetheless troubled by these developments. All of them. If only the Libyans had to put trousers on to solve their problems. How happy would the world be then?

This weekend, me, LB and our trousers decided to celebrate the tentative turn in weather with a picnic in Kew Gardens. After a detour through Barnes Farmers Markets for tallegio, pesto, custard tarts and all other kinds of delicious goodness, we took ourselves to the gardens for some idling through the flora. It was so lovely, despite the overhanging threat of rain and the daffodils, magnolias, azaleas and cherry blossoms were just exquisite. As was the chocolate we bought at the gift shop on the way out.

It was what can generally be referred to as A Good Day. We'd had dinner with Tors and the Hungry One on Friday night - sloshes of wine and sparkling conversation and this afternoon we met in Leicester Square for coffee and a film. I think the maintenance of Life Outside Work is going to be critical to the enjoyment of work and LBB and I have already booked in a date with a pizza in Brixton next Saturday at the recommendation of a certain food queen. I'm already hungry thinking about it.

I'm not sure what this week will entail but it's sure to be busy. Bring it on. All that's missing is 10 more degrees and a skirts and sandals montage.

Mid year report

"Jo is struggling with motivation in the face of ongoing employment rejection and her extra-curricular activity is suffering as a consequence. She remains only an occasional joy and a more-often-than-not distempered willful misery guts. Her success this semester will be entirely dependent on a statistically unlikely lottery win and/or a rare moment of open-mindedness on behalf of someone somewhere in an HR Department."

"It's been a bit of a beige month - one that will mostly go down in history as the month of the headache. Not the month that was a headache, though any honest sub-editor could certainly get away libel-free with that headline too, but the month of the headache. Two weeks and counting now and it's like the hangover without the liquor and I'm not sure where the fun is in that. I'm waiting now for both test results and new glasses, but it's been extremely dispiriting, both the getting sent home from work "because you look terrible" part and the too exhausted/foggy headed to write, think, read or focus generally on anything beyond the comforts of the sofa.

Two things have struck me while in this state.