Launch

Today has been a big day. Against all odds and despite all signs to the contrary over the last couple of years, 21st Century Portraits is now out in the world and tonight it launched at the National Portrait Gallery.

A bout of lasts

It’s a strange feeling sitting here in our flat, contemplating our last remaining night after three and something years in shitty old Hammersmith. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved our little house and life here nearly overlooking the Thames but I ain’t going to miss this particular patch of west London.

I honestly thought I’d dread this moment but after nearly a month of packing and sorting and chucking and, let’s be honest, low-grade bickering about whether or not we really need to pack the enormous French dictionary when neither of us speak the language and realistically never will, well, I’m just ready to pull the cord.

21st Century Portraits

Today is a BIG day. Like, 245 pages big. The Book is now on sale.

It’s terrifying and exhilarating and frankly strange to think that all my words are now out there in the world for public consumption. We’ll try not to go near that other c word (criticism) for now.

I’m incredibly proud of how hard I worked to help make this book happen and hope that anyone with the excellent sense to buy it (…) appreciates its provocations, its beauty and its best intentions.

I always said I wasn’t going to leave London until the bloody thing was published and so here it is, and now here I go, in just two and a half weeks time. Talk about back to back Significant Life Moments.

I wrote a book.

Elsewhere in the world brilliant friends of mine are on the brink of delivering small humans. This week, yesterday, I was borne of a book whose labour has only taken three and half years. I feel overwhelmed, elated, terrified and not sure what to do with it. I just keep staring at it. For several hours last night it went like this:

(Dazed wandering about the house, book invariably clutched to chest or held at a length with look of clinical curiosity.)

“It’s a book. I wrote a book.”

“I, me, I wrote a book.”

“I wrote this.”

“A book.”

“It’s a book, an ACTUAL book.”

“Oh my god I wrote a book.”

(Ongoing disbelief and dumb wonderment etc. etc.)

Tuesmonday

I bloody love a long weekend and I love that the month of May has two of them. It's civility and generosity rolled into two. I also love Tuesmonday. You know, that wonderful negation of Monday blues by sheer fact of it already being Tuesday and thus one day closer to Friday. It's pretty wonderful.

So I had a good long weekend.

Some thoughts on art and other things

Swings and roundabouts. Last weekend I left the house once (for chocolate). The weekend before I was out and about all over the place. 

I was actually working last Saturday, overseeing the production of a short film for work, part of which involved orchestrating and participating in a walking tour around some of the lesser known art spaces in Peckham. 

Tino at Tate

A while back I wrote a list of all the shit I wanted to do once I had finished writing and updating the book. Some of those things – washing, a pedicure – I have managed, others – the Ai Wei Wei pavilion at the Serpentine and Queen Art and Image at the National Portrait Gallery – I failed abysmally to accomplish.

And so damn it if I was going to miss Tino at Tate.

I’d had FIFTEEN weeks to get to Tate to experience the Seghal and to check out The Tanks before they closed for ongoing renovations and even the night before it was odds-on we mightn’t get there. But get there we did – with 24 hours to spare.

A little bit of lately

At the time of writing I’m en route to Kassel, Germany to see Documenta 13 – globetrotting art dilettante that I am – but even with a dedicated couple of hours to give here I’m slightly overwhelmed as to where to start on what is effectively a “Life Lately” catch up. Or really, a life lately, and life not so lately catch up.

The last nearly two months have been frantic. I do remember the last time I was this overwhelmed with exhaustion and adrenaline and it was pretty ugly then but that feels like a warm up compared to this recent marathon of sleep-deprived madness. 

Last night in London

I have so much to catch up on here. I'm slowly ticking things off my list but in the spirit of getting my non-book writing butt back into gear I'm going to start with last night.

Last night was lovely. A quintessential #onlyinlondon occasion. A date. Me and my Lovely Boy. Tickets to the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts. The programme was inspired by the current Impressionism exhibition (as yet unseen... bad, bad...) but was just so beautiful.

Jumping on Jeremy

This is a cheat post. One of those posts where you stick up a bunch of images in lieu of substantive or witty writing to tell yourself you updated the blog. Tick.

I am writing. Just elsewhere. A book. I'm nearly done. I promise.

In the meantime, distract yourself with pictures of our visit to Burgess Park, Peckham two weekends ago to jump on Jeremy Deller, or rather, Jeremy Deller's brilliant, bouncing Stonehenge spectacle, Sacrilege. The title says it all really.

Things I Want To Do When...

Am busy. Stupidly busy. Swigging diet coke at 3am busy. It's awful. I look awful. But soon - soon - it will be finished and normal transmission will resume.

Then I Will...

Exhaustion thy name is Full Time Work

I am zonked. I should be in bed right now and know I will regret it in the morning but I've just finished up the last of my NPG work and LB is cooking us a late light dinner while I fight the urge to rest my head on the keyboard.

The test of a personality

So I got a second interview. I think this is a good thing. It's certainly not outright rejection and it gives me a chance to feel like, if I get offered and then take the job, it was the result of a considered decision - by them and by me - and not a knee-jerk reaction to what has basically been 12 months of unemployment. The interview is on Tuesday afternoon and yesterday I spent nearly three hours completing a psychometric test in anticipation of said "informal" interview. A personality test, basically. One can only hope I don't fail that. I could handle a rejection on the grounds of technical incompetence but not because I'm not a morning person.... We will see....

A purple letter kind of day

I know you can have a red letter day, I'm assuming by right of reply you can then also have a blue letter day... but throw the two together and my question is this: have I just had a purple letter day? A splash of blue, a hint of red and we come out somewhere in the middle?

The day did not start well. After a you-really-should-know-better telling off by my hairdresser last week that I should only wash my hair every other day this morning began with a shake of my not so shiny swishy hair and a brief moment of thanks for the Pantene stocks I never invested in, what with their now significant drop in value... Anyway, the half hour I should have saved from faffing with my hair was wasted on trying to find clothing that would see me through eight respectable hours at the gallery and five rather grotty, beer stained hours at the bar. Basically, I left the house feeling frumpy, grumpy, sans good hair and late.

Art and cake and plans ahoy

Cornwall coast

It's been a surprisingly fruitful, if not frustrating week. The reality of not having a job is fast becoming annoying, exacerbated no doubt by the unfortunate turn in writing towards a feeling of it being, well, homework. Some not so exciting artists and some works so well-known it is impossible to write anything original about them without six months of intensive research and even then it would still risk sounding familiar. Am pushing through but the rate of productivity has severely slipped so this week needs to be tackled with the sort of bloody minded ruthlessness usually applied to a dessert chasing five courses and a cheese platter. And yes, I probably will end up feeling just as ill at the end of it.

Art and pesto... the art of pesto?

I don't know where the last week has gone but wherever it went it went quickly.

For the most part I have been at home, sitting at the little desk LB procured for me, writing diligently if not excessively about portraits, artists and the 21st century. I don't know if it's the magic of the desk, or the submission to total art submersion but I have really got a buzz from the writing I've accomplished this week.

Adrian Ghenie, Pie Fight Study 2, 2008

London days and dates for one

It's been a week now since returning to - gasp, sunny! - London. Note I didn't say "warm" London but sunshine seems a conciliatory gesture, especially at this time of year and so I will simply be thankful. For the sunshine and for socks.

Lovely Boy is back to work and I too am hard at work, trying in vain to get my part of the book as finished as I can as soon as possible. Which has meant since I began last Friday, writing the equivalent of an essay a day. We're talking 3000 words and if today is proving anything to go by, just as many calories too, and even at this rate I still don't think I'll be finished by the end of the month. It's the ultimate submersion therapy for my procrastination problem to say the very least...

I do feel inspired though and had a really positive day at the gallery yesterday with some affirming feedback and I just keep envisioning the book, finished, published and in my hot little hand. Full0time paid employment currently escapes me, not for lack of trying, but hopefully something will come up soon enough, especially if I want to get my travel plans shuffling along.

Last weekend was really lovely. LB and I went to Chinatown for dumplings and steamed pork buns and a series of serious conversations about being Grown Up and The Future (this is not code for babies by the way, fuck no, rather, an allusion to talk about life plans and where to live and how to buy a house when you have no money and, if you're me, no immediate prospects for le cashflow problem. And now that I've explained it, it isn't even an allusion. It's just a long sentence. Sigh.)

 

Anyway, the weekend. Sunday I left the B at home, because for some crazy ass reason he "hates" East London and I went back to my old stomping ground in search of flowers, flea markets and Antipodean coffee. I can't say it enough but I love the Columbia Road flower market. And I love East London because even with all its grimy grossness there is some stubborn charm in there and I miss it. Loads.

getting arty with the iphone...

I did come home laden with flowers however and a promise to myself that I would take myself on a date each week, just me and London, chillin', hanging out, seein' some Stuff. A necessary social arrangement really if I am to make this year as worthwhile as I want it to be and a date tomorrow night with some girlies from The Retail Job should be just the tonic to my floral gin.

What I do have to do tomorrow, is not eat my way through 3000 words and somewhere in there try to get to the pool for a head clearing, arm toning (?....) swim. At this moment in time a truck full of Snickers bars wouldn't get me there but tomorrow is a new day. Hopefully a sunny new day.

still getting arty...

The year that was, what's left of the year that is.

There’s literally only hours left of 2010 and as I type I’m sipping a mango bellini, sitting amongst the family in a pretty blue dress. I'm freshly showered after the most enlivening of swims at Bilgola Beach and am looking forward to dinner later and perhaps some dancing on the lawn come midnight with my LB, under the stars with a beautiful north easterly unsticking the heat from the air. 2011 here we come.

Stuck in the writing mud.

LB is off secret squirreling this weekend in anticipation of D-Day next Wednesday (the D in D-Day being "Doomed To Be Considered Old Always From This Day Forward") and I am across the river nannying, or, as I like to think of it, earning my next haircut.

The weather is obstinately beige and not becoming of early summer and the lethargic efforts of the sun are proving contagious. My writing has crawled to a near-halt over the last two weeks and I'm struggling to muster the enthusiasm for much beyond a bowl of Special K on the couch. I might be tempted to diagnose a case of the birthday blues - or an existential crisis of thirty proportions but in the interests of good mental health (mine and those that have to suffer me) I'm choosing to whitewash the feeling in a mash up of philosophy and sentiment about this thing we call A Milestone.

One thing Leeds to another

FINALLY. Open toed shoe weather has arrived in London and it is delightful. There aren't many pro's to being fundamentally unemployed (I could probably count them on two fingers...) but afternoons on the sofa, in the sunshine, with a bowl of ripe passionfruits would absolutely be one of them. (I would say the only one but given that I'm staring at an imminent and ongoing lack of career I'd like to hold out for the possibility of even one more tick in the pro column, however tenuous.)