im back!

well i haven't blogged for nearly 3 weeks, (a long time seeing as i was blogging almost daily in the summer) but i needed a break from the narcissism, and i needed a break from Liverpool so i escaped down to London for a week, to try and breath after whats been a mad summer...

im now back, had a great time in London, saw some great art, some great shows, and of course some shite too... one particular highlight for me was suprisingly 'How To Improve The World-60 Years of British Art'. Perhaps it was a set of Roger Hiorns' copper sulphate encrusted engines that won me over? they always do, perhaps it was the piece by Susan Hiller that i cant remember wat it was called, but i remember being transfixed by a young Drew Barrymore in some random horror film doing terrible things with her mind, intermixed with clips of the kid in 'The Shinning' were he's screaming REDRUM, and half recognised 'Polterguiest' clips i remember seeing wen i was a kid... see iv just got lost in it again as i was blabbering on about it here! (i am often seduced by flashing lights and strange sounds!) The night of private views off Brick Lane were also great, especially the free venison sausages and MOUNTAINS of free becks, i think i am all to often seduced into liking a show by the standard of freebies, and here, at Hauser & Wirth, the standard was high, but the work, Christoph Buchel's fake seedy hotel complete with 2nd hand fridge-freezer shop and messy scrap yard was, well... i cant quite decide what i actually thought, i am still inclined to think differently by the after thought of the great night out i had!

anyway enough blabbering about London, i may post some photo's at some point? i may not? im back working now in the anti-climax that is Tate Liverpool in this time of Biennial blues, wondering what it all means...

oh god, the blogger is back!

the end...

so the residency is over, and it all went really well. i was a bit panicky on Thursday, mostly about the artist talk (ok i was shitting myself) but that in the end was a really useful thing to have to do. it forced me to have to explain the work i had been making over the last two weeks, and then be questioned on it, like a group tutorial, but with 50 or so people!

i had finished working on the pieces on Wednesday night, leaving church about 10.30pm, and had decided that that was the point to stop taking apart and 'rebuilding' the furniture, it was my last full day so it was the last day to continue this futile act of attempting to reassemble these things completly, realising i would never actually be able to do so.

it was interesting talking, i was realising i was saying things that had actually never fully occured to me before, but by talking to a group about the whole process it seemed to makes things clearer in my head. things like the fact that the furniture, by being put through this process, this act of 'rebuilding' now became symbolic in some way, having taken on some sort of extra meaning or significance beyond their purely material properties, rather like the crucifixes and other things found in the church, they are just wood, but are also much more. another interesting thing to come from the talk, i realised that the church itself had been rebuilt constantly throughout its history just to function, if the place fell down, the obvious thing to do was to build it back up, so the people could worship once more, but by 'rebuilding' the furniture again and again i had in fact rendered it functionless, the opposite i suppose to the church itself.

here are sum pics of the last day, me setting up some new media in the church! i trapped the camcorder in a drawer, turned upside down and bolted, kind of descretly in one of the pews. you could see it through a gap were i had taken the joints of the drawer apart. i also had a speaker trapped inside, amplifying the sound of me crashing and banging which echoed around the building, during the talk...

so the residency is over and yes it all went really well, but now i have time to spare i need to reflect and evaluate everything? its been a really hectic, mad, busy summer, probably the busiest of my life and i havent had time to breathe it feels like, but all was great, lets see what happens next...