Interim

One of my favourite books of recent years has been ‘Wanderlust – A History of Walking’ by Rebecca Solnit. She has some fascinating things to say about women and public space:

‘A woman who has violated sexual convention can be said to be strolling, roaming, wandering, straying – all terms that imply that women’s travel is inevitably sexual or that their sexuality is transgressive when it travels.’

I’ve made a lot of solo trips – I’ve walked alone in the Himilaya and the Alps. I’ve travelled alone in Turkey, India, Nepal, Dominica and Guatemala. I’ve been alone in Mexico City, Istanbul, Delhi, New York, Rome, Reykavik and Barcelona…The key to feeling confident alone as a woman traveller is to have a sense of entitlement. That you have the right to be there. Because few women in few places in this world do have that right. To freedom. And space. And movement.

I’m with Solnit when she says: ‘Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.’

The yearning to travel, the wanderlust, is a very particular freedom for a woman as it can never be for a man. Sylvia Plath said: ‘I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.’ This is the spirit of endeavour, historically always denied to most women.

Most ‘On the Road’ type male odysseys are mapped by women who stay put, who remain immobile. And wait. I am not one of those. I have always wanted to be in the world and of the world. Whatever the risk.

To meander is to be unproductive. It is a luxury of sorts to travel aimlessly, at a slow pace, without the pressure of the shortest route from A to B. That is how these drawings came together really. By taking a meandering route. Where travel is more important than arrival. That is inherent in the creative act – and certainly in drawing.

I’m in an interim moment. Studio based artwork is made and scanned. Next, I’ll be working at ZenEssex design studio to create a layout for the billboard. The Independent Free State takes a pause for breath. It’s down to the other people I’ve enlisted in this project now to help make my vision a reality…

Stop Press: Westminster Council have now given permission for the billboard to enter their Exclusion Zone for one day, which is amazing, as a number of ‘public artworks’ have been denied this privilege. So I’m assuming they must like the visuals I sent. There are some conditions – the logos (Arts Council, National Lottery, Metal) must be discreet and there must be no other text apart from the title and no reference to any exhibition or event. That’s all fine by me. So now I’ll get my dramatic photographs of the billboard ‘in situ’ against a backdrop of central London’s iconic landmarks.

I have yet to direct the routes for the remaining 2 touring days. I’m considering: 1. a tour of all the main London galleries and gallery areas (outside of Westminster) and 2. All the main travel hubs of London. Both of these routes will yield really interesting GPS tracking documents which will fuel further work.

My 3rd and most complex route idea is to follow, as closely as is practically possible, one of the drawings I’ve mapped out – ie so the GPS tracking route will re-form the drawing itself. The female form will be realised though the route taken. This would take some working out and would be at the mercy of traffic and time to complete on the 8 hours hire per day. But it’s got to be worth a go…

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On Freedom Etc

‘The demand for freedom is universal and political, but also intensely personal, and one which can require courage to follow…for its path sweeps lonely to the summit, no map, no guide, no god at your heels…If you want to play safe, you should never have come up here, to the site of freedom…Modern, urban, work-oriented societies teach people that freedom is something you outgrow…Our innate freedom is dulled and dimmed, deadened and demeaned by detail and deadline and caution and clocks. But roaring underneath all this, still, freedom growls in the dusk. Freedom is because life is, and to be most alive is to be most free.’

Jay Griffiths from ‘Wild: An Elemental Journey’ 2007

So where did the title for this project ‘Independent Free State’ come from? Partly, it’s a personal narrative, I am now an autonomous artist, having taken ‘voluntary redundancy’ from the public sector a year ago. (ie ‘If you don’t jump off the cliff we’ll push you…so what’s it to be?’) Alongside a whole generation of creative people, I’m part of the recession-fallout with its crippling arts and education cuts. So, I’ve worked for the State for around 15 years and now I’m out on my own. It was the right moment for me. As a product of the early 80s Art School scene I was never going to be happy being complicit in the new regime of the aggressive business model that art education (all education) has become.

With this kind of freedom comes insecurity and precariousness but also excitement, renewed energy and curiosity, you have to be resourceful. Above all, you have to believe in yourself in order to keep getting out there and to make things happen. Freedom can go to your head. I may be out of the stifling bureaucracy and Health and Safety clampdown of the state sector (with its heavy handed infantilization of the thinking adult) but there are still rules, negotiations to be made, mediations to broker, when working in the public realm with public money…

I’m waiting to hear back from Westminster Council (re its ‘Exclusion Zone’ for the billboard) as to whether my artwork will be deemed to be an advertisement after all. The Advertising Regulations are certainly broad. I’m not sure what exactly the artwork will seen to be ‘advertising’: myself? The Arts Council? Art? As a former colleague pointed out recently when we were discussing the project, the mix of irony and truth of art appropriating the language of advertising then in turn being defined as advertising is pretty interesting here.

Westminster have sent me the regulations that define advertisements:

“any word, letter, model, sign, placard, board, notice, awning, blind, device or representation, whether illuminated or not, in the nature of, and employed wholly or partly for the purposes of, advertisement, announcement or direction, and (without prejudice to the previous provisions of this definition) includes any hoarding or similar structure used, or designed or adapted for use, and anything else principally used, or designed or adapted principally for use, for the display of advertisements”.

Apparently a number of public artworks have recently been defined as advertisements by these regulations, they’re that broad.

I’ve had to seek written confirmation from the Ordnance Survey people that I will not be breaking any copyright laws by using OS maps in the artwork. I was concerned, as were other people I spoke to, that to display this work in public would be a breach of copyright. I’ve been told that if I own the maps (I do) and they are not to be reproduced to be distributed as maps then it’s fine. Which is great news. Appropriation is so commonplace in contemporary practice – the use of other images and representations to make ones own – that copyright seems an antiquated notion. Everything’s ‘up for grabs’ in the age of the World Wide Web isn’t it…? Even our entire identities can so easily become someone else’s property.

I’ve been talking to other artists, writers, film makers and lecturers about this project. There’s been a lot of interest. There have been a few cautionary conversations around my use of the World map ie ‘contested’ areas and Islamic countries. That my super-imposing figures that could be interpreted as ‘naked’ on an Islamic State could certainly spark controversy. I’m not interested in courting controversy in this way – it would detract from the project. So I’ve pretty much decided to avoid depictions of these areas. When I showed a friend the map of the Westminster ‘Exclusion Zone’ he remarked that it reminded him of the ‘Ring of Steel’ that was de-marked around London during the IRA bombing campaigns. He also said that the billboard would seem to ‘legitimize’ anything I put on it particularly with the title being ‘Independent Free State’ it could easily be perceived as being sponsored by The State.

I’m considering the map images working as pure visuals without the title, the intrigue and ambiguity of these images are enough. ‘Independent Free State’ will still appear but as the title (brand?) alongside the Arts Council, National Lottery and Metal logos, who are my funding bodies. However, it will still appear ‘written large’ on the reverse side, a kind of ‘blueprint’ for ‘freeform’ human figures where the public will complete the drawing at Village Green arts festival.

 

 

 

 

Progress

I work in a communal studio space. I have my own ‘territory’ within this space but may spread out as necessary depending on what I’m working on.  It’s an unusual set-up which comes down to the economics of slicing up a large space to make it affordable but avoiding the ‘rabbit-hutch’ enclosures of many other studios. It’s an intense way to work. Cross-fertilization occurs. A black abstract mark on one wall re-appears in a graphite drawing of a disembodied dress that stares back across the divide. The studio is cluttered, stained and smeared with the detritus of 12 years of creative practice. It’s dirty and rich with the history of creative endeavour.  People have ‘spilled their guts’ here. It is a kind of psychic battleground. It is also emotive and intimate: all your ‘stuff’s up there on the wall for anyone to see. Your failures as well as your ‘breakthroughs’.

The work unfolds. I get my hands dirty. I breathe in noxious fumes of spray paint, adhesive, graphite powder…

After 2 weeks in the studio I’ve made a kind of break through: broken through my prescribed processes and something unexpected has happened. A kind of euphoria kicks in, a ‘revelry’ of the mind and spirit. You suddenly think you know exactly what you’re doing and why. It doesn’t last long, but while you’re in that zone it’s the best thing in the world, you’ve glimpsed a tiny universal truth all of your own. By the next day self-doubt returns but you’re on more solid ground from which to ‘take-off’. You’ve made progress…

I’m working with Ordnance Survey maps now. They are exquisitely beautiful. The soft colour palette and contours are, for me, inherently female. They are on a human ‘walkable’ scale rather than the macro World Atlas maps I was previously working with. Now I have large scale ‘micro’ OS map images counterpoised with tiny ‘macro’ world map images.

The map and the female form have become one. They’ve synchronized and melded, each transforming the other. The figures have an exuberance in their ‘liberation’ from the map – just as a sculpture is ‘liberated’ from its stone. This seems a powerful statement: feminization of the map. Her territory. Occupied territory. It’s a strong image and I think I’ve found what I want to form the triptych on the billboard.

The map’s flesh tone urban sprawl become her. Defacement/reconfiguration. I’ve been morphing drawn images to incorporate the terrain of the map, seeking out existing lines of rivers, roads, railways and coast – ‘drawings’ that already exist. In so doing I’m imposing my own order on the world and creating new abstracted figures that have an immediacy and seem to spring out from the map with an energy. They’re striding across the face of the land and out of the enclosed confines of the map. I think of those ancient figures carved into physical landscapes. I’ve created whole new space and place with these map-figures. My creative vision starts spinning out – what if I could actually physically map these figures out on the land/cityscape? How would I go about doing that?

Justin Hopper, curator and writer sent me a great historical reference for map and female form – specifically Europe as Queen – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_regina

The maps are of: London and the Thames Estuary down to Southend-on-Sea. A ‘personal geography’ that incorporates where I’m based, where the project is launching from and the route it will travel up the river to London where it will tour. Beyond the personal narrative these locations have become intensely political. The Thames gateway is a hotly debated space with the impending new London ‘super-airport’ plans. Historically, it’s one of the busiest and most important waterways in the world. The East End of London is of course about to host the Olympic Games and has undergone radical transformation in the last 4 years.

The Olympic site has become a contentious one. Just the other evening I was being driven through London heading East back home to Southend when we noticed a massive glow in the sky which got brighter the further East we travelled. Suddenly we were upon the Olympic site which was drenched in the most powerful of flood lights as work continues round the clock to complete for next month. It was like Encounters of the Third Kind. Like a spaceship had landed in the grubby old East End. Shocking and exhilarating.