Epiphany

Just a quick visit to Gray's today with Susie. We head to the room to see if Jonathan needed help preparing for his time in the whitespace, only to find that he's prepared the walls, and finished the visual aspect of his work (we've been told by Iain that Jonathan is trying to apply two soundtracks too). The space looks fantastic...I look forward to hearing what he has to say about it.

No one else is in, so Susie and I check out the Baltic pod cast I'd watched last night (Joseph Havel). It's great, after seeing the show, I could understand what Havel was talking about...but more interestingly, after my crits with Jo & Tom & Steve, I could start to "hear the language" he used, when talking about the work. I'd noticed that he never talked "directly" about the work (physicality, materials etc). He talked about feelings (he even struggled to "describe" what the work really was "about" (I had the feeling that the art spoke for itself, it's beyond "aural language", otherwise, he would be a writer!). He also talked about the space the sculptures inhabited, their relationship to each other, and the people within the gallery space. He'd used words like "quiet", "discrete", "songcycle". Quite ethereal and non specific. It's like a conversation that gives you cues to agree, but still have enough space so you can make up your own ideas too. I am learning all the time, about how to present work, talk about work, get work etc...but this pod cast + crit(s) have been epiphanies.

listening to : silver mount zion - born into trouble as the spaks fly upward : sutekh - born again (remixes)