Working with my letter to myself about keeping things unresolved.
These pictures were taken today whilst I was laying my work out on a very large table, making some tests towards an ‘installation’ of the work in a loose and open format (for a virtual exhibition).
I still don’t know exactly what a virtual exhibition might really be capable of being, and I must admit to initially feeling underwhelmed at the requirement to prepare work for one. But perhaps that was only fear: the age old trick of not trying difficult things, in order to avoid trying and failing.
So I am come round to it. And in any case, I am blessed to have tech support from some truly capable and generous people. And of course this makes me grateful, makes me want to do all I can to remain open to experimentation, and even to joy – in the face of difficulties, fear, the unknown.
How will I know whether I am succeeding or failing? I guess I may not know until afterwards, or maybe I will never know. And the truth is that questions of connection and engagement are always going to be present, and will apply in all circumstances – its only that they are heightened and brought closer to the surface by my need to figure out what it means to prepare work for a virtual exhibition.
So what am I trying to do here, what to achieve ?
I suppose what I want first of all is to make sure that the work is generous. And I have a growing feeling that there is a value in showing the unresolved, the uncertain, the unfinished. That it is the less ‘proficient’ of the things that I am making from my kitchen table, and my little room in my little house, which may be the most generous of the things I can offer to show to someone right now.
Secondly, my work is a lot to do with attention, connection. Therefore, if the work becomes something to consume with a swipe, a slick shiny grabber of a fraction of another person’s precious second, this will be a contradiction and a tension that may consitute failure in my own terms.
And also, (which seems a bit selfish), I think I will learn a lot along the way, which has got to be a good thing.
