ARTISTS TALKING

# 2 [11 March 2008]

The installation is in place and the Preview is over. It went quite well - better than this blog is going!

After the last blog  - now weeks old Krys and I met to make further plans about the show. We live some 40 - 50 miles apart so that getting together takes as much planning as the exhibition itself does.

We have also made many planning trips to the venue. All of this has gone well and been productive. We reckon that we understand the limitations of the venue both in terms of its potential to show our art well and its potential to further our ambitions - if you like - or at least  - to give us increased credibility.

Our problems are as ever - the cost of the exhibition. To a large degree we have built into our creative persona the idea that art is ephemeral and can be made cheaply. It has to be for us as we have very limited financial resources but we also want to make art cheaply as a statement of opposition to the huge expense and hype that surrounds celebrity art.

Therein is a very interesting debate about the importance f the well-crafted object - the work of art that is a technical 'tour de force' Our arguement is not with this kind of beauty or with reverence for it. I think we are interested in the democratisation of art for art makers - we are interested in the process - anyway this is the beginning of a discussion perhaps.

# 1 [21 February 2008]

Right - I am angry with myself. Firstly it is ages since I tentavely started this blog. Secondly I am diffident about doing it. Every artists exposes themselves simply by making art. I guess to my shame that I don't trust other artists to be generous to me and to what I say in this blog.

Is this a fear of being done by as I did? Am I not generous to other artists? I guess we all have to protect ourselves as we work but in fact I have mostly found other artists supportive and kind.

Currently I am struggling to get an exhibition/installation together with my friend Krystyna -

Our exhibition Hamera and Hartley's 'Finding Fathers' is due to open  at New Hall on the 2nd March.

The venue presents a real challenge. It is a cold, long corridor with study doors down one side and a glass wall on the other. The walls are a white brick and 'pictures' can be attached to the wall on a railway track of slightly grubby batons. Nevertheless it is still a big deal to exhibit at New Hall especially for an old committed feminist like me.

Will we reach an interested audience though? Or hopefully attract a new one?