ARTISTS TALKING

# 32 [2 September 2008]

Alex!! felt so slow in the head today that I forgot to ask if you were still up to Nottingham? If so, then I think I am going for it, stay the night in that hotel you mentioned and head back on the saturday....do you want to come along? and yes I can be your escort.............Hx

So hotel and escort booked I headed north on Friday.  Hayley was driving using her newly borrowed satnav. I loved it, or her, a slightly condescending lady of indeterminate age (the sat nav, not Hayley) who kept us almost entertained for the whole journey. She beeped repeatedly if we went too fast and was extremely calm when we appeared to leave the road entirely. I'd sworn blind that I had stayed at the Nottingham Ibis before but I clearly hadn't, it wasn't where I remembered and it looked completely different. Still once we had staggered down the inexplicably swaying corridors and I had prised our twin beds the regulation six inches apart the room seemed very nice indeed.

We found the gallery easily and spent the first few minutes eavesdropping conversations about untimely evictions and vol au vents while manoeuvring ourselves in front of the fan. There was drink; lager, cava and wine, much drink, too much drink. The show itself was friendly, it had similarities to the Studio Voltaire show but was not as cool, more humour, variety, colour and frivolity. There was a bizarre sequinned toy tigerskin rug which would have sneaked into a school craft fayre and a rather magnificent injured giant  rabbit slumped on the floor. My favourite things were Bruce Ingram's two fabulous mythological assemblages made out of paint trays and magazine cutouts.

After a while we introduced ourselves (well Hayley did) chatted, got directions to a show at the Fame Factory, drank more drink and took Hayley's drawings off the wall before beating a hasty retreat into the night. 

Later we finished off a bottle of wine while watching a serial killer film. We never found the Fame Factory, probably because Hayley insisted on calling it the foam factory.

I'm not going to write about the next day, as I'd prefer to forget all about it.

# 31 [25 August 2008]

I'm suffering from extreme physical inertia at the moment. I've spent a good proportion of today pricking holes in 16mm film so I think I need to get out. Surface Gallery have invited me to a closing party for the show which is now their last. As I missed the opening due to malaise I might give this one a go. Hayley (www.hayleylock.com), also in the  show, might be going too so I won't have to hire an escort. Both of the readers of this blog will have already noticed, because of my constant moaning, that I am uncomfortable at openings (& closings).  Apart from free drink and company I usually turn up at private views hoping to be struck by lightning. It does happen, but I always feel stupid standing there waiting waving my umbrella in the air. 

The show at Studio Voltaire got a review in Time Out. Reviews are  something else that I also crave. Something to do with lack of confidence or megalomania or both. Here's an excerpt:

Elisabeth Lecourt’s painting of a greyish, blank-faced female head reverberates, in its inhumanity, with Alex Pearl’s economically unnerving, half-comic DVD of what appears to be a backlit effervescing tablet in water, the holes in it representing malevolent eyes and mouth, disintegrating and ascending.

Break such works down and their tension dissipates. In the moment of reception, though, they cast small but effective spells.

By Martin Herbert

I was pleased to be mentioned alongside Lecourt's painting and that they used a photo of my favourite piece in the article (Reflect, 2008 by Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth). Most of all I liked what I take to be mild criticism in the penultimate line. When I dream about eating; as I bite into the apple, donut, whatever, there is always nothing there. I've always wanted to make art like that.

# 30 [19 August 2008]

I've had a break which seems to have involved marathon scrabble playing, I blame the weather. I came back to forty plus emails including many e-alerts, e-bulletins, e-updates and an e-vite or two. I'm not complaining. All these things make me feel like I am at the centre of something without requiring I get off the sofa. However, at the end of last term, at college, we had a staff development day which made me wary of being over e-nthusiastic. A highly paid woman in a suit spent an hour telling us repeatedly that we had to become e-mature. I'm afraid I walked out.

One of the emails did contain some bad news (actually more than one, as there were also a couple of rejections). Apparently the Surface Gallery is about to be evicted so there will be no prize winners' show next year. I wasn't expecting to win but it seems a shame for whoever the winners would have been. 

# 29 [13 August 2008]

I've been visiting artists in their studios. It is really interesting seeing how other people live and work. It's nice to see that they are scatty or uncertain or amusingly neurotic. In both cases we have been discussing putting together some sort of show. Things seem very vague at the moment which I think I shouldn't admit I find a little unnerving. I've always been given the impression that artists are supposed to thrive on organic situations and I do try to pretend that I have appropriate levels of artistic nonchalance.

Anyway yesterday I spent some time in a converted shed playing and passing ideas around, it was a slightly awkward situation as we were trying to find new ways of working together while doggedly (too doggedly?) hanging on to what we do. I did manage to find a use for some pictures of aeroplanes that have been kicking around for a while.

Today I visited an artist who lives just down the road in an unconverted Victorian school house. She is trying to pull together a show based around personal and local history and I think wants me to be involved somehow. I'm afraid I just listened and didn't spit out lots of ideas, but secretly I thought it was really exciting. Hopefully it will develop into something.

# 28 [11 August 2008]

I need an entourage. There's nothing worse than doing your third solo lap of an exhibition clutching your drink with increasing desperation. Usually looking round a group show its interesting to see how the works vie for attention. In the show at Studio Voltaire all the works were rather quiet, reticent even. I really enjoyed Coleman and Hogarth's rebus like video projection and a spooky portrait by Elisabeth Lecourt. 

Back in my tiny hotel room I sheltered under the leaning wardrobe and watched the Olympic opening ceremony while reviewing the footage from my morning's filming outside a pub in Stratford.

# 27 [7 August 2008]

I am journeying again tomorrow. I'm going to the private view at Studio Voltaire and on the way I will try to make a protest film in Stratford. Yet again I managed to find a cheap hotel in Clapham and yet again I didn't think to check the reviews until I had booked it online. Every time I check a new complaint has gone up, and I keep going back. It's like the lure of a grisly corpse.  The latest reads

Stay away, stay away, stay away!!!!!!

I got a single room and it was disgusting. I might as well of slept outside on a park bench or in nearby Tesco's car park. The duvet was dirty and had holes in it. The bathroom (I am not sure I would call it a bathroom, and the washbasin (what washbasin?!) were pretty vile. The woodwork was rotten and in desperate need of replacing. The TV did not work as the aerial was broken.

I can't cancel it now but you never know it could be ok and if I drink enough at the pv I  probably won't notice. I also got an email from Joe at Studio Voltaire asking me to burn a new dvd for the opening as the selectors had forgotten to bring it with them. I'm all ready to go now bag packed, map marked, escape planned.

# 26 [5 August 2008]

More adventures in Leicester

On the platform in Leicester I was sat next to a young woman. We were both watching a wasp about to fly up her skirt. I was seized by a sudden urge to slap at it with my notebook. An act which would surely have lead to a sting and my arrest.

Conversation with a toddler before he was told to face forward by his mum:

Hiya
Hiya
Hiya
...
Hiya
...
Hiya
...
Hiya

# 25 [2 August 2008]

I'm traveling back from Leicester where I've just set up a show in the Phoenix Arts Center. I say set up actually it just involved taking Rachel Cattle's dvds out, taking down her drawings and and bunging my stuff up, to be honest Eric did most of it. I decided to show three of the automatic films and one small print of a still.

The journey up was characterised by the first break in the weather. Rain clouds were gathering. As usual I managed to seat myself next to the toilet so my thoughts were constantly interrupted by the fumblings of incontinent passengers. At least this was an old fashioned toilet with a mechanical lock. I'm frequently an unwilling audience to the difficulties people have with the electronic versions whose sliding door threatens to sweep open leaving its occupant in flagrante. Seeing the problems this system causes have made me think of becoming a sort of convenience bell-hop (in cap) pressing the "open", "close" and "lock" buttons in the right order. Despite the time these trips allow me to think I am getting bored with the views from trains. I am always seeing the backs of things as if the world is facing the other way. The journey is punctuated by the same experience of  back yards and back gardens which I glimpse unsatisfactorily like a peeping tom in hell. I seem like I'm in a bad mood, I'm  not and my city break has gone well, I have been described as the Mike Leigh of automata film making (a narrow field I admit).

We've just gone through Melton Mowbray a place with almost mythic status for me. A few years ago I decided to cycle from my home near Ipswich up to my parent's home near Manchester. I decided to do it in a day and on the hottest day of the year. Melton Mowbray was the place I nearly gave up suffering from dehydration/heat stroke. But after a little rest in the park and several litres of water I made what felt like one of the most important decisions of my life, got back on my bike and carried on. I made it, but did have to soak my shorts off in the bath and had nasty sunburn on my eyelids.

# 24 [30 July 2008]

The "not in the antarctic" cards have continued to go out. I've been getting random addresses from the Post Office website by typing in words associated with the antarctic, penguin, snow etc. The search engine is a bit intuitive so it tends to come up with some totally unrelated addresses, but that's ok. I suppose that most of them will go directly into the recycling but I am keeping an eye on my website stats to see if there are any hits from Blackburn or Pontefract (among  others). Emails have been whizzing back and forth about going to San Francisco next year. Ian and I have discussed: PAL and NTSC (I have no clue); the best way to display my work (I am vague); the joys of panel discussions (fear and ridicule); and whether I will be dragged off to Guantanamo if I try to enter the US with a load of spy cameras, remote controllers/receivers and other electronic devices.

In my spare time I'm doing a bit more writing. I'm going through all the technological devices I own and spinning stories off them in the hope that something interesting might turn up.

# 23 [28 July 2008]

I had to drive to Bury st Edmunds today to return some tvs to the gallery. When I got out of the car I had sweated so much it looked like I had wet my pants. I had to mince into the gallery carrying said tvs and simultaneously try not to turn my back on anyone. Alison and Craig were setting up the next show The Beguiling which opens tomorrow. There were lots of interesting things some hung, some half unpacked from crates. I left with the image of Alison's arm poking through a hole in the gallery ceiling 25 feet above me.

At home I am just sitting around still trying to think of ideas to do with "The failures of the ‘human condition’ VS the computer/digital" - bloody title, I might do something about sweating and preferring my online life to my real one.

I am reading Michael Bracewell's St Rachel, its strange how a book picked more or less at random seems so appropriate.