My First Exhibition

The final picture was exhibited in Manor Park. It was a small space that had been arranged with a few other people on the course. My picture was wedged up between eaves on a staircase. The experience inspired me to think of the possibility of other exhibitions in the future – and I started to plan one for next year, in my head.

I was pleased with the way the painting worked out, particularly how the baby looms over the shoulder of 'Colin', the way he senses its presence.
It made something more of the commuters. I was pleased with the way Mr James turned out. And Colin. Towards the end, I had to move more quickly than was ideal, just to finish in time – but I think this actually worked in my favour. It pushed me to make decisions.

Train again – and Unfinished Painting

I am still taking pictures of commuters on the train, focusing on their expressions. I have a folder of all the faces and today I spread them all out on the floor. This reminded me of an exhibition I had seen on the top floor of the Saatchi Gallery, small pictures of victims of the war in Afghanistan. So many faces. So many different expressions. Eyes looking in different directions. Different skin-tones. What I need is more faces, more people. I would like it if viewers did not know quite where to look. Or maybe they would be drawn to one face, one pair of eyes.
I have looked at the work of artist John Stezaker. It is interesting how he pulls different faces together as one.

The odd juxtaposition of tones made me think that instead of using the same size box for each face, the same colour and texture of paper, the same colour printing, I could experiment. I would like to incorporate collage, photos and paint.

I had the idea of putting a baby in my picture. It came from the idea of parallel play – babies playing side by side but independently, self-absorbed, oblivious of one another. 

I played with the idea of putting a character from Vermeer in the picture. But it seemed too much. And I thought it would result in a mixed message. I wanted to keep it fairly direct.

Some Recent Exhibitions

Fight the Nothingness
A couple of weeks ago I went to see David Shrigley's exhibition at The Hayward Gallery. To me, he seemed like a clever cartoonist. Most of the pieces depended on captions written either directly on the picture, or close by. For example, a rough-drawn fist with the writing, FIGHT THE NOTHINGNESS. Or the cow looking back at the woman milking it, and saying WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? I found the cartoons funny, but did wonder what the hell I was doing, there...

Joy in People
Jeremy Deller's work at the Hayward Gallery was remarkably varied, but not much interested me very much. A crushed, rusted car. A functioning tea shop. A 3D film of bats. An outline map of of the UK with Iraqi place names and a similar one of Iraq with UK place names. A film of wrestlers. A set of stamping machines that you could put sheets of paper in to spell out phrases like HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY and A GROUP OF PEOPLE STANDING OUTSIDE A CLOSED DAY CENTRE. It all seems to me to be not nearly as clever as it thinks it is.

To the River
This exhibition by Sophy Rickett at The Arnolfini in Bristol was a video installation with various screens. The screens show various people hanging around waiting for the Severn Bore. And there are recordings of the crowd as they wait. The river and the landscape are never shown. All we have are the people and what they say. And what they talk about is interesting: a fox dead in the tide-line; the stress around crossing the weir at night.

It was interesting, the way the screens and voices arranged around the room. It created a brilliant, sombre and moving atmosphere.

Someone Else
Another exhibition at The Arnolfini in Bristol, this time by Indian artist, Shilpa Gupta. A Singing Cloud was extraordinary, a large object made of 4000 microphones with an audio loop. My favourite was a Motion Flap-Board that reminded me of the noticeboards at train stations. It flipped through a number of statements. Gupta says she is interested in 'the media that we employ...and the loss of the inherent gap that takes place during the process of communication. I am interested in the process of absence, which could take place in the authoritative mode of history writing, of censorship, or simply even how our actions are largely controlled by the unconscious'. I thought if I wrote this out it would make more sense. It doesn't.