gasping

Like a fish flipping and gaping, having slipped maniacally from an infant grasp on to the grainy earth of a river bank, I feel time slipping through my fingers as air slips through the desperate creatures gills. No matter how hard it sucks at the flimsy air it cannot glean oxygen to breathe. No matter how hard I try I cannot find time to fulfil myself. Weeks slip through my gaping mouth and nothing comes of it. We speed towards our final weeks in China and beyong them I can see nothing. I can't see how I could do this anywhere else, yet what I do achieve here is so infinitesimal. I'm still thrashing around. I am not dead yet.

leaves

unusually there are leaves on the street. in any ordinary shanghai day, there would be no leaves... there would be an army of street cleaners to rectify any such inflagrancy of party cleanliness guidelines... laughable, truman showesque- but reality in China- things don't look out of place here... because the party says they shouldn't look out of place. So to my surprise I see autumnal leaves. It was, after all, 10pm... and friday. I expect the weekend shift will clock on at 5 tomorrow and rectify this injustice- not before the weekday crew are fired

juices flowing

well not to sound vulgar, but things seem to be clicking into place at the easel. Will I have show fodder by the 21st? fuck that, who cares Im enjoying myself for the first time in 2 months

Placebo

The new show is entitled Placebo. It forms the second in a series of shows that begun over the summer with Synaesthesia.

I have been busy scouring my image collection for suitable reference material, and aim to continue my low-fi aesthetic approach to image making with raw canvas and monotone palette. Ill be including (hopefully) some new watercolours too.

It refreshes the soul to create, to think- as well as stressing the hell out of my frazzled self- in such a way as to remind one what one's purpose is. It also stimulates the poignancy of being located on the other side of the world (to what?) and resident in a more or less alien cultural pool, and encourages me- rather than to focus on this alienation- to express a feeling of suitablility, adaptation to any environment, not just an alien one. Its a bit like reminding yourself that by being in circus of cultural dispraxia, you are actually at home anywhere, and as such you settle down with pipe and slippers in the gutter and straw in the autumnal sun and think just how lucky you are to be so damn happy.

Dianaism

Efforts from behind the plastic lens...