Ahhh Bless

Poor old blue- this year is not our year. How incomprehensible it is that we should find that hard to swallow, yet how satisfying that we should choke on the failing of our champion gladiators performances, for all and sundry who spectate. This year is indeed not ours, and what embitters and enrages is the knowledge that next year can at best be spent recuperating and reforcing our mettle, whilst languishing in 4th. Bring on the champions league...

Tomson Garden, Luxury Condominium

Rust

It seems perfectly appropriate that the bicycle that we had bought 4 weeks ago is now so rusted and discoloured that it looks as if we have had it for years. It was not an expensive purchase- remarkably cheap in fact, but not so cheap that it should disguise itself effectively amongst age old domestic stock which it parks alongside in the bike shed. It is appropriate, because like the fish tank that we bought, it was clearly marked domestic use only- do not export. Im not quite sure why this leaves a bitter taste in the mouth- but somehow it does. That manufacturers should be so explicit in their elitism of production- so unabashed in their 'its good enough for the locals but don't ever show it to the real world' attitude, is I think the reason for the distaste. Its a theme which is doubtless being explored by many artists at the moment, but the rust and broken plastic seems to me the most resilient and unequivocal symbol of this New Dawn.

Postcard from Shanghai

10th September, Pudong

A creative

Often in these kinds of situations, the sort where the rituals of socialising and 'settling in' are fuelled by latte and wide smiles, the phrase 'oh your an artist- my (insert relation here) is an artist' comes up, usually accompaned by a qualifying term of modesty or humblemanship. (No one ever says 'oh yes my (insert relation here) is an artist- he's bloody succesful and is currently showing at the Whitney...')

It's not a bad thing, or offensive or derisive. I don't feel like Victoria Beckham when she meets Mrs Average housewife and is told 'oh my fred is a ranging midfielder, he loves a dead ball too...'. Or Mrs Rushdie when A N Other says 'yes I also love the storytelling narrative- Ive done a few myself would you like to hear them...'. No, I find it sweet and inoffensive, but it does draw coser to my mind the question of what is an artist- again- as it is a theme that seems recurrent in my musing these days.

One of my favourite books , currently at home in storage, is a 1950's tome aimed at a roughly secondary comprehensive audience, and is titled 'How to write, speak and think correctly'. It's name has always appealed, in its conviction and clarity, and its broad subject matter. I bring it up now because I think the lot of a artist (read A N Artist) is roughly under the same vacuous premise- how to write speak and think creatively. Or perhaps originally. Because the art of even a painter is most definitely entwined in the thinking process, the discussion and the written shorthand that surely preceeds any kind of creativity or originality. I am all too aware of the restriction that 'just painting' can bring- a fact which is compounded when you can actually paint quite well (note the ambiguity that clouds and swamps the phrase quite well just then. Artistic philosophers the world over are scribbling 'well how, well what...' in their notebooks. But the fact that my line an my figurative form seem well polished compared to most of humanity has been the largest millstone of all in my research and creative enlightenment. It leads to endless nicely painted things that mean- well what exactly? And as such a tremendous amount f unlearning has had to be undertaken over the last 5 years as I search for a meaningful thematic or consistent motif that expresses the written, the spoken and the thunk thoughts that in my opinion categorise the artist, as distinct from the (insert relative here)

Its a long and ardous, painful, depressing and undermining process to fnd such a groove, such a voice as an artist. I have found it tremendously difficult, and still to this day have no common thread or consistent marketable, understandable commodity that a critic or historiancould apply to my output. I am encouraged by the permanence of, or consistent resurfacing of projects
such as the street kids or burmese refugees, and perhaps therein lies some kind of motif or narrative. However it is still a very long way from being at all respected or even concreted in my own mind, and as such the difficult writing, speaking and thinking- correct or otherwise- will continue to trouble my waking thoughts.

beauty in the mundane

back in the flow

As a creative journal, this blog has fairly satisfied its cause. the lack of contributions over the last few days belie a genuine lack of creativity or inspiration on my part, other than those thoughts that spring forth whilst I am ironing, cleaning, washing clothes or feeding offspring.

Today however I find myself inspired by a visit to the Zendai museum of Modern Art. Inspired inspite of what I saw, as opposed to directly by it. I was happy to have critically written off one of the exhibitions there- of so called 'new painting' (a bland description of a flimsy concept if you ask me...) a genre in which the painting occupies more than just a wallspace, but where it comprises some sort of installation in that it its environment and the manner in which it deals with a subject or emotion transgress the traditional conceptual arena of figurative painting. To me its like painters tryng to get in on the installation/coneptual act, despite being confined to 2 dimensions. Any conceptual angle that these artists try to engineer seems trite and (to use a matthew collings phrase) a bit windy. the paintings were still hung on the wall, and that an ultraviolet light would intermittently reveal som 'underpainting' did not to me generate the conceptual notion of an installation. It would be to do installation art down to concede that such gimmickery be reclassified thus. Add to this the fact that the concepts revealed by the intermittent switching of these lights was flaky to say the least (portrait of bush is suddenly revealed as bin laden, asian business man is revealed as skull etc etc) and you have little more than ambitious diploma level teenage mediocrity. So nerr.

Hanshoi Lu

Football fest anyone?

6 hours of premiership action starts 8:15pm tonight. Come on!

2 weeks in

And so we are coming to the end of week 2 in the big brother house- make that big brother republic. The list of off limits sites is extending gradually, but nothing orwellian or excessively prohibitive.

So 2 weeks in and 102 to go, to reach my personal target of being in an established career of some kind. Oh how Ill look back at this little entry and laugh.

There's a woman in the next block. I think a floor lower than us, but not much more than that because I can see into one corner of one of her apartment rooms. No no, nothing like that. The corner of the room that is presented to my vista as I wash up is bare, sparsely furnished- looks kind of functional fr some reason that I cannot put my finger on. Perhaps the unfinished wood which makes up the back of a type of furniture unit, that is pressed up against the window, is giving the utilitarian feeling- but I guess most furniture looks like that from the back. It's just that usually the back of a cupboard or dresser or shelving unit has no audience other than extreme proximity to an opaque and oppressive wall. It seems strange that I am allowed to witness the nudity of the unit from my vantage point- like being backstage during a performance and seing the plywood and nails that constitute the illusion of a rolling scene or stormy sea at a theatre production. But does not seem strange for long. Why should you care who sees the back of your unit, when you are three or four floors up, and a gulf of at least 30 feet separates your apartment from another across the little mock roads that snake around the condominium? You see, the proximity of others is completely forgotten somehow when you are dimly aware that you are living high up in the air. But I digress. The perceived chink through which I witness the utilitarian room- at least utilitarian unit (should I be specific and say the utilitarian looking back of the possibly ornate and frivilous fronted cabinet?) and its accompanying room is like a little window into someone elses life- I mean their entire life and not just their life in that room. Sensing a small old woman doing something I am unable to fathom in one corner of a room, the rest of which is hidden from my view, allows my mind to ticker away for hours on the very nature of her existence, of her struggles, her aims and ambitions, of her daily routines and customs that in her mind pertain to the realisation of those dreams... Perhaps there is a reason that she wears small plastic disposable gloves whenever she is in (that corner of) that room, a reason for her economic refinement in selecting a bare floor and undecorated walls. Perhaps. The human mind, well my one at least is not entirely comfortable settling for an explanation devoid of intruige or some possibility of unknowable mysticism. I think the gloves mean something. I am sure the room and its decoration are also a key.

And I'm happiest leaving it there and knowing no more- at the moment the possibilities are boundless and the imagination limitless. She remains a mystic and a yogi to me, wrapped in ritual, ceremony and behaviour from another world altogether. And now to the dishes.

Matilda behind the lens

We All know about deterioration. We all know about breakdown- of friendship, of communication... I am all too familiar with the breakdown of human interaction - but what about fundamental breakdown. The There is a mathematical formula that can predict the deterioration of a nuclear substance over time- indeed the decomposition rate of a particular isotope forms the basis of our most accurate timepiece- the atomic clock. So what measures musical the deterioration from Beatles (1985) through Electro (1984-1988) via Velvet Underground and The FaithHealers, to Beltram (arguably not deterioration) and back to Led Zepellin (more a transgression...). Its an organic evolution, which by defenition is a deterioration or evolution (depending on your slanted mind/eyes)... could somebody please send me the formula...am i growing or shrinking, erroding, washing away in my own floods of doubt, of self criticism, of fear... or growing stronger? Evolving....

Just how many pictures of the Colonel does it take to sell a chicken burger? The neon of this pedestrian street near Peoples Square is actually quite an attraction, and on one evening I saw several locals rocking up to capture the spectacle on their shiny new cameras. Whether it was this KFC/Pasta city/others ensemble, or the more popular giant coke bottle down the road (complete with white neon fizz that oozed forth as you watched- well, was lit white periodically to represent the phallic spurt of an unleashed bottle) the shining gallery of all that is derided as corporate in the west was actually a big attraction to those of the east. I was even seduced by the spectacle, swept up by the emotion of a crowd of happy faces in awe of the bright and radiant light show that seemed more harmless and gay, less a corporate and oppressive call to consume.

A very strange thing happened today...

...as I was lying on the floor in the lounge I noticed that my body had begun secreting a very fine oily substance- not quite a liquid, but certainly not a gas or solid. I had never noticed it before, but was definitely aware of something as I lay there. the sun streamed in through the large window that faces the city, and I thought I might have been sweating. However, in the same way that you accept that if you sit in a hot bath your forehead will pirspire with small droplets of salty sweat, so I accepted that secreting something oily was a rational thing for my body to do as I lay on the floor of a luxury apartment in a strange city. I didn't have anyone to tell about it, so I just lay there for a bit, thinking about the chores that were ahead of me for the rest of the day. I had made good progress with cleaning the floors, and polishing the surfaces- a task which had left me feeling tremendously satisfied upon completion- perhaps because it was the first real task I had completed in around six weeks. Everything else in that time had been compromised in some way due to the fact that I was living out of a suitcase and so nothing that I had executed felt like it had any permanence or lasting effect. All had been transitory and ethereal until the polishing. Now the gleaming surfaces- my gleaming surfaces- provided concrete evidence of a very real sense of completion. As such I looked forward to sweeping the three flights of mahogany stairs, but only after a new cup of coffee. My thoughts drifted to the other two people who could well have been lying down- or producing oily myrrh- at this time in their respective corners of the world- one in New York and the other in London. And of course of the imlpications of eternal life that the reality of my secretions behest.