In House
This weekend my step-daughter Babette and I scarcely left the house. Babette has a piece in a group show at the Crypt Gallery, St Pancras, which opens this Thursday. Half-way through her foundation year, she has been hard at work on art school applications, which have to be in today. We broke from our respective labours to have intense conversations about John Baldessari, or to subject the rest of our (absent) family to detailed psychoanalytic scrutiny.
I was really looking forward to a friend’s party, but half an hour before it was due to finish I realised –with a terrible lurch of guilt and disappointment — I had missed it. I’ve been preoccupied with remaking ‘Clay End’ from our show ‘Five Sisters’. York Museum Trust has given the mosaic a temporary stay of execution, so it can be shown in London. It will be included in our show ‘Pattern Industry’ at FAS Contemporary. To work in the space though, the mosaic has to be smaller. This is less simple than it might first seem. It is not a matter of taking parts of the former whole and remaking a border for the new slimmer shape. The work in York had its own internal logic and rhythms, which also must apply to the narrower version. I have reused many of the roundels, but a couple of them needed reworking – the sculptural elements in this new configuration made some sections look oddly flat. I needed to find a visual logic for the flatter areas, and I hope, with my weekend’s labours, that I have.
Good to see your daughter is maintaining that great artistic tradition of last-day rush to deadline! Looks like you’ve done jus the right “tweaking” to fit the new venue. Great that this opp came along, tho no doubt a bit nerve-wracking! Congrats, g
P.S. let me know if/when you’re interested in an interview — and if so, what would suit as a topic.
It’s called ‘just in time’ George, a principle that transformed industry, and is now applied to ‘Pattern Industry’.
When will you sell me some lovely note cards with these images on them??? Gimme.