More recent work

Caroline Wright, Gilding the Lily.

Notebooks

Phyllida Barlow, try this out, notebook 2010.

Reviewing the work

Helen Rousseau, Book of Borders, 2010

(15) Curtains / blinds

1.

It was when time was finally receding

we found perspective, or rather it found us,

diminished and helpless on the far horizon.

Perspective was the thing we’d keep our eyes on,

since shrinkage was, for us, a form of bleeding,

and everything was closing in around us.

So everything closed in, and we were shrunk

within the very terms we thought we’d mapped,

our maps being vague approximations,

too imprecise for neater calculations.

Either our systems or our eyes were junk.

However free we were we still felt trapped.

However free we were we still were locked

in houses too small to live in, cars too wide

to miss a pot hole or a traffic cone.

The mind won’t fit the skull, it just gets blown,

and yet keeps spreading and will not be blocked.

It wants to fly because it’s stuck inside.

These words want out. They want a natural light

if only so they might feel less uncertain.

Perspective starts here where they say their names

so any drawing underwrites their claims.

Their vanishing point is what is lost to night

whose drawing is the drawing of a curtain.

2.

Little by little she let down the blinds.

The light in the room obeyed her as she moved.

It was a work of delicate gradations.

She could control gradations in this way,

leading the light as if it were a horse

she might have ridden right back to the stables.

Horses of light were champing at the bit.

They stamped the darkness, breathed a thin grey fume.

Light trembled with excitement that was fear.

The blinds kept moving, light was growing thinner.

It was like dusk, or dawn, some half-way station

between two busy major terminals.

And in that darkening there was a moment

when breath failed and the pain slipped into numbness,

and night, or just the blinds, brought darkness on.

George Szirtes

We've reached a point in the project where we're taking stock of the material generated so far. Posted here and in the following posts are works and thoughts from the end of last year as well as some produced more recently.

new year, new work

Happy New Year to all our blog followers.

It is something of a surprise to think that respond/reply is now almost a year old. I guess it is at this time of year that one takes stock, putting up measures against everything we do. So much work has been made and so many subjects discussed, two exhibitions and two public discussion events have taken place and there is still another six months to go.

Looking forward with eager anticipation to 2011 and everything drawn and written that it brings.

Wysing Arts Centre

It has been a busy time.

Since the open discussion in Ipswich Town Hall Gallery we have installed some work for a show at Wysing Arts Centre in the Wysing Arts Contemporary series entitled Partnering. Here, our project has a very different flavour to the work at Ipswich since we have tried to focus on the nature of the four protagonists working together rather than majoring on the work produced as a result.

A large (2.5 x 3 mts) photograph forms a backdrop to a stage set on which sits the desk and chairs that we use for meetings. On top of the table are copies of our work in a box file, a sound recording of our open discussion and a script for an imaginary play. It is multi layered, and needs time to uncover everything.

We plan to hold our next meeting in the gallery space on the stage.

The open discussion event on 1st October was well attended - about 65 people in total, many of then students from Suffolk New College. Phyllida, George, Helen and Caroline spoke for around 40 minutes, outlining the project history, its development and their individual reasons for taking part. The conversation ranged from "what is art?" to the student and art institution's roles today. There were several questions from the floor bringing the event to a close after almost two hours.

The project will be represented at the next exhibition at Wysing Arts Centre near Cambridge. Called Wysing Arts Contemporary:Partnering, the show looks at different ways in which artists are working with other people, be they artists, those from other professions or communities. The show opens on 16th October and continues until the end of November.

Excellent news - a poem by George that was written right at the beginning of the project has been selected as the poem for the National Poetry Day card.