the next phase

As I write respond/reply is moving into a new phase. Much collating and editing of material has been done by

Helen and some by myself, resulting in a collection of notes, transcripts, writings and images that are ready to be formed into a publication of some description. We have identified a fantastic designer and are keeping our fingers crossed that she will find the material interesting to work with.

At this stage what the publication will look like is undetermined, in fact the possibilities are endless.

Here is a taster extract of one of the transcripts

When I think how did we get here? I don’t know how we got here….. so my thing is to go back to we’ve got an institution, what is an institution? How do we recognise an institution? How does an institution bestow respect admiration and affection and how does that institutions can bestow some of those things, some of the time?

It is now May and the project continues but with the end of our funding signalling a shift in focus to decisions around what we might do now and in the future with the work and relationships we have built over the past eighteen months.

Although these concerns are looming large, production continues. Recent writing from George is shown below, responding to one of Caroline's gilded postcards as illustrated earlier in this blog. This image and resulting poem has started a discussion around stories beyond words and how the artist and/or poet may wish to stimulate the viewer/reader to travel along a personal path from the subject.

Gilding Lilies

1.

A thin lick of gilt that frames the act,

One golden moment stolen from the sun,

The solid gold baby in the wretched cot

The glow of passing summer, snapped, snapped, snapped.

2.

I am the king of gold, my Midas touch

Lethal as the Gorgon’s stare. I am classical

And hallowed, straight as a die rapt

In perfections and somewhat beyond gone

Out of the world well on the way to truth

Dressed as cliché, each word poured fresh

Minted, mounted, mantled, minuted, mined.

3.

Two reproductions of paintings by Raphael Soyer

Stood in for melancholy. My parents’ shorthand

Comprised the banalities of my own banality..

Our need of art came down to Raphael Soyer.

But why the melancholy? Why the need for it

In reproductions? Was it aspiration?

Cause enough, God knows! And yet the image

Was oddly fitting, creating our need for it.

We were modernists of nostalgia. The whole house

Swam and rang with the fetish of missing things,

Their nodding ceremonies, their hand-me-down

Lost gold look gilding the whole house.

Later I knew that Soyer wouldn’t cut it

Not half as much as melancholy did,

That gilding was a matter of melancholy,

A link to further links and as with any link

The only thing to do with it is cut it.

4.

Sometimes the frame will swallow up the act.

Sometimes the memory outshines the sun.

Sometimes the cot of gold contains a child.

Sometimes a snap is the only thing you’ve got.

George Szirtes

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.