Slack von Slackerton the slacker.
Goddamn, over 4 months since the last post!! To be fair, it's been on my mind to write for weeks (months) but life seems pretty busy right now and it's just been difficult finding the right combination of time and energy, seems to always be one without the other. I do actually have plans for several long pieces, mostly regards various memories and happenings from the 80's, a la the hitching post I wrote but for now here's just a little catch up on what's afoot in my small universe.
Limbs - Group show / pop-up shop.
I've just had to delete what I'd initially written here and start again as I had started this blog post a couple of weeks before the show but now it's suddenly a month or two after....oops!!! So, instead of a progress report here's a review of the event and everything it meant in regards to finally getting my mojo back with my art.
I was just re-reading an interview I did with CAVEAT! zine from Malaysia back in 2020 about my artwork where I felt I'd been particularly negative about my working practice and inspiration at the time. One of the questions I was asked was -
That answer pretty much summed up how I was feeling at that time (and had been for some time). However, having been a part of the LIMBS collaboration with my friends for the past few months really gave me the boost and focus I'd needed for so long and actually feel like I can call myself a working artist again. I'd felt like a fraud for so long. At this point I really have to thank my good friend Katri for inviting me to be part of this event. The whole thing was her brainchild and she really drove the whole collaboration which really has proved to be such an important catalyst and will hopefully lead onto other exciting things.
https://www.instagram.com/limbs_collaboration
Of course I couldn't do things the easy way. Despite being asked to be part of this at the end of February, giving me a full 8 months or so to get some new work together I didn't actually put paint to canvas until a month before the show. I had been doodling and going through ideas in sketchbooks etc but nothing was sticking, I was overthinking everything and couldn't find a focus or decide what it was that I wanted to do. Initially I had thought about a series of large charcoal drawings but I wasn't very happy with my first attempts, then I thought I'd like to make some large, loose and energetic paintings, perhaps even a set of abstract works. In the end I was still procrastinating and jumping from idea to idea without committing to anything when there was just a month to go. So I just bought a bunch of different sized canvas' and decided to just start painting with no real clear plan and just see where it took me. In the end I started by simply covering the white space with various tonal, colour experiments I'd initially explored in my sketchbooks. At this point I kept to my original brief of working fast and without too much thought. I just needed to make a start, make some marks. So I quickly had 4 paintings on the go at once. I haven't worked in this way for a very long time. Generally I'll work on one piece, one project at a time, taking it to it's conclusion until I move onto something different. It really was quite liberating to have multiple works in progress concurrently. It meant I meant I could be working on one and when I felt I wasn't sure where to go and hit any kind of block could just put it aside and work on another. I'd also decided to work in acrylic which again I hadn't done for a very long while and certainly not on canvas. I think last time I was painting on paper, card and board.
It proved to be the most intense and productive month I have had for years, it was certainly very stressful at times but if there is such a thing as 'good stress' then this was it. As well as having multiple paintings on the go I had also decided that I wanted to make floating frames for them all. I'd never done that before so a quick YouTube tutorial was in order before I went out to but supplies. So for the last couple of weeks I was working every hour I could get, burning the midnight oil, running between the spare bedroom/makeshift studio with paintings in various states and the garage where wood was being measured, cut, glued, varnished etc. I was still finishing the actual paintings in the early hours of the day of the opening, quickly varnishing them before going to bed. I then discovered that as I'd only had time for one coat they had dried patchy so had to apply another coat first thing in the morning (you're supposed to leave at least 24 hours in-between layers) and then just hope it would be dry enough by the evenings opening event. I had to also fix the still sticky canvasses into the hastily assembled frames in the morning. It felt like I was a contestant on one of those cheesy tv reality shows where you're trying to create something against the clock. Despite everything feeling like a massive rush at the end I was pretty happy with how they had all turned out and only one of the frames was seriously wonky, not that anyone else seemed to notice (or were perhaps too polite to mention).
I don't think I've worked with that kind of intensity since I was getting everything ready for my Visual Studies degree show some 22 year ago ( I can't believe it was that long ago!!!!). Although leaving everything until just a month before meant lots of stress i think it's probably the only way I was going to do this. I wish it wasn't the case but I do tend to work best under pressure. Anyway, after all that hanging the work in the space came together miraculously easy and quickly, for us all I think. Everyone's work looked great and it was such a buzz to see how we'd all manged to pull everything together. The whole weekend was a lot of fun if quite exhausting and I definitely think we've learned a lot about what to do and not do and what we can do better if/when we do something like this again. Thanks to everyone who came down and supported us and everyone who bought work or just came for a chat.
Regarding the work itself, it had been a few years since I'd last worked on canvas in acrylic but I was surprised at how quickly I got into the groove with it and found it pretty satisfying and that things more or less went as I'd hoped with both a few mistakes but also some happy accidents along the way. Typically though the idea of loose and energetic work seemed to quickly go out of the window and I ended up working in a much tighter more controlled way, I just don't seem to be able to help myself so decided not to fight against it and just go with it. Of course some paintings worked better than others and I think if I'd started earlier and had more time there's a couple I would have worked further on and that could have been developed more. Although I have definitely been guilty of overworking paintings and drawings on many occasions so the time constraint not giving me that luxury was probably a good thing. Sometimes I really don't know when to stop and when something is finished. All in all it was a great starting point though and a medium I'm planning on continuing working with for the foreseeable future.
Uncomfortable scratching into the Young Mid's mind.
A few blog posts that I've had planned for a while have been prompted by old cassette recordings that I've recently digitized, for example an old Deviated Instinct practice compilation featuring recordings from late 1984 and early 1985 with short local news items recorded from the TV from the time in-between songs (Crass stylee), specifically about the doomed Norwich 'No Business as Usual' demonstration and the eviction of the Argyle Street squat, both of which happened in the early months of 1985. I remember Leggo had just bought a little hi-fi with a double cassette deck in it so that we could copy tapes and it was using this that we put this little compilation together that we sent out to a few friends and probably made it onto a few tape trader lists. I plan to stick this up on YouTube soon with accompanying posts both about the failed demo and it's aftermath, we were ALL (as in everyone) arrested following that and the court cases dragged on for months, plus my recollections from the 6 months or so living in the squat. My memory is (and sadly has always been) dreadful, if it wasn't for photographic evidence I'd barely believe I was actually around in the 80's, so scant and blurred are my recollections. Thankfully I have a few old diaries, of course I didn't write half as much as I wished I had and during the most fun and crazy times 86-89 I didn't write anything but I do have odd stuff between 82 and 85 and a snippet or two from 86 which is helping put things together a bit. I've been methodically going through them and typing up every word so that from now on I'll have a digital record. Both to remind myself and also because my writing is so fucking unreadable it will be good to finally have it all deciphered. Unfortunately of course, much of what teenaged Mid had to say was extremely cringe inducing. At times I kind of want to climb back through the pages and give my younger self a good slap. Between the diaries, the calendar pages within plus the fact that I've literally kept every single pen pal letter and general band correspondence during all the 80's I've been able to piece certain events back together in a vaguely crusty detective manner.
I used to also keep gig lists, I have lists that go from my very first gig in 1980 until a few months into 1986 when I guess I just got lazy and stopped. This drives me crazy as this was just when I started seriously travelling all over the country following bands, visiting friends and going to gigs in all manner of places as opposed to simply local gigs in the early 80's. It makes me weep to think of the literally hundreds of amazing bands I've probably completely forgotten I saw through the second half of the 80's and the entire 90's and half the 00's, I only started making a list again in 2014
