I have been in his studio for three months. He said he would return after six but that seems unreal to me now, or, it is a reality that doesn’t matter anymore. For a while I preserve his workspace where he left his desk and chair, his jumper on its shoulders. I don’t go towards this area. His notes stay folded in his books, his thoughts suspended. He has a hook on the back of the door where I hang my coat and bag. His studio is becoming more mine. I do things to make it more mine: wash the floor, paint the walls, make tea. I also do nearly nothing and his studio is more mine – just being here is enough. I carry the studio with me in my day-to-day life. Tasks begun in the studio are finished in my imagination. Artworks imagined on the bus are fabricated in the studio. Every day contains moments of studio thinking. These thoughts are more like commands from the studio itself.
I borrow is an ongoing series of works initiated for the exhibition Being a Character and recommissioned by Laura Smith and Maria Christoforidou for their group exhibition Decalcomania at the Exchange, Penzance. The series of 7 works all consist of objects produced in other peoples spaces or studios using their tools and materials. Each object is accompanied by a story recounting the experience of inhabiting another person’s means of production and how the qualities of the object and the identity of the maker are affected by the process of borrowing.
The I borrow works commissioned for Decalcomania are entitled: I borrow an artist’s studio, their tools, their materials (model by Jonathan Carr-Hopkins) / I borrow a photographer, his tools, his materials (photograph taken by Francis McKee) / I borrow her cupboard, her tools, her materials and I borrow her earrings (model by Kimberley Bright). These works were combined with a table of black objects accompanied by the diptych of texts, SO and Places of disintegration. A new configuration of the works 7 consecutive moods and As if was performed before the preview of Decalcomania. For further information on Decalcomania please visit http://decalcomaniaproject.wordpress.com/
Decalcomania was supported by the Glasgow Visual Arts Fund.
How to recognise a Widow, Horse in a mirror, Private cup