New Year 2017 - Age of Exploration

I meant to write this post on New Year's Day to keep to my schedule as conscientously as possible - didn't manage  of course because the  decision about my use of time came down to making art work or writing about making  artwork..... I  finally have got the  time  to write because I'm bedbound with a nasty bug and can't stay upright for too long, so a break from the studio  is in order.

In the run  up to this year's big exhibition in Beijing with Niamh Cunningham, Gulistan and Jin Mei (our working title is 'Like  an Iceberg') I've started work on a  series called 'Age  of Exploration'. The first finished work is on my homepage and the slideshow above shows progress on a larger  work in the  series  which  is in 4 parts. In  fact I can't work on more than 2 parts at any given time because the studio is too small.....

Of course, I started work on  it without measuring the ceiling height in my dining room (the only wall in the house that can  take it) and then discovered that it's 10cm too low. This meant setting up a system of leaning supports  so that I could actually assemble the work  and check that everything  would link up. I'm going to ask a kindly neighbour with a higher ceiling to lend me a wall once I've finished the painting

These photos show the ongoing progress, the stretching is temporary because it will have to be destretchered for transport to China and I need things to be floppy so I can do the sticking and burnishing.

As there's a lot of cutting out to do I time the process and try to watch videos/films related  to the theme while scissoring away which is quite fun in a nerdy way. So far I've watched all 4 series of Vikings (it's not great so I on't feel bad about keeping one eye on the cutting out all the time) as well as In the Heart of the sea. That comes out at 4 series x  10 episodes - each 45 mins = 1,800 mins + the film which is 122 so a total of over 32 hours of cutting out excluding the cutting out where I've been listening to music or having a conversation on the phone. Nothing  like multi tasking.

I'm also rereading old favourites like Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island and Lord Jim which were such memorable experiences from my childhood and adolesence. So that's all the 'light side' to the project, there is of course a darker one which relates to crossing water as a refugee  or a migrant and this is the aspect that keeps me awake nights. I watched The Crossing recently, an extraordinary documentary film about the Irish Navy resue mission in the mediterranean 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7GdGMbHYlc&t=1886s 
I wish that all those people  who use refugee almost as a term of insult would watch this and begin to understand the difficulty of what being a displaced person means. 

As we sail into 2017 I want to make art about important ideas, histories and ethics, to seek meaningful collaborations and reach  out to  many  people  - to  dive into  my  own age of exploration.