EIGHTY NINTH POST

The course is over, the piece of paper is on my desk; it is real, the MA is done. Two years went by so quickly. I’m left with a lot of bits and untidy ends to sort out. I don’t know how much of the ‘bigger picture’ (no pun intended) I resolved on the course, or whether that was the point in the first place. I did a project. I can continue it or abandon it. I seem to be ending a lot of ‘projects’ before they have a chance of becoming something; if they ever had a chance at all. Everything is at best, superficial or at worst, done on a whim.

I want to be one of those people who arrive at their studio in the morning knowing what they have to do. A steady, growing body of work concentrated and considered. Sequential and intelligent, not dashed off and done in response to some exhibition opportunity. I think I need to connect the thinking with the doing.

Or maybe I am wrong about all this. Does it really matter so long as I enjoy my art life and feel happy about mooching around my studio? I do feel a bit lost, hopefully only temporarily and I worry that this feeling of isolation and absence of some academic structure behind me is leading me to be tempted to the dark side of being like them.

The art wankers.

Spoon fed the mainstream propaganda, desperate to be accepted and recognised for their pallid, limp imitations of ‘art’ that they have seen on their countless visits to state sponsored galleries; each trip a notch on the bedpost of the impotent. These neutered shells haunt every private view, greedily gobbling up another portion of crap. Connecting, networking, being seen. If they speak at all, it is about them and rarely about the exhibition. Honest opinions are dangerous, a wrong word or a disparaging remark might cost them dearly. There is usually a loud one, the drunken rebel in the room, willing or unable not to speak up and seemingly rail against the considered view. He, for it is invariably a man, unkempt and with it, edgy, has nothing but contempt for these people and yet is content to repeatedly perform for them. Well, there is free wine. The innocent bystanders quietly murmur their disapproval and once he is out of the room and only then, openly mock him. His delusion, his lack of understanding and have you seen his work?   

And I don’t know what to do with the blog, not really. There is no project to prattle on about. I can natter about art stuff or bore myself and the three readers with endless twaddle about nothing. I could make it more of a diary, a precise and detailed account of the daily struggle with art; my art life and other minor distractions.  

I may start a diary anyway, a real one about all my life, not just the art side, which is admittedly the bulk of it. I don’t know. I can’t see the point; it would end up as an endless gush about the kids. Good to live through, dull to read. I met an old friend yesterday and we discussed memory, very relevant as we hadn’t seen each other in a decade. Mine is scattered at best. I think it is all there but filed away. I attribute this to living in the present. I really do not plan ahead beyond the next week and I rarely even think about the past. I think it all exists simultaneously anyway, so if I need to I can recall the past in quite good detail to the extent that I can feel it, almost. And to do that all the time would stop me being here now, and this moment is all that in reality counts. I suppose life is a little like a blog. I know there are eighty eight other entries and I can remember hazy details of some of them, possibly even the odd line, or more accurately, the gist of a line but I don’t spend any time looking back. This entry, the one I am writing at the time, is always my favourite one, my most cherished post, until it is on the internet and then I turn back to word. What was the future entry, becomes the current entry (and it is only current whilst being written) and is mine for a short while.

Most of the time, I shoot off an entry in one session. That session might be over a half day simply because I am doing other ‘net’ things but as often as not, it is all written and posted in a short time, an hour at the most. Very occasionally I will write a bit, then come back to it a day or so later. Some posts can take a week of brief visits. I realise now that I am writing all of this for me. I know you don’t care about my ‘writing pattern’, I do, though mainly as a record of what is what, fact wise.

Perhaps I fear the end and need to sort my affairs?

Oddly I did buy a 4GB stick today to back up all my stuff, just in case.

Should there be more pictures and more links for you to click around? I could put all my old BA blog/journal and pre-BA ‘journal’ writing up here too. Archive it all; the complete work of Bob Milner, all in one place. I can then bin the paper copy. I feel the need to tidy and sort and order. I have cleared the studio, boxed things up and so on. I can work in there again after the chaos of the final show and the last part of our gallery project. I want to sort out all my reference files and gather all my writing together. That could take a year, which is a good way of avoiding making artwork. Well if you want to avoid it stupid fucker, maybe you should quit.

No, I intend to have a routine. Several paper based projects on the go at the same time, the odd painted piece happening and when I am feeling really rough, start the archiving, seeing it as a long process but interesting. I want it all to be manageable and coherent. It is to me, I see it all, each pile of paper ephemera, as a visual thing; I instantly know why I saved it, what it means. How it all relates in a bigger way, still working on that. I don’t think I am yet drawing or painting what I was meant to draw, paint and archive. I have to be careful as I can envisage a time when I have a room full of work and a reluctance to let any of it go. I think I am making my own museum; dedicated to preserving for posterity a half life.

On a sour note, it was nice to unpick my drawings from the final show. They had been tacked up using pritt pads, one in each corner. Whoever took them down piled them up one on top of the other, not opposing (face to face…oh, the irony) so as to avoid the sticky tack from damaging the surface of the drawing, so I now have nine ‘ruined’ drawings. Yes, they were intentionally ‘throwaway’ or more precisely, not precious in any sense but a little care, attention or respect would have been nice. I handle a lot of artwork that isn’t mine and I am always careful, no matter what I think of the work.

Friends are important. And regular contact with friends is vital. I have a few very good art friends who I couldn’t imagine life without. I won’t name them as that would be revealing too much. I know who they are and I’d hope they know who they are too. The thing is most of them are scattered across the country, a couple of them abroad. I always think of ‘abroad’ as a very English concept. So contact is frequent but limited in a way. I wish they lived locally and we all met often and had a drink, chatted, maybe even made some work in the same space. Some of them are ‘here’ because of the internet, so I can hardly bemoan the concept of virtual friends but if we were all geographically closer, we might get some kind of ‘movement’ on the go. I’d like that; the need to belong is very strong. Again, maybe it is a portent of some kind of doom.

I was in the studio today thinking of one particular friend and wished I had some phone credit to text him, see how he was, possibly get him to come up and visit the studio. We occasionally write letters which is always good and I thought of writing him one instead. I returned home and there was one from him on the mat. And in it, he is proposing some kind of friends writing letters to inspire work project. Apparently, I predicted a ‘post-MA’ slump and he is suffering it and I know I am. I don’t remember predicting it and I wouldn’t have thought it likely, I do after all have an art ‘career’ albeit unpaid and unseen, mostly. So, there, that was odd.

Another friend is not called Creature, though he uses that name. He is a good lad. And that is all you need to know dear reader. The reason I am mentioning him though, is that his website really needs another four hits this week and if both of you reading this visit twice, that would be great. He has been….assembling, or curating…or allowing other people to create special mini ‘friends’ issues of Creaturemag and I think the idea is great and the work is great too, so please, have a look. I may do my own version and if he likes it, there will be a peep at my friends but knowing my reluctance to work, it could be some time.

Clicketh here: www.creaturemag.com and seeketh the friends.

An exciting but potentially hazardous project that is underway with another friend is a comedy writing thing. Fuck art, it doesn’t pay the bills. It would if you were better at it. I have two degrees. So fucking what means nothing. Do some pencil portraits of pop stars and minor celebrities; that should pay the bills. I’d rather not. Fuck you then. We’re both a little bit funny and we can’t be any worse than most of the ‘comedy’ on TV at the moment. Well, we could be but one of us has an ear for dialogue and the other an eye for the ladies, so that ought to be a winning combination. If you locked a monkey in a room with a typewriter for long enough, you’d find it credited on some BBC 3 programme. We will write it, edit it, and send it away. I predict we will be rich and famous very soon. Job done, go back to making art that no one likes.

Television is all I ever really wanted. Art was just a way of passing the time. I want to reach out to millions and make them laugh. What can be more satisfying than that? I feel like a young lad; the world is my lobster. I could do anything. I could write the novel to end all novels. I could dance, sing. I’ll do anything that doesn’t involve sitting in that fucking studio every day dribbling paint and scratching at paper; back to the movement thing, making ‘art’ is a lonely business. I need an audience, without one, without some chance to talk and laugh I curl up and retreat into a dark place.

In 1997 I worked in a bank. It was a large telephone bank, no direct contact with customers. I was a back room banking representative. One of the cogs that kept the greasy wheels of capitalist enterprise in motion. I didn’t mind it, it was very dull and I clearly wasn’t going to be there for a long time. We sat on large desks, perhaps ten of us around a table, like in school. We had work to do and the teacher, sorry, team leader would sit at the head of the table to ensure that we concentrated on getting the job done. Friday was dress down day and there was always someone celebrating something, so team gelling visits to the local pub broke up the monotony.

Inevitably in that kind of environment, there were ‘characters’, people who were so grotesque that if you wrote about them, no one would believe it. I was on a team with Ray. We’ll call him that to protect his identity; he does still work in banking. That isn’t his real name, he was called Raymond. I thought that Ray was the funniest man on the planet. He was witty, fast with it and had a truly unique take on life. One time, during one of the regular after work pub sessions, he was so funny that as I laughed, I spat a mouthful of beer all over him. Not really my fault, I was drinking as he spoke and I wasn’t expecting the nugget of comedy that came. Of course, I can’t remember it now. I knew he had a degree in English or something wordy, so I suggested we write some comedy. He was the comedy God, I was merely his willing secretary who might occasionally come up with a pun or two but what a lethal combination that would be. I suggested we used what we had right there in front of us every day; the office. Ray spoke: ‘No one will watch a comedy programme about an office’. He convinced me. Four years later Ricky Gervais proved him wrong. I’m not bitter.

We tried once to write something. We were smoking some imported tobacco at the time which didn’t help.

Ray was so sharp, so funny. His office persona was brilliant, almost a little too brilliant, not quite rehearsed but something told me it wasn’t that spontaneous. A few years after I last saw Ray, I found Bill Hicks. I have a long but weird history with Bill. After rediscovering him, I remembered that I had seen him on TV years before but he was a minor passing interest one night when the imported tobacco hadn’t yet kicked in. Bill Hicks is dead now, he died in 1994. I hungrily listened to all the old recordings. There was something familiar about the material. I had heard a lot of it before, not when he was alive and I was smoking, no, this was after that. It puzzled me for ages and then I remembered; it was Ray. My illusions were shattered. Ray knew that no one in the bank would know Bill. The comedy project was doomed before it began. Ah well, we’ll see what happens this time.

You never know, post one hundred and fifty two might be written straight after the BAFTA awards where we narrowly miss out on a ‘Best Comedy’ gong to Mitchell and Webb.

2551 words and no animal was harmed in the process though I did eat some boiled ham.

EIGHTY EIGHTH POST

(written today)

If the last few entries have been a little disconnected or truncated it is because I lost interest. The lack of internet connection didn’t help but the truth is I still had WORD which is where I write all my thoughts and then cut and paste to WORDPRESS. I am on an electric metre and if I haven’t fed it enough the electric goes off. It happens surprisingly often and at least WORD recovers the document. My greatest fear is that in the middle of an especially fecund entry, when suddenly all the little scraps of this and that began to merge and make sense, the electric would go off and WORDPRESS would refuse to acknowledge that my golden nuggets ever existed. Something similar happened once, a long time ago and no matter how many times I tried to write down what I had lost, it was never good enough, never as potent as the original lost text. Bullshit, I know but that was the emotional sensation and very real for me.

So, yeah. I had WORD. I didn’t have any WORDS. That was the point.

For about thirty seconds I did consider carrying on the ‘Camberwell experience’ post as if four weeks hadn’t passed by but my heart would not let me. Whatever else you can accuse me of, I like honesty. I might, probably will, write about my Camberwell experiences in time but for now all you need to know is that I passed the MA, had fun doing the show, got the certificate in the post and have not seen or heard from one person on the course since.

Ten weeks in the wilderness of no-net. Shit.

282 words

EIGHTY SEVENTH POST

(written in July)

I have been without internet access for six weeks now. It should have been a disaster, with the MA coming to an end and all that stuff. As it is, it means I have been away from all the emails about trivial matters, off the marketing team and unable to bitch on the blog. All of which has meant a smooth, enjoyable end to the course.

Wider still, I have not missed email. I thought I would. There is more to life than being plugged into the net. I like it, don’t misunderstand me dear reader. I think that I had reached a point of addiction, some kind of unhealthy state where use of the internet was disproportionate in my life. Even though the computer has WORD and PHOTOSHOP and PUBLISHER, all applications that I do use in my creative life, since the death of the net access, I have barely touched them. As I am on the edge of being a ‘qualified digital artist’, something I have always disputed, here is the proof that I was right all along. I draw, I write. That is it. I am a digital artist in the sense that we are all digital. I think. There, finally, the result of two years long and hard study; we are all digital now. Make a tee-shirt.

Thirteen posts short of the magic one hundred; I have been asked by several people if I will continue with the blog. Of course! This has always been about more than the bloody course. I will probably link it or merge it with the peep website sooner or later, unless I retire from public life. Tempting. The odd thing is that I have never felt that I have an audience for the blog, this just keeps me happy. I know some people read it; some poor bastards have to for the course, though not for much longer. Is there life after the MA? Once you reach the peak, the air becomes thin and tiredness sets in. I’m clearly not going to find a ‘well paid job’ as I don’t fit into that world. I’m not prepared to bend over and take it in the ass for money. And other than money, what other reason is there to ‘work’? I am interested in doing a PhD but I’m not sure why. Just because. Is that enough of a reason? I fancy it.

Well, I like writing. I like writing about art. I have a weakness for essays and proper binding and so on; all I want is my name on a spine.

Is this enough to attract a sponsor?

 

My Camberwell experience

The weeks leading up to the show had been quite hurried. I felt a little distracted, unprepared. I wrote endless lists and made drawings of how the show might look. A week before going down, three days after two wooden units had been made to order for the space, I was told that I couldn’t have the planned room. It was an odd sensation, partly because I was not on the internet that often; no time to sit and shoot off a missive on ‘how much of a cunt you are’ etc. and so on. It is easy to be angry and difficult when you have the comfort of continuous net access coupled with alcohol. In the morning, at a friend’s house, under pressure to leave, the only reaction to the news is: oh.

The only real issue was that I had asked a friend to make two units for the room. These were supposed to go behind the glass windows to make a ‘cabinet’ for some cups and maybe a few bottles. This was vague thinking of the highest order and as with my plans for the show all along, subject to a change of mind in the slightest of moments. This is how I work. I doodle what I want the show to look like, write a list of what needs doing, delegate as much of the work as possible, procrastinate my own contribution to such a degree that I need to readjust my expectations continually; negotiating, cajoling and making excuses along the way.

This is how it works:

‘I need thirty drawings!’ Two weeks pass, during which time I have done six drawings. ‘I can manage with twenty!’. A week passes and I have managed another four, making a total of ten. It is now two days before I leave for London, I have no idea what space I have and I have very little time left to draw. ‘I can knock off another four, maybe, and then take the OHP….just in case!’ This I do. I end up using nine drawings. I selected. I curated.

794 words

EIGHTY SIXTH POST

(written in June)

I have had a week away. Not a sentence I have ever been able to write before. As a young romantic, I had three months away hitch-hiking around Europe but that was a youthful taste of adventure, not a break. It was work; I had a self-image to cultivate. I was the pasty non-smoking Kerouac. Who didn’t write, much. Or do drugs. Then. I was pretty clean for a bum.

I would never do the sun worshipping package holiday. Never, ever. Then again, unless you have first hand experience of something, I don’t think you have the right to sneer. And the holiday was free. And it was only a week, I think I could manage a week, and if nothing else, I could read or perhaps sketch. That was my rationale. The kids were excited about flying and swimming in the pool every day and lazing on the beach, eating in restaurants and so on.

So, that was that; a week of no internet, no art and very little contact with my real world. I thought beforehand that the timing was pretty lousy, just a week before the Israeli project, itself just two weeks before the MA show. I can’t go away and neglect all that. Well, I did. My mind was pretty empty beyond making the decision of whether to swim in the pool, stroll down to the beach or sit in the shade with my book; I chose to holiday with Alan Bennett and his childhood. Each day rolled into the next without much to mark the passing of any time.

I don’t have any profound statement to make. It wasn’t the tedious nightmare I had assumed it would be. Stripped of any cultural nonsense, it was a very simple week. I enjoyed it, as uneventful as it was. The truth is I might have got no more done in that week had I stayed in England. Of late, my arse has been dragging when it comes to making any work.

Most of the MA show is in place, a few loose ends need to be tied. As for the Israeli project, I am confident we have discussed enough, thought enough about the project to make some work. It is a little strange as I don’t feel any pressure about it, as if there is no expectation of anything from anyone. The Israeli Embassy in London is involved in the funding, as are local arts organisations. I think the show will receive a very limited audience and I really don’t care what the other participants, beyond my art-partner, make of my contribution. This means I can play, I think.

The Cupps came on holiday with me, some of them, not all ten thousand and they enjoyed it.

463 words

 

3W88_EIGHTY FIFTH POST

Ah, the elusive eighty fifth post. The final show is all sketched out on the back of an envelope. I think it will be all right. It will contain some new work; some stuff from the last two years and a crucial part of the exhibition will be to encourage the public to take part, to respond directly on some aspects. This isn’t the neatly packaged summary or the beautifully framed show that you can buy. I’m not even sure it will be an indication of what you can expect from this bright young thing as he finally enters the real art world proper, post education. It is for me, for now.

It is an ending. I never really considered if there was going to be an ‘after’. I have an art career, if you can call it that. A lot of the time, the MA has seemed almost incidental. It is becoming clear to me that this is it, the final part of a something. When I think of the months ahead beyond July, I feel a twinge of joy at some imagined liberation. No one will be watching. No expectation. I know I will continue with PEEP!, the gallery aspect. I might even make more zines. I will paint. I will write. I am trying to get a joint writing project started now, before the end.

There is the temptation to do very little for a while. I don’t really know what ‘time off’ is but the school summer break might be a good excuse to potter and dabble, ready for a relaunch in the autumn. By then, the gallery project in Halifax will be over. I have a solo exhibition pencilled in at a local venue for November which is supposed to be a new body of painted work; nothing too exciting really, not in terms of anyone noticing. The work might be interesting. I might even suck arts council cock and go against all the previous ranting about funding in order to expand the PEEP! empire, with the sole purpose of being talked about in the Guardian or reviewed on the a-n website. I know; I aim high.

The most likely scenario is that I will retreat to my studio and write a bit, paint a bit and be happy with that. I find it hard to see art in any career terms or know what a logical art move might be for an unsure purpose. I do this to make stuff, for that moment. Not a very brilliant mission statement. I am therefore I do.

At the end of June, the studio is hosting some Israeli artists. Some of the studio members will be working with them on a joint project for two weeks, ending with an exhibition of the work. I am involved, not normally something I would be interested in; I’m not interesting enough, I make silly drawings. And I don’t do social events. And I don’t do well meaning art projects that have little to do with my idea of what art is, thinly disguised with stock phrases and mock platitudes concerning the purpose of this international exchange. As it is, I have been fortunate to be matched up with someone who is intelligent and perceptive enough to be able to smell the bullshit too. We have a lot of common ground, it’ll be fun. So, I am really looking forward to the two weeks, the experience more important and potentially more satisfying than the end result. Ah, it’ll look good on the CV. The CV that no one reads.

You have to try new things and challenge your own preconceptions; you have to grow and develop, be open to the new. It could have been a very dull project with a different ‘partner’ but already, before any work has been done, this interaction with an artist from another culture, with this particular artist, has proved to be rewarding, invigorating really. For the moment, this is all I will say about this project but I sense a beginning of something and the timing, right at the end of the MA, is fortuitous but significant. I know this.

I wanted to do an audio recording for the final show. PEEP! stand up. I can make it in time, I think. Whether I should, whether it is just padding, I need to consider. I am sitting on this material for a different project. I don’t think I need it for the final show. I’d like to include it but then again, I’d like more space; I have a kitchen sink that I could throw in.

I had a good tutorial today. That is all I have to say about that.   

I’m sorry this isn’t an exciting entry.

795 words

3W88_EIGHTY FOURTH POST

The full symposium text

PEEP! is a project with one mission: change. We need change. We have to change or perish. We have no divine right to exist. We are nothing but sophisticated bacteria.

PEEP! can make a difference; it is an evolutionary and continuous process of questioning. We aim to encourage the people of the world to come together, united in opposition to the current system of governance that perpetuates the oppression of the people, by the people, for the benefit of a few people. Life does not have to be shit. 

PEEP! does not have all the answers. We think that creating a dialogue and fostering the desire for a new way is more important than imposing a doctrine from above. This should be a fun process! We have to laugh in the face of adversity, a much better plan than keeping up the pretense that all will be well in the end; that science will mysteriously provide the answer. You’d be better off trusting in God.

PEEP! is an attempt at offering solutions. We have to reevaluate what is important. Making money isn’t. A tiny minority benefit from that scheme. Most people struggle to enjoy the rewards of their labour. By the time you own the house, you’re practically dead. Just about managing every month, peppered with the occasional ‘treat’ isn’t living; it is existing; stuck in the same cycle. Let art into your life!

Art has been significant since the beginning of humankind. We need to claim it back from the artificial system we live in. Art can heal the world. We live in a world saturated with visual material; we need to infiltrate this culture to begin to make a difference.

PEEP! has one aim; to make the world come together, united in opposition to the many evils that oppress the masses. The masses being most of us. Many of us are poor, even those who are fortunate enough to live in the prosperous West. In the West we have a good education system and healthcare for all, generally. We are able to eat and have shelter. And we have television. We have the light in the corner of the room that offers the truth. The truth that we have it quite good and we should be grateful for that. We haven’t been murdered, raped and we don’t have to queue for handouts. We don’t have horrible diseases that make our children die at a pathetically young age and when we do have some nasty threat, it is usually short lived and perfectly balanced by post-traumatic care and compensation. Money heals. Time only adds an extra nought to the claim.

People die and people are born. People kill, are killed and wish to kill. Fuck everybody else. There is no society. The world is full of whinging scruffy cunts who add nothing to the gene pool. You are a walking inconvenience who has to be managed and herded for three score and ten by a world government that is trying to find a lasting final solution that we won’t notice. We are at a tipping point in history. If we continue along the current path, we are fucked. The next generation will be even more subservient. Fatter, thicker and even less interested in humanity, let alone the people next door. Shut off, occupied; entertained. Ignorant of the truth. The news will be nothing other than a fake reality show, even more so than it currently is.

Culture; manufactured consumer trends with built in obsolescence. Sponsored by the multi-nationals, funded by the government; state approved art. At the top level, hand in hand with private finance, banking and wealthy businessmen and at the bottom the continuous struggle to make work and retain the belief that you have something of value to offer, not monitory value; meaning. Hoping for some recognition without crossing the line where you sell your soul for a quick fix. The system is designed so that you have to belong to be of value. Well, turn away from the corporate whores and the money men. Join the paupers. Revel in poverty. Make your work and make it seen.

Disclaimer: None or all of the views expressed in this piece are necessarily those of the author, nor any of the author’s imaginary associates.

700 words

3W88_EIGHTY THIRD POST

I am waiting to see what space I will have at the final show. I was hoping for a room but now I think I’d be just as happy with a long wall space, possibly happier as the rooms in the basement seem….crowded with wires and other weird objects. Stuff they need to function, I know this. I’m not being fussy or moaning; really, I can work with anything. Yes, there are ‘perfect’ spaces; smooth walls, brilliant proportion and so on, good light but I do wonder why such an institution can’t provide a dedicated, semi-professional space for the use of students. It would be better, even if the ‘gallery’ was off-sight and shared with the other partners of the ULA. Perhaps they already have good spaces.

I have a room

So the challenge is to make work to go in a room I have never seen, properly. Time seems to be running out before I have started. I know what I want to do. It will be a PEEP! gallery presenting the recent work of Bob Milner. The website will hopefully expand on the whole PEEP! thing. I need some audience participation in the show. I’m not sure if I can be there to act as ringmaster. Even if I make it down, I’d only stand in a corner frowning and slowly getting pissed.

I have a desire to make better work

I am a little tired of the process I am used to. I make work made to measure. I want this MA to be over with so that I can concentrate on making work that is self indulgent and my personal gift to posterity. I don’t care if I sound an arse, perhaps I am an arse.

Time and again I tell myself, I am a tuna fish.

I want to play and explore and create some painted surfaces that I feel I need to do, get out of my system and so on blah blah. I think I have wrote of all this shit before but ever the one for repetition, I will say it again. I need to paint. I need to make the kind of work I want to. I do like the silly drawings, the written prose that is a bit rantish, the piss take work. I do like it. It is a part of me. I don’t ever allow the other, more painterly, more studied, more thoughtful, sensitive side out. I should, I need to be more in touch with the effete, the cultured. Fuck it. Why not?

I’m writing the jingles not composing the symphony.

I’m doing articles for Reader’s Digest not writing the Great Novel.

I’m pigging out on crisps rather than eating a meal.

I’m googling rather than reading.

I’m paddling rather than swimming.

I’m wanking rather than making love.

I’m carrying on with this inane list rather than accepting that the one person who reads this shite has got it already. I need to move on. Oh, never has such a passing thought carried so much symbolic emphasis. If only you knew, dear reader.

Yeah, so. Yeah. PEEP! In a room. Some work.

Extract from the symposium text that I left out

“We tend to think that the visual arts are in a healthy way. Twenty thousand art students are ejaculated each year from the fecund bell end of higher education. Most of them wither and die in the fallopian tubes of paid work. A few push on, determined. Once in a while and not very often, one lucky sperm makes it and an art star is born. And that is if you are lucky, if you even end up in the correct orifice. Those that work in advertising and marketing are clearly the product of anal sex, destined to end up as a flaky crust in the undergarments of posterity.”

 645 words

3W85_EIGHTY SECOND POST

I doubt I will reach that elusive one hundredth post before finishing the course. That means my average has fallen to less than one post a week which is fairly shocking for someone with my ego. I can waffle at a semi-professional level. I should be on post two hundred by now, possibly even higher. My recent lack of interest in all things MADA hasn’t helped. I will carry on posting beyond the course; this will become ‘my blog’. Not a MADA requirement, just the assorted ramblings of a neurotic mind. I never felt it was a necessity for the course really. I haven’t worried too much about that.

 

I hope I pass. It will be a total pisser if not. I don’t expect a bouquet of flowers and a shiny tiara, looking radiant in my Miss Digital Arts sash and matching two piece. (If you set up the tripod John….)

 

I am getting excited about the final show. I have some work to do for it and a long drive of 196 miles, taking three hours and forty one minutes, according to multi-map. It will be odd being in the building and meeting people who up until now have been names in a virtual landscape. Will it smell like a proper art institution? I am impressed they have a life drawing class. I might pose in my birthday suit with nothing but a cup to spare my modesty. (If you set up the easel John…) If it helps me get that pass.

 

I have spent the evening at work scribbling notes about the show. It is all coming together in my fractured and occupied mind. I imagined that the room I wanted had a door, which it doesn’t appear to have when I looked at the images on the wiki, so that aspect of the plan will need a tweak. The whole place looks like a bunker. Cue footage of RKO cockerel and fast talking American voice: “Berlin, 1945 and enthusiastic hobby painter A. Hitler makes his final preparations for a major retrospective of his technically proficient watercolours. Herr Hitler welcomes the prospect of an influx of Russian visitors to the bunker, eager as ever to make a sale. Everyone is hoping the opening night goes with a bang, followed by a traditional roast.”

 

Do I go on? I never know when to finish a post. I am reading ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ by Robert…shit, I forget. He is dead. Old book….but brilliant. Tressell! Robert Tressell…..yes. Where would we be without fuckingoogle? Did life exist prior to the dawn of fuckingoogle? Here… it is a shit entry, but all the same:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged_Trousered_Philanthropists

 

I’ve had enough. I’m off to bed.

 

450 words

3W83_EIGHTY FIRST POST

Six long weeks have passed since the silent crit. I have the notes on my desktop somewhere; my main recollection was that the beer or prospect of beer took all the focus away from anything meaningful. Perhaps the flaw is that I don’t really understand what PEEP! is or should be, or that I cannot find a way to communicate what it is or could be to people.

 

It should be a culture within the greater culture, like a wart. A parasite that needs the host to exist but has its own characteristics. A sub culture then, a one man movement. A bowel movement, of a fairly light and spattered kind. A morning after the night before evacuation.

 

I think the longing to be off this course, away from the screen and the guff that goes with being a student at Camberwell, is pulling at me more strongly than any desire I had to be an MA. I thought I was being practical; I will do the work anyway, may as well get some kind of recognition for it. A bit of paper to file away. And in the early stages of the course I was excited about the international angle of it, the promise of new learning and vigorous debate. I could sense a whole body of work ahead of me that I was eager to make. Some of that has happened but the main story of the last eighteen months is one of coping with the disappointment whilst letting my art life carry on regardless of Camberwell.

 

I can tick all the boxes. I love my studio, I really appreciate being part of a very mixed group and the opportunities that have happened, would only have happened because of my involvement with Westgate. I get up and want to be there. And I go there. A few weeks back I spent the best part of three days drawing letters of the alphabet with ink and nib pen. Over and over until I was happy with each character I needed. That is not me. I cut and paste, I scavenge, pilfer, adapt. I can draw but who gives a fuck? Few people. Ok, no one. Not even me most of the time.

 

I am part of a gallery project, and I have my own gallery project and I am hoping to expand that. So, box ticked. The gallery box, an important box. Every two months we open the studio up to the public and I make work for those nights, a chance to do something. I take it, that chance.

 

I haven’t started on the new paintings yet for the ‘solo’ show in November. I haven’t fiddled with the PEEP! website yet to make something of it. We haven’t done a new issue of MTS for a few months. I have stopped looking for other gallery submission opportunities for MTS as we have enough on with the space in Halifax. A couple of shows are marked in though, so it ticks along nicely and that box can be ticked. MTS is not dead.

 

And the beer. The first batch was all right. A little too young really when it went out and the labels could have been a lot better. And my ‘marketing’ of the product and the concept could have been sharper, I suppose. If I were someone else, you’d have heard of my beer. It would have been in supplements, on art websites; talked about. I admit it, I am very low key. I am not mercenary enough or pushy about self promotion. I made the beer because I wanted to. I was once the kind of person who would sweat and bust a gut to push the marketing side, agonise over press releases and all the crap that goes with promotion. All that nonsense just doesn’t interest me anymore. It never really did but I thought it was something you had to do, that it was what ‘made’ you as an artist. Shit ideas, good PR. I now go for shit on all fronts and I’m happier for it.

 

On the subject of excrement, as this blog often seems to be, I did apply to the Saatchi search-for-an-art-star TV talent contest. As MTS not me, solo. There is no ironic posturing here. We won’t be selected; we won’t even come within spitting distance. I am sure there are at least ten thousand hopefuls all wanting a shot. If we were offered the chance, it would be great! Fuck it, a free studio in London for a few months and an experience you can’t pay for, except with your dignity perhaps but what does that matter? Everything is about learning and developing.

 

Aside from the small PEEP! gallery, the rest of the project is in a state of limbo. I don’t know what to do with the submissions. I am not an art agent. The publication has stalled because I don’t know what it is I want it to be. Not a miscellany of work by other people, not really. Who needs another zine like that? I can’t make it into a ‘proper’ book as I don’t have the money. I could try to chase the elusive pot of arts council money but if I did, and I don’t think I like the idea of suckling that particular teat, I would prefer to apply for the bigger PEEP! gallery project.

 

All this leads to indecision about the final show.

 

The other issue I am trying to resolve, which I can’t before July, is the purpose of doing any of this. No, the focus of it all. The purpose…silly; fun and why not, better than working for a living. The focus of it is the issue. And if I get that right, then the method of delivery will fall into place. The context is the unsustainable culture/society we have created. The whole of it, beyond this temporary financial crisis or concern for the melting ice cap, I am addressing the bigger, biggest picture. We are pretty much fucked as a species if we don’t make some serious adjustments. Even with serious and far reaching adjustments, we are going to suffer a great deal, there will be death and misery on an unprecedented scale, and it is coming. Not a Biblical end of days, fire and..hang on, there will be a lot of destruction. Not a God thing then but an inevitable consequence of the progression of the human race for the last, um, four thousand years. Like washing machines and other ‘white goods’ that come with a one year warranty; we, as a species, have inbuilt obsolescence. Our manufacturers guarantee is due to expire.

 

The question is how to prepare for it, what steps we can take to manage the chaos and possibly prevent as much mass death; what we have to do during the transition period from now to post-now, in whatever form that will be. I think we have reached or gone beyond ‘peak comfort’. It is, despite the ‘advances’ that will appear in the near future (mere cosmetic tinkering and more wealth accumulation for the minority at the expense of the majority) and the promise of ‘change’ and the coming together of nations in crisis after crisis, a downhill ride from here on in. These are, if you measure it in material ways, the best of times. Enjoy your trainers.

 

1235 words

3W75_EIGHTIETH POST

“Crit Review”: Four questions for you to consider.

 

1. With respect to what PEEP! is or how you perceive it, what area would you consider to be the strongest and/or weakest and is there one aspect that should be concentrated on? Please refer to SEVENTY SEVENTH POST for the most lucid account yet of what it is all about.  

 

2. Should PEEP! develop a system to determine the relative worth of an artist, based upon criteria, examples of which are: technical ability, knowledge of art history, a critical understanding of contemporary practice, depth of creative ideas, inability to avoid bullshit in regards to art practice. Those failing to convince ought to be culled. Discuss.

 

3. Taking into account your response to question one, what kind of presence should PEEP! have at the final show? Would you concentrate on submissions and the curation of those submissions, expect more of the original work of Bob Milner; should this be virtual or actual or would it be better if PEEP! was not included at all?

 

4. If the final show was simply a PEEP! beer, hand made, delivered to the gallery etc. would you be pissed off because you couldn’t be involved? A jpeg would not do justice to the taste of my beer. A tasting guide would only hint at the wonder, the explosion of sexstasy of PEEP! beer on your palette. Is this a suitable end to the MADA version of the project?

 

5. Who is your favourite artist? One choice only.

 

251 words

 

Shit, I am a few words short. Oh bugger. Well, the nature of PEEP! is not adhering to any rules, despite the shortcoming and obvious flaw of being involved (however loosely) in mainstream art academia; education being too strong a word to use. I don’t think that it matters what happens today. I would like some response, which is why I made some questions to make it easier. Too often in the last eighteen months there have been blank screens and a lack of substance, so I don’t really expect anything different this time. Oh, we might have a full class, which would be good.

 

I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing and it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about the project. I do this because I want to and if the board or the external examiner is happy to assess it and hand over a piece of paper, brilliant. You won’t upset me, so please, shoot off. That would be great, some life in here at long last. I’m mute anyway!

 

426 words

 

Bastard! I thought I had it then, thought I was at the word count. I know it is crucial that I get it B for the Bang On. Or else. It must mean my mind isn’t as sharp as all the others. All those wagging tongues. I’ve told you over the months what PEEP! is all about so if you haven’t read it, tough. I’m not repeating it all just to take up space; not when I can waffle instead. Oh shit, gone over now.

 

513 words

 

www.peeep.co.uk