The idea of creating a contemporary art installation developed between 12th July 2002 and 29th April 2003 and led to knowing how I was going to use the rest of my life after reaching the age of sixty five in March 1964
On July 12th the Baltic Contemporary art centre opened in Gateshead on the banks of the river Tyne and during the day there was a build up of information on regional news programmes leading to a series of special programmes on BBC 2.
That such a project had been developed in Gateshead was amazing and signalled a significant change in the cultural experience of living in Tyne and Wear. The creation of the centre from a building which had been a flour Mill was in fact part of a strategy by forward looking politicians, development agencies and those interested in cultural activities, to transform how the region saw itself and how others saw the region, and which had is roots, perhaps unknowingly, with the ending of great industries of the North in the mid 1980’s, as coal mining, steel making and ship building all collapsed and then disappeared from Northumbria.
Then in the 1990’s while the development of the car assembly plant of Nissan outside of Sunderland provided employment for a major workforce the transformation of the central areas of the city of Newcastle and the newly created city of Sunderland was kick started by the creation of two new universities, based on existing institutions of further education. Whereas now the ancient University of Newcastle provides for 20000 fulltime students in long standing buildings in the city centre, Northumbria University in Newcastle has 300000 full time students and an iconic new building complex with a new bridge over the central highway connecting the old and new complexes. Similarly in Sunderland a new complex on the banks of the River Wear has been created with the consequence that there are also over 20000 full time students and in all three instances students come from all over the world. In Gateshead as in South and North Tyneside, as well as in Sunderland and Newcastle colleges of further education have been developed bringing together six form colleges, study for degrees and other part time courses in association with business and industry, including for apprenticeships and for lifelong learning, providing over 50000 places and running alongside the continuing College of Art and design in Newcastle(a range of applied art courses are provided at Sunderland University together with South Tyneside College.
This growth in higher and further education has a combined teaching and administrative staff in excess of 25000, radically changing the population structure and transforming the centres of the cities and towns, creating new residential communities and developing the provision of food and recreation activities for primarily the contemporary generations of 16-25 year olds.
This in turn has aided tourism making Newcastle the second most popular city to London for a short break. In addition to two Major football stadiums seating 100000, there has been multi million pounds expenditure on two existing theatres enabling performances from international touring companies and a multi million pound transformation of a third theatre, the developments of arenas and concert hall halls for all kinds events and with the creation of two major new concert halls in an iconic building adjacent to the Baltic on the Gateshead side of the Tyne river, and the promotion of range of festivals, including separate modern and traditional jazz events. There are now five multiplex cinemas and one specialist international film theatre, a world class Olympic standard swimming pool, casinos and the continued development of the largest and outdoor shopping complex in Europe.
This package was intended to make Newcastle and Gateshead the European centre of culture for 2008, but had to settle for runner up to Liverpool. This was the vision which the Baltic was to fit in alongside a score of art galleries and museums. It is also fair to say that the majority of older local residents were bemused, curious, under whelmed and sceptical.
In discussing the Baltic building and the opening exhibition on the July Friday Newsnight Arts Review programme, Germaine Greer summed up my subsequent reaction on visiting. It was an important new development but there was no WOW. This was art of the mind, clever art, and art of contemporary skills and materials, but I was not moved, challenged or stimulated by anything experienced. This reflected my personality and interests but I was aware from the reactions of many of those visiting, that I was not alone in this reaction.
Between the opening of the Baltic and making my first visit I went on a mini trip which included a visit to the recreation of wartime Britain at Eden Camp in Yorkshire, to Bolsover Castle in the midlands and Eltham Palace in London. I had watched Yorkshire play Durham at a Cricket match in Leeds and taken a thirty mile car journey to watch the film, No Mans Land which trailed a film on the Life of Jackson Pollock, to be shown a few weeks later.
I had seen some Jackson Pollock original works at the London Tate decades before and my knowledge of him as an artist was based on a Melvin Bragg programme which had become distant memory. Although I had never experienced his brooding depression, the binge drinking and binge sex, there was something about the man and his life which struck a chord rather than having empathy with his work output. However I was filled with the need to understand why some visual artists devoted themselves to work which aroused public ridicule, destroying themselves as balanced people, experiencing family and personal breakdown and failing to integrate their lives with society generally.
A few days after seeing the film I made a special visit to my birth and care mothers who lived together 300 miles away on the southern outskirts of London, and decided to try and purchase a book or two which might help to understand the nature of contemporary art. Over the previous three years I had travelled by car to visit and assist in their care over a period of a week and on average once a month. This time I travelled by train and there was time before the evening departure to visit the bookshops in the Charing Cross Road. By good fortune research on the internet I had decided on two books which were to transform my life, but could not find either until visiting the London branch of the famous Oxford Bookshop, Blackwell’s. I still could not find the books in the art section although on checking the computer there were copies of both in stock. A young assistant explained that it had been his idea to create a separate section on contemporary art and I was shown where the two works were located: After Modern Art 1945-2000 by David Hopkins, Oxford Art History, and Concepts of Modern Art, From Fauvism to Postmodernism edited by Nikos Stangos in the World of Art Series published by Thames and Hudson.
On return train journey back I concentrated on two chapters in the second book: Conceptual Art by Roberta Smith and Post Modernism and the art of identity by Christopher reed. These two chapters had as great an effect on my life as had previously reading two of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal reports as an adolescent school boy in 1954 on the recommendation of our Jesuit teacher of modern history and then rereading the Sermon on the Mount again shortly after leaving school in 1955 having experienced my first loss of faith in the Catholic Church. These readings had led to embarking upon the Gandhian teachings of Satyagraha and to deciding to spend six months in prison rather than accepting a recognisance to stop non violent protests against the British possession and potential use of weapons of mass destruction on 1960.
There were two reasons why I found these two chapters of such significance. Over the previous five decades I had thought of many things which others had transformed into physical works of art. I had tried to play the piano and then the clarinet, I had tried to draw and paint. I had longed to try creating objects from clay or in bronze but lacked the means and knowledge. I relished the company of artists who were part of the peace movement and devoured programmes and books about individual lives and lifestyles. On leaving prison I had written a play which the Readers at the Royal Court had felt of sufficient interest to suggest to the company that they look at what else I had created. I had not, and had then accepted a place at Ruskin College and then switched to the University Diploma in Public and Social Administration and professional social work practice. I directed my creative energy into this work while always nagging away was the wish to create something which expressed my soul and vision of the world. It was not until attending an international management college in the mid 1980 that my personality was psychometrically tested and I came to understand the nature of my creativity and its impact on relationships, personal and professional.
For several years I harnessed the insights gained in ways which resulted in greater creative productivity but channelled in such a way that I also became more satisfied with my life. When what had become an all embracing career came to an end I wrote a novel which again received some encouragement as well as rejection. Because of the unusual nature of my childhood and upbringing, which had thrown up problems akin to dyslexia, autism and Asperger’s I had always had difficulties in communicating what I felt and thought. Not knowing who was my biological mother until attending school and never being sure if the individual said by relatives when I was an adolescent to my father, I had more than the usual uncertainties about who I was. While always being heterosexually interested and inclined, I was also aware that an upbringing by three single women, only one of whom had been married, had given me a greater feminine personality and outlook than appeared to be usual for the boys and males of my immediate experience. Just when I was comfortable with my sense of identity and just before my sixtieth birthday I learnt for the first time that my father had been a senior priest in the Catholic church and this his family were from Malta, although similar to my mother he had was born in Gibraltar, but had then been taken back to Malta for his education and subsequent training for the priesthood. This changed my perception of self and my experience to that moment.
Reading those two chapters against this background, became a revelatory experience in two ways. For the first time I had a clear vision about the development of contemporary and the point to which it had reached, and I understood myself as a creative artist and for the time in my life all the dots became connected. I was not confident about producing work or certain about the form of work but I commenced to reorganise my life as a working contemporary artist.
However at the very point when I was ready to devote myself full time into creative work activity three developments stopped me at the point reached. I was invited to give evidence on behalf of sixty claimants in a contested Class action in the High Court and it was several months before the case was settled out of court with a settlement satisfactory to the those involved, and to their lawyers. My birth mother who had severe short term memory loss with psychosis was admitted into residential care when her sister who had been my care mother, was admitted to hospital against her expressed wishes because of medical and nursing negligence and died as a consequence of a secondary hospital based infection within a matter of days. My marriage of over thirty five years failed.
At one level the combination of these three developments led to an emotional breakdown and a re-examination and re-evaluation of my life, but it also changed my everyday perception in a way not experienced since leaving prison in 1960, seeing the film Jazz on a Summer’s day and listening to records of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas and String quartets, first heard during a brief stay at an open prison camp in the second month of the experience.
And then at the end of April 2003 I travelled by coach to London to stay at the former home of my birth mother while visiting her on a daily basis in residential care. The journey from the north east to London by coach is long taking, on average over seven hours, but it usually quieter and more comfortable than standard class train travel. On the outward journey I read Wladyslaw Szpilman's, "The Pianist," after seeing the film, and where the extract from the diary of Captain Wilm Hosenfield was as moving and of interest as the life of Wladyslaw. The Pianist is book about someone who survived the ghetto to become an international artist. I was reminded that although I knew I was a creative, I was not functioning as one, or engaged in artistic activity. It was in this frame of mind that before returning home I made an early morning visit to see my mother and then took the train to London to visit the Saatchi 100 exhibition at his gallery, then at the former County Hall building on the South Bank close to Waterloo railway station and the giant Millennium Ferris Wheel, The London Eye, passing the Dali sculptures and exhibition of his work. Unusually I can remember most details of that day, in part because I made notes and then converted them to a laptop and desktop and have written of the experience several times.
The impact of the Saatchi 100 works which changed British Art was intoxicating, sending me whooping with joy at the translation of concepts into a fairyland of heaven and hell and with the dramatic awareness that I had come home.
In one large area there were two works by the same individual. One I had some awareness because it had attracted media attention. Superficially it was a bed with objects but to me it was a naked soul who had looked into the abyss. Above the bed the artist had crucified herself. When you look into the abyss said Nietzsche, the abyss looks into you. The artist was Tracey Emin. I quickly made my way to where my travel bag was stored and retrieved a notebook and then seeking permission from a security steward sat on the floor and wrote down what I thought and felt. There was sadness and joy, empathy and remembrance of my own experience. I rushed around seeing everything, delighted that among the present day there was some Bratby and I made a note to reread his two novels, 'Breakdown' and Breakfast and Elevenses,' published in 1960 and 1961 and read for the first time in 1963 after buying them second hand.
On my way out I bought Stephen White's disappointing cleaned up photo of the Bed together '100 Works that changed British Art' hardback edition, and giggled at the audacity of deciding that I would go home to produce the hundred and first work, blissfully unaware of the extent to which the wider concept of 101 was already in active circulation.
Later I discovered there were 98000 Google references to Ms Emin and I read several hundred of these, printing many for further reflection. I acquired a copy of. ‘This is another Place', Modern art Oxford, and 'The Art of Tracey Emin, Thames and Hudson, edited by Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend, The Tracey Emin Video and by luck was able to make a tape of some TV Programmes.
I was not dispirited to learn that most of what I had recently been thinking and feeling had been thought and worked through before, by others, especially after reading But is it Art? by Cynthia Freeland, bought at the Tate Modern, that same afternoon. I was confronted by the notion that everything I now thought had been thought and worked through by others before and with greater clarity, and that everything I wanted to do, had already been done better. It was as if I have lived in a parallel universe but unlike Dr Who or Primeval, I was able to now successfully cross over. This sense of enlightenment and satisfied beingness was reinforced by my first visit that same afternoon to the Tate Modern which like the Baltic has a Millennium pedestrian Bridge outside linking to the main areas of the city.
On leaving school in 1955 at the age of sixteen years I had worked in a building around the corner from the Tate Gallery and went regularly to look at exhibits during lunch times. I had been much affected by the work of Rodin more than anyone else, and continued to make visits when I left the office in 1957, including the Painting and Sculpture of a decade 1954-1964 exhibition. As with the Bratby at the Saatchi there was some Stanley Spencer at Tate modern which reminding of the impact of Gulley Jimpson, in Joyce Carey's ‘the Horses Mouth ‘and the wallow and slosh of paint. However I was to take a very different route because of other work on show that day about which I had no previous knowledge.
The Saatchi visit had focussed on the work of Tracey Emin but her work and that of others, revealed who I was and who I had been but not what I was going to do. I found the physical nature of objects fun and impressive although presumed that in some instances other people had been employed to translate the ideas of the artists into what I experienced such as the room filled with liquid and distorting balance and creating the dual image as that when looking across a lake; the underground map of people that influenced; the room of distorted instruments, come to mind, as well as the installation of hell bringing back the memory of the Rodin Gates. however these and others had little impact on what I decided to do and have done.
On arrival at the Tate Modern I had found a seat overlooking the former Turbine Room where people were laying on the floor looking upwards at something I could not then see, and I eat a late lunch of home made salami sandwiches, two purchased crème caramels and drank a can a diet coke. I was then ready to explore and found the experience overpowering, but instantly knew what I was going to do and why, excited at the possibility but also afraid that there would not be time for me to achieve something of value, and also afraid there would be time, but I would fail, as I had failed in several important aspects of my life. I also realised that a chronicle of aspiration and failure was as valid as one of achievement and success.
After the meal I took a lift to the first public access floor and the rest as they say has become my daily experience. Several artists moved and challenged piling on one layer of WOW and revelation upon another. I became so excited that I abandoned a visit to the theatre or cinema that evening and returned to the apartment to develop the idea precipitated by the work of four artists in particular. Through their work I found a portal between my world of sixty four years and theirs. I knew not only who I was had been but what I was going to do, and have done so for close on six years.
Top of the list remains Bruce Nauman. On the first visit it was Good Boy Bad boy which first caught my attention but I did not stay for the full session and it was only the second visit which confirmed the impact. On that first visit it was his photos of the concept work where he had created a living area as an exhibited installation and then exchanged objects from his flat with those which he had put on exhibition which echoed my feeling that my work had to cover everything that I had of my life. I had long since rejected the convention biographical work which usually centres on the aspect for which the individual had become well known rather than the totality of their experience. The idea of keeping and putting everything about me into one situation was an extension of this concept. Ideally I should move everything I own into a working art space, while retaining some areas for privacy, the objects and the work activity and the output should be able to be viewed by anyone interested at any time both through a physical presence and also via the internet and the web cams. The use by Bruce Nauman and others of neon lights and colourful pieces at both places influenced the decision to create artman signature card with glitter and also to use glitter on the spine of volumes of card work.
On a second visit I listened to the full Good and Bad Boy performance of sixty minutes, fifty two seconds, and apart from the hypnotic musicality, there was something more profound: a dialectic dialogue about gender and identity. Well that was my reaction. There was something about me in his work or me putting myself into his work. My third visit to the Tate was exclusive for the Nauman installation in the Turbine Hall. The installation comprised speakers on either side of the long side walls fixed at intervals. I had with me a voice recorder which picked up background sounds so I walked from speaker to speaker the length wise listening to each cycle and making my comments as I walked between. I then transferred this recording to a laptop and must check if this is so later. My actions that day attracted some attention from other visitors. This was an important stage because I felt my experience was an instinctive personal performance. It was what Nauman’s work needed to appreciate his experience but which also became a different work through my experience .
On the first visit the Tate Modern had two areas, booths, where it was possible to watch recordings of Sarah Lucas, including street performing which must have taken great courage. I did not set out for my visit to become a performance nor did I attempt to communicate what I was doing with anyone else. However it was a taste of what being a performing artist must be like and confirmed he difficult I would have in putting idea into practice.
I was also much influence by the Joseph Beuys, not so much the work available abut but audio information about his life and beliefs, something which I followed up later, I was also able to follow up the visit with internet searches.
The most important influence that day in terms of the precise form my work would take was that of Hanne Darbovan who present a series of numbered cards.
For the rest of the day and most of the night I found it difficult to contain myself filled the certainty about what I wanted to do and how I would do it. I then made lots of notes on the coach journey back the following day. During the period 1960 2003 I had accumulated substantial records of aspects of my life. The material was not comprehensive and a lot if was confidential and must remain so but it would form the basis for recreating the experience of my life in the context of the world external to me.
I decided to recreate my life from birth 3.9.39 to the age of 65 in the form of A4 cards with one card representing every hour, over 600000 cards, and make them into sets of 24 some 24000, which would be bound in volumes, level arch files and in boxes and sealed filing cabinets. Each card would be numbered and each set signed together with front card made with glitter glue. The Artman and signature cards would themselves become part of the total card output with their own numbering.
As a starter working framework I divided the 600000 cards between those which reflected the work process and its development, those with covered events together with others with covered information. There would also be creative work sets and those to be treated as confidential as well as those which covered lists, of books, of audio records, of various activities including theatre and cinema films and of the project itself which was called 101. I selected black folders and black boxes for development and creative work. Blue for events and information records and red for confidential. And that is what I have done since, some completing over 8000 sets and close on 200000 cards
The project has evolved in various ways Early on I bought a digital camera to record the process of creating the work as well as the environment in which it was stored and as a bonus the camera included a memory stick for taking photos or short film clips. Although over the first two years I created 20 hours of films, these remain unedited and I have concentrated on taking stills of every completed card as well as photo essays of present experience reflecting on the past with some 310000 photos created, only a small proportion of which have been converted into A4 cards. As a substitute for talking direct to anyone wanting to view what I was doing I created 101 90 mins audio tapes.
Of the 8000 sets over 1700 are confidential although only a proportion of these are destined to be secured in large four draw black cabinets. Those in display units or red boxes will need to be kept within viewable but securely locked containers, enabling them to become public access if consent is given or the individuals concerned die.
Those which must remain confidential will be sealed with a welded black metal cover once full, (I am using ten at present but will need another ten to twenty more when the work is completed). The idea of sealing into black cabinets developed during 2003. The first influence was the black monoliths in the films 2001 and 2010 which represent the original and ongoing creation of the universe and therefore the ongoing recreation of my individual experience within the known universe. The second influence was another German artist and sculptor, Eva Grubinger who used black and exhibited at the Baltic September November 2003 and commented that black projected something sinister, secretive and menacing.
It was in May 2006 that I decide to created a Blog site on AOL 101 Public and Private Art 2003-2012 with the first posted on 14.05.2006 called Fragments of time as a substitute for audio recordings and where I was able to add photographs of development work and other activities some 40000 over the course of the next 11 months with the last writings posted on 30.03.2007 “Just another Day parts 1 and 2” and where on the penultimate date 29.03.2007 the writing is entitled MySpace 101.
AOL had discontinued this programme but the photos are among over 325 CD’s and DVD disks, with the writing some of the 350 data disks covering the Amstrad 215 and 512 and primitive multi media desktop as well contemporary desk and lap tops, as well as lists and individual prints contained in the 2250 development sets. The reason for brining to an end posting on AOl was the discovery of MySpace, having checked out information on artists appearing at the X factor live show in Newcastle and finding that several had posted pieces of their music on the MySpace site which I joined originally intending to have 101 friends, 101 Blogs, 101 best books best music etc but which evolved into 100.75 to indicate work i progress and to mark the 100 and three quarters years of the life of my birth mother.
An invitation to join a new MySpace site linking artists and their work, the closure of AOL and a request for information about my work from another new friend led to deciding to revise what had previously been written about how I came to do what I do. I joined Google Blogs about a year ago without posting anything and had forgotten doing so until deciding to set up a duplicate system of posting which would also provide the opportunity to collate and review everything written before since April 2006 as I approach my three score years and ten.
In doing this aspect of my work I am influenced by the French performance artist and creative Sophie Calle whose work Exquisite Pain was performed by the Forced Theatre Company at the Newcastle Playhouse. This work involves the repetitive re-examination of one traumatic episode in her life over the course of the year and how times gradually changed her perspective, juxtaposed with recounts of the experience of different types of pain by others. The performers reproduced her work which made it into an historical period piece rather than contemporary art which would have qualified they had changed the sequencing of the juxtaposition. Clearly it was essential to keep to her changed perception but a variation and rewriting of the reactions of the experience of friends, even if re written or reorganised by Sophie would have kept the work contemporary as art and as theatre. I made the point in the after performance discussion but was not appreciated.
I have consider exhibiting a component of the project from time to time. In 2004 I wrote a statement about the interaction between development as a creative, the loss of catholic faith, the search for spirituality and the impact on identity of the discoveries about my biological father. 101 in Black and white is a 400 page work badly printed for my by the Daily Mail including 101 Black and White photos. The 101 copies are contained in a series of black and white boxes stacked three at a time to represent the day month and year of birth, 9 (3 x 3) 3 and 39 (1x3 and 3x3) and two sets of framed photo cards, one set the 101 photos and one set 101 states about my experience related to the book.
I decided against exhibition until I had resolved official enquires into the preventable and premature death of my care mother by the authorities and completed a work about my relationship with birth and care mothers and their lives and backgrounds. I have extensively researched their family on their father’s side going back to the 1500’s in the Wiltshire and a two hundred page study of the family up to 1901 census has been completed and published as a public access version in association with several other family history researchers who covered different branches of a family taking individuals to the USA and Canada, Australia and South Africa in addition to Gibraltar. My mother‘s grand father was the fourth of five sons born in succession after the birth of seven sisters in succession and my mother was the last survivor of a family of seven sisters and four brothers with one other reaching the age of 98 and my care mother 93. I have completed a 200 page work on the life of my care mother with limited circulation in addition to becoming part of 100.75. I have changed my mind about continuing with the work about my care and biological mothers and my interaction with them and to concentrate over the next five years on a remake of the 1993 completed novel together with a play about life in a residential establishment for those with severe memory loss and the interaction between their past lives, their present existence and their relatives. Although I live in a ten roomed property with a loft I have reached the point, only a third way through, makes it difficult to manage the work in the space and display as envisaged. There is also the escalation in the price of card doubling over five years and in folders and transparent pockets although the price of printing ink has significantly reduced through on line services.
I am reminded of my mortality with the passage of years and it has long since ceased to matter if anyone else is interested or shares enthusiasm for what I am doing and why, or if the installation will be completed and experienced by others. What has come to matter is being able to live the dream and being me, a creative artist working. Yes I can and I have.
On July 12th the Baltic Contemporary art centre opened in Gateshead on the banks of the river Tyne and during the day there was a build up of information on regional news programmes leading to a series of special programmes on BBC 2.
That such a project had been developed in Gateshead was amazing and signalled a significant change in the cultural experience of living in Tyne and Wear. The creation of the centre from a building which had been a flour Mill was in fact part of a strategy by forward looking politicians, development agencies and those interested in cultural activities, to transform how the region saw itself and how others saw the region, and which had is roots, perhaps unknowingly, with the ending of great industries of the North in the mid 1980’s, as coal mining, steel making and ship building all collapsed and then disappeared from Northumbria.
Then in the 1990’s while the development of the car assembly plant of Nissan outside of Sunderland provided employment for a major workforce the transformation of the central areas of the city of Newcastle and the newly created city of Sunderland was kick started by the creation of two new universities, based on existing institutions of further education. Whereas now the ancient University of Newcastle provides for 20000 fulltime students in long standing buildings in the city centre, Northumbria University in Newcastle has 300000 full time students and an iconic new building complex with a new bridge over the central highway connecting the old and new complexes. Similarly in Sunderland a new complex on the banks of the River Wear has been created with the consequence that there are also over 20000 full time students and in all three instances students come from all over the world. In Gateshead as in South and North Tyneside, as well as in Sunderland and Newcastle colleges of further education have been developed bringing together six form colleges, study for degrees and other part time courses in association with business and industry, including for apprenticeships and for lifelong learning, providing over 50000 places and running alongside the continuing College of Art and design in Newcastle(a range of applied art courses are provided at Sunderland University together with South Tyneside College.
This growth in higher and further education has a combined teaching and administrative staff in excess of 25000, radically changing the population structure and transforming the centres of the cities and towns, creating new residential communities and developing the provision of food and recreation activities for primarily the contemporary generations of 16-25 year olds.
This in turn has aided tourism making Newcastle the second most popular city to London for a short break. In addition to two Major football stadiums seating 100000, there has been multi million pounds expenditure on two existing theatres enabling performances from international touring companies and a multi million pound transformation of a third theatre, the developments of arenas and concert hall halls for all kinds events and with the creation of two major new concert halls in an iconic building adjacent to the Baltic on the Gateshead side of the Tyne river, and the promotion of range of festivals, including separate modern and traditional jazz events. There are now five multiplex cinemas and one specialist international film theatre, a world class Olympic standard swimming pool, casinos and the continued development of the largest and outdoor shopping complex in Europe.
This package was intended to make Newcastle and Gateshead the European centre of culture for 2008, but had to settle for runner up to Liverpool. This was the vision which the Baltic was to fit in alongside a score of art galleries and museums. It is also fair to say that the majority of older local residents were bemused, curious, under whelmed and sceptical.
In discussing the Baltic building and the opening exhibition on the July Friday Newsnight Arts Review programme, Germaine Greer summed up my subsequent reaction on visiting. It was an important new development but there was no WOW. This was art of the mind, clever art, and art of contemporary skills and materials, but I was not moved, challenged or stimulated by anything experienced. This reflected my personality and interests but I was aware from the reactions of many of those visiting, that I was not alone in this reaction.
Between the opening of the Baltic and making my first visit I went on a mini trip which included a visit to the recreation of wartime Britain at Eden Camp in Yorkshire, to Bolsover Castle in the midlands and Eltham Palace in London. I had watched Yorkshire play Durham at a Cricket match in Leeds and taken a thirty mile car journey to watch the film, No Mans Land which trailed a film on the Life of Jackson Pollock, to be shown a few weeks later.
I had seen some Jackson Pollock original works at the London Tate decades before and my knowledge of him as an artist was based on a Melvin Bragg programme which had become distant memory. Although I had never experienced his brooding depression, the binge drinking and binge sex, there was something about the man and his life which struck a chord rather than having empathy with his work output. However I was filled with the need to understand why some visual artists devoted themselves to work which aroused public ridicule, destroying themselves as balanced people, experiencing family and personal breakdown and failing to integrate their lives with society generally.
A few days after seeing the film I made a special visit to my birth and care mothers who lived together 300 miles away on the southern outskirts of London, and decided to try and purchase a book or two which might help to understand the nature of contemporary art. Over the previous three years I had travelled by car to visit and assist in their care over a period of a week and on average once a month. This time I travelled by train and there was time before the evening departure to visit the bookshops in the Charing Cross Road. By good fortune research on the internet I had decided on two books which were to transform my life, but could not find either until visiting the London branch of the famous Oxford Bookshop, Blackwell’s. I still could not find the books in the art section although on checking the computer there were copies of both in stock. A young assistant explained that it had been his idea to create a separate section on contemporary art and I was shown where the two works were located: After Modern Art 1945-2000 by David Hopkins, Oxford Art History, and Concepts of Modern Art, From Fauvism to Postmodernism edited by Nikos Stangos in the World of Art Series published by Thames and Hudson.
On return train journey back I concentrated on two chapters in the second book: Conceptual Art by Roberta Smith and Post Modernism and the art of identity by Christopher reed. These two chapters had as great an effect on my life as had previously reading two of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal reports as an adolescent school boy in 1954 on the recommendation of our Jesuit teacher of modern history and then rereading the Sermon on the Mount again shortly after leaving school in 1955 having experienced my first loss of faith in the Catholic Church. These readings had led to embarking upon the Gandhian teachings of Satyagraha and to deciding to spend six months in prison rather than accepting a recognisance to stop non violent protests against the British possession and potential use of weapons of mass destruction on 1960.
There were two reasons why I found these two chapters of such significance. Over the previous five decades I had thought of many things which others had transformed into physical works of art. I had tried to play the piano and then the clarinet, I had tried to draw and paint. I had longed to try creating objects from clay or in bronze but lacked the means and knowledge. I relished the company of artists who were part of the peace movement and devoured programmes and books about individual lives and lifestyles. On leaving prison I had written a play which the Readers at the Royal Court had felt of sufficient interest to suggest to the company that they look at what else I had created. I had not, and had then accepted a place at Ruskin College and then switched to the University Diploma in Public and Social Administration and professional social work practice. I directed my creative energy into this work while always nagging away was the wish to create something which expressed my soul and vision of the world. It was not until attending an international management college in the mid 1980 that my personality was psychometrically tested and I came to understand the nature of my creativity and its impact on relationships, personal and professional.
For several years I harnessed the insights gained in ways which resulted in greater creative productivity but channelled in such a way that I also became more satisfied with my life. When what had become an all embracing career came to an end I wrote a novel which again received some encouragement as well as rejection. Because of the unusual nature of my childhood and upbringing, which had thrown up problems akin to dyslexia, autism and Asperger’s I had always had difficulties in communicating what I felt and thought. Not knowing who was my biological mother until attending school and never being sure if the individual said by relatives when I was an adolescent to my father, I had more than the usual uncertainties about who I was. While always being heterosexually interested and inclined, I was also aware that an upbringing by three single women, only one of whom had been married, had given me a greater feminine personality and outlook than appeared to be usual for the boys and males of my immediate experience. Just when I was comfortable with my sense of identity and just before my sixtieth birthday I learnt for the first time that my father had been a senior priest in the Catholic church and this his family were from Malta, although similar to my mother he had was born in Gibraltar, but had then been taken back to Malta for his education and subsequent training for the priesthood. This changed my perception of self and my experience to that moment.
Reading those two chapters against this background, became a revelatory experience in two ways. For the first time I had a clear vision about the development of contemporary and the point to which it had reached, and I understood myself as a creative artist and for the time in my life all the dots became connected. I was not confident about producing work or certain about the form of work but I commenced to reorganise my life as a working contemporary artist.
However at the very point when I was ready to devote myself full time into creative work activity three developments stopped me at the point reached. I was invited to give evidence on behalf of sixty claimants in a contested Class action in the High Court and it was several months before the case was settled out of court with a settlement satisfactory to the those involved, and to their lawyers. My birth mother who had severe short term memory loss with psychosis was admitted into residential care when her sister who had been my care mother, was admitted to hospital against her expressed wishes because of medical and nursing negligence and died as a consequence of a secondary hospital based infection within a matter of days. My marriage of over thirty five years failed.
At one level the combination of these three developments led to an emotional breakdown and a re-examination and re-evaluation of my life, but it also changed my everyday perception in a way not experienced since leaving prison in 1960, seeing the film Jazz on a Summer’s day and listening to records of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas and String quartets, first heard during a brief stay at an open prison camp in the second month of the experience.
And then at the end of April 2003 I travelled by coach to London to stay at the former home of my birth mother while visiting her on a daily basis in residential care. The journey from the north east to London by coach is long taking, on average over seven hours, but it usually quieter and more comfortable than standard class train travel. On the outward journey I read Wladyslaw Szpilman's, "The Pianist," after seeing the film, and where the extract from the diary of Captain Wilm Hosenfield was as moving and of interest as the life of Wladyslaw. The Pianist is book about someone who survived the ghetto to become an international artist. I was reminded that although I knew I was a creative, I was not functioning as one, or engaged in artistic activity. It was in this frame of mind that before returning home I made an early morning visit to see my mother and then took the train to London to visit the Saatchi 100 exhibition at his gallery, then at the former County Hall building on the South Bank close to Waterloo railway station and the giant Millennium Ferris Wheel, The London Eye, passing the Dali sculptures and exhibition of his work. Unusually I can remember most details of that day, in part because I made notes and then converted them to a laptop and desktop and have written of the experience several times.
The impact of the Saatchi 100 works which changed British Art was intoxicating, sending me whooping with joy at the translation of concepts into a fairyland of heaven and hell and with the dramatic awareness that I had come home.
In one large area there were two works by the same individual. One I had some awareness because it had attracted media attention. Superficially it was a bed with objects but to me it was a naked soul who had looked into the abyss. Above the bed the artist had crucified herself. When you look into the abyss said Nietzsche, the abyss looks into you. The artist was Tracey Emin. I quickly made my way to where my travel bag was stored and retrieved a notebook and then seeking permission from a security steward sat on the floor and wrote down what I thought and felt. There was sadness and joy, empathy and remembrance of my own experience. I rushed around seeing everything, delighted that among the present day there was some Bratby and I made a note to reread his two novels, 'Breakdown' and Breakfast and Elevenses,' published in 1960 and 1961 and read for the first time in 1963 after buying them second hand.
On my way out I bought Stephen White's disappointing cleaned up photo of the Bed together '100 Works that changed British Art' hardback edition, and giggled at the audacity of deciding that I would go home to produce the hundred and first work, blissfully unaware of the extent to which the wider concept of 101 was already in active circulation.
Later I discovered there were 98000 Google references to Ms Emin and I read several hundred of these, printing many for further reflection. I acquired a copy of. ‘This is another Place', Modern art Oxford, and 'The Art of Tracey Emin, Thames and Hudson, edited by Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend, The Tracey Emin Video and by luck was able to make a tape of some TV Programmes.
I was not dispirited to learn that most of what I had recently been thinking and feeling had been thought and worked through before, by others, especially after reading But is it Art? by Cynthia Freeland, bought at the Tate Modern, that same afternoon. I was confronted by the notion that everything I now thought had been thought and worked through by others before and with greater clarity, and that everything I wanted to do, had already been done better. It was as if I have lived in a parallel universe but unlike Dr Who or Primeval, I was able to now successfully cross over. This sense of enlightenment and satisfied beingness was reinforced by my first visit that same afternoon to the Tate Modern which like the Baltic has a Millennium pedestrian Bridge outside linking to the main areas of the city.
On leaving school in 1955 at the age of sixteen years I had worked in a building around the corner from the Tate Gallery and went regularly to look at exhibits during lunch times. I had been much affected by the work of Rodin more than anyone else, and continued to make visits when I left the office in 1957, including the Painting and Sculpture of a decade 1954-1964 exhibition. As with the Bratby at the Saatchi there was some Stanley Spencer at Tate modern which reminding of the impact of Gulley Jimpson, in Joyce Carey's ‘the Horses Mouth ‘and the wallow and slosh of paint. However I was to take a very different route because of other work on show that day about which I had no previous knowledge.
The Saatchi visit had focussed on the work of Tracey Emin but her work and that of others, revealed who I was and who I had been but not what I was going to do. I found the physical nature of objects fun and impressive although presumed that in some instances other people had been employed to translate the ideas of the artists into what I experienced such as the room filled with liquid and distorting balance and creating the dual image as that when looking across a lake; the underground map of people that influenced; the room of distorted instruments, come to mind, as well as the installation of hell bringing back the memory of the Rodin Gates. however these and others had little impact on what I decided to do and have done.
On arrival at the Tate Modern I had found a seat overlooking the former Turbine Room where people were laying on the floor looking upwards at something I could not then see, and I eat a late lunch of home made salami sandwiches, two purchased crème caramels and drank a can a diet coke. I was then ready to explore and found the experience overpowering, but instantly knew what I was going to do and why, excited at the possibility but also afraid that there would not be time for me to achieve something of value, and also afraid there would be time, but I would fail, as I had failed in several important aspects of my life. I also realised that a chronicle of aspiration and failure was as valid as one of achievement and success.
After the meal I took a lift to the first public access floor and the rest as they say has become my daily experience. Several artists moved and challenged piling on one layer of WOW and revelation upon another. I became so excited that I abandoned a visit to the theatre or cinema that evening and returned to the apartment to develop the idea precipitated by the work of four artists in particular. Through their work I found a portal between my world of sixty four years and theirs. I knew not only who I was had been but what I was going to do, and have done so for close on six years.
Top of the list remains Bruce Nauman. On the first visit it was Good Boy Bad boy which first caught my attention but I did not stay for the full session and it was only the second visit which confirmed the impact. On that first visit it was his photos of the concept work where he had created a living area as an exhibited installation and then exchanged objects from his flat with those which he had put on exhibition which echoed my feeling that my work had to cover everything that I had of my life. I had long since rejected the convention biographical work which usually centres on the aspect for which the individual had become well known rather than the totality of their experience. The idea of keeping and putting everything about me into one situation was an extension of this concept. Ideally I should move everything I own into a working art space, while retaining some areas for privacy, the objects and the work activity and the output should be able to be viewed by anyone interested at any time both through a physical presence and also via the internet and the web cams. The use by Bruce Nauman and others of neon lights and colourful pieces at both places influenced the decision to create artman signature card with glitter and also to use glitter on the spine of volumes of card work.
On a second visit I listened to the full Good and Bad Boy performance of sixty minutes, fifty two seconds, and apart from the hypnotic musicality, there was something more profound: a dialectic dialogue about gender and identity. Well that was my reaction. There was something about me in his work or me putting myself into his work. My third visit to the Tate was exclusive for the Nauman installation in the Turbine Hall. The installation comprised speakers on either side of the long side walls fixed at intervals. I had with me a voice recorder which picked up background sounds so I walked from speaker to speaker the length wise listening to each cycle and making my comments as I walked between. I then transferred this recording to a laptop and must check if this is so later. My actions that day attracted some attention from other visitors. This was an important stage because I felt my experience was an instinctive personal performance. It was what Nauman’s work needed to appreciate his experience but which also became a different work through my experience .
On the first visit the Tate Modern had two areas, booths, where it was possible to watch recordings of Sarah Lucas, including street performing which must have taken great courage. I did not set out for my visit to become a performance nor did I attempt to communicate what I was doing with anyone else. However it was a taste of what being a performing artist must be like and confirmed he difficult I would have in putting idea into practice.
I was also much influence by the Joseph Beuys, not so much the work available abut but audio information about his life and beliefs, something which I followed up later, I was also able to follow up the visit with internet searches.
The most important influence that day in terms of the precise form my work would take was that of Hanne Darbovan who present a series of numbered cards.
For the rest of the day and most of the night I found it difficult to contain myself filled the certainty about what I wanted to do and how I would do it. I then made lots of notes on the coach journey back the following day. During the period 1960 2003 I had accumulated substantial records of aspects of my life. The material was not comprehensive and a lot if was confidential and must remain so but it would form the basis for recreating the experience of my life in the context of the world external to me.
I decided to recreate my life from birth 3.9.39 to the age of 65 in the form of A4 cards with one card representing every hour, over 600000 cards, and make them into sets of 24 some 24000, which would be bound in volumes, level arch files and in boxes and sealed filing cabinets. Each card would be numbered and each set signed together with front card made with glitter glue. The Artman and signature cards would themselves become part of the total card output with their own numbering.
As a starter working framework I divided the 600000 cards between those which reflected the work process and its development, those with covered events together with others with covered information. There would also be creative work sets and those to be treated as confidential as well as those which covered lists, of books, of audio records, of various activities including theatre and cinema films and of the project itself which was called 101. I selected black folders and black boxes for development and creative work. Blue for events and information records and red for confidential. And that is what I have done since, some completing over 8000 sets and close on 200000 cards
The project has evolved in various ways Early on I bought a digital camera to record the process of creating the work as well as the environment in which it was stored and as a bonus the camera included a memory stick for taking photos or short film clips. Although over the first two years I created 20 hours of films, these remain unedited and I have concentrated on taking stills of every completed card as well as photo essays of present experience reflecting on the past with some 310000 photos created, only a small proportion of which have been converted into A4 cards. As a substitute for talking direct to anyone wanting to view what I was doing I created 101 90 mins audio tapes.
Of the 8000 sets over 1700 are confidential although only a proportion of these are destined to be secured in large four draw black cabinets. Those in display units or red boxes will need to be kept within viewable but securely locked containers, enabling them to become public access if consent is given or the individuals concerned die.
Those which must remain confidential will be sealed with a welded black metal cover once full, (I am using ten at present but will need another ten to twenty more when the work is completed). The idea of sealing into black cabinets developed during 2003. The first influence was the black monoliths in the films 2001 and 2010 which represent the original and ongoing creation of the universe and therefore the ongoing recreation of my individual experience within the known universe. The second influence was another German artist and sculptor, Eva Grubinger who used black and exhibited at the Baltic September November 2003 and commented that black projected something sinister, secretive and menacing.
It was in May 2006 that I decide to created a Blog site on AOL 101 Public and Private Art 2003-2012 with the first posted on 14.05.2006 called Fragments of time as a substitute for audio recordings and where I was able to add photographs of development work and other activities some 40000 over the course of the next 11 months with the last writings posted on 30.03.2007 “Just another Day parts 1 and 2” and where on the penultimate date 29.03.2007 the writing is entitled MySpace 101.
AOL had discontinued this programme but the photos are among over 325 CD’s and DVD disks, with the writing some of the 350 data disks covering the Amstrad 215 and 512 and primitive multi media desktop as well contemporary desk and lap tops, as well as lists and individual prints contained in the 2250 development sets. The reason for brining to an end posting on AOl was the discovery of MySpace, having checked out information on artists appearing at the X factor live show in Newcastle and finding that several had posted pieces of their music on the MySpace site which I joined originally intending to have 101 friends, 101 Blogs, 101 best books best music etc but which evolved into 100.75 to indicate work i progress and to mark the 100 and three quarters years of the life of my birth mother.
An invitation to join a new MySpace site linking artists and their work, the closure of AOL and a request for information about my work from another new friend led to deciding to revise what had previously been written about how I came to do what I do. I joined Google Blogs about a year ago without posting anything and had forgotten doing so until deciding to set up a duplicate system of posting which would also provide the opportunity to collate and review everything written before since April 2006 as I approach my three score years and ten.
In doing this aspect of my work I am influenced by the French performance artist and creative Sophie Calle whose work Exquisite Pain was performed by the Forced Theatre Company at the Newcastle Playhouse. This work involves the repetitive re-examination of one traumatic episode in her life over the course of the year and how times gradually changed her perspective, juxtaposed with recounts of the experience of different types of pain by others. The performers reproduced her work which made it into an historical period piece rather than contemporary art which would have qualified they had changed the sequencing of the juxtaposition. Clearly it was essential to keep to her changed perception but a variation and rewriting of the reactions of the experience of friends, even if re written or reorganised by Sophie would have kept the work contemporary as art and as theatre. I made the point in the after performance discussion but was not appreciated.
I have consider exhibiting a component of the project from time to time. In 2004 I wrote a statement about the interaction between development as a creative, the loss of catholic faith, the search for spirituality and the impact on identity of the discoveries about my biological father. 101 in Black and white is a 400 page work badly printed for my by the Daily Mail including 101 Black and White photos. The 101 copies are contained in a series of black and white boxes stacked three at a time to represent the day month and year of birth, 9 (3 x 3) 3 and 39 (1x3 and 3x3) and two sets of framed photo cards, one set the 101 photos and one set 101 states about my experience related to the book.
I decided against exhibition until I had resolved official enquires into the preventable and premature death of my care mother by the authorities and completed a work about my relationship with birth and care mothers and their lives and backgrounds. I have extensively researched their family on their father’s side going back to the 1500’s in the Wiltshire and a two hundred page study of the family up to 1901 census has been completed and published as a public access version in association with several other family history researchers who covered different branches of a family taking individuals to the USA and Canada, Australia and South Africa in addition to Gibraltar. My mother‘s grand father was the fourth of five sons born in succession after the birth of seven sisters in succession and my mother was the last survivor of a family of seven sisters and four brothers with one other reaching the age of 98 and my care mother 93. I have completed a 200 page work on the life of my care mother with limited circulation in addition to becoming part of 100.75. I have changed my mind about continuing with the work about my care and biological mothers and my interaction with them and to concentrate over the next five years on a remake of the 1993 completed novel together with a play about life in a residential establishment for those with severe memory loss and the interaction between their past lives, their present existence and their relatives. Although I live in a ten roomed property with a loft I have reached the point, only a third way through, makes it difficult to manage the work in the space and display as envisaged. There is also the escalation in the price of card doubling over five years and in folders and transparent pockets although the price of printing ink has significantly reduced through on line services.
I am reminded of my mortality with the passage of years and it has long since ceased to matter if anyone else is interested or shares enthusiasm for what I am doing and why, or if the installation will be completed and experienced by others. What has come to matter is being able to live the dream and being me, a creative artist working. Yes I can and I have.
