On art, and photos, and bookmaking, and exhibitions, and whether to sell my work.

Every day it rains, and it does not feel like Summer here.

On Monday, Lara explained what a big week it was going to be with our shifting planetary energies.

But there was too much cloud yesterday to see the Full Moon, before or after her light became occluded by the eclipse. And I forgot to learn how to let go without getting caught up in the watery emotions of it all.
No surprise.

Some good news yesterday, in an email:

And if you visit the website, you can see the pictures of my book in there with the other submissions.

Tuesday, Faye and I sped up to London to see the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. It is always lovely to be there, in that space and that environment. I was particularly excited because the Wohl Central Hall, which is the first room of the Show, was hung entirely with the work of artists who use photographic media.

It was pretty splendid. I was totally won over by Edward Burtynsky’s “Shipbreaking” fieldproof images, shot on type 55 polaroid film. These prints, taken from what are supposed to be just proofs, are far more interesting to me than the polished final prints that you can see on his website. And imagine selling your ‘proofs’ for £12,000 a pop? No, I can’t imagine it.

But after Burtynsky, and Gary Fabian Miller, the rest was just a bit dull. Especially Cindy Sherman’s huge, award-winning masterpiece, “Untitled #472″… (this is the only link I could find to it on the web) which left me cold and dead.

Walking into Room III, with all the paintings, was amazing, at first, but soon the eye tires of so much colour and candy. And I had to race back to Room V when I noticed in the list of works that I’d missed a pair of Ian McKeever paintings.

It is quite hard to take in so much variety, especially when every artists’ work is hung entirely without context or surrounding narrative. Works that have no relation to each other are forced up close together. And you find yourself trying to read them as stories with connections to each other, even whilst knowing that this can’t be done. For me, it is quite frustrating.

We realized that we might have got more out of the Bloor brothers’ exhibition at the South London Gallery – something more cohesive that could be read as more of a whole. Oh well, no time for that now.

This week I did something else a bit bizarre. Take a look. I’m really not convinced that this is the right move forward at this point in time. It is so so hard to decide whether to sell your work / how to sell your work / where to sell your work, and then for how much. I have dithered around like mad over this. And I have let all my natural flakiness come out.

My friendly business advisor would firmly say, No, don’t do it. Unless you always want your work to always be priced for the cheapest market and mass production. My bigger concerns are just about the work itself. Are these images good enough or the right images to be selling? Is this how I want people to read me as an artist? And it just goes round and round in circles like that, endlessly, until you drive yourself mad.

And I go back and fiddle with images, endlessly – they are never ‘done’.

But I’m hoping this will be a stone to sharpen myself on. Make me answer some of those questions for myself.

I know that everyone has a different perspective on this. Please join in and share your thoughts, if you feel so inclined.

Tagged as: Crop 2011, Photography, Royal Academy, we love your books