A day for 30s.... the day I earnt £30 and got a parking ticket to pay £30

... now that was today.

What do I gain from the experience? A pat on the shoulder for having tried my best.

That doesn't quite seem satisfying.

A brief meeting with film-maker gained me a confirmation that he is up for filming for nothing much more than the covering of the actual expenses of doing so. Oh thank all heavens for that.

Now I am short of one assistant and then the camera can roll...

I think we will schedule the weekend for mid-late May or mid-June, alternatively.

All my applications came back rejected. I am an artistic reject. Let's see if I can't turn that round by 180 degrees in the next 12 months. Can I become the equivalent of hot-cake instead?
My other collaborator said this: Turn towards the light...
And so I shall. As spiritual as that sounds. But what is wrong with spirit?

Now I have 30 days to make the structures for exhibition in St Luke's and perhaps I can find a follow on exhibition for them, too.

The 7 Giants will stand tall and proud, strong a watchful in the ruin of St Lukes which was severely damaged in WW2. The church remains a memorial to lives lost, fates suffered. Not that its presence often stops anybody in their tracks anymore to contemplate the past and it's lingering echos into this presence..
But there it stands nevertheless, a memorial.

In it I will place 7 bird hides / forester's hides, standing tall on elongated legs. watchful. Whether they are friend or foe remains open. 7 giants on tall legs viewing over the space. 7 because that is the great number of fables, tales and belief.7 to indicate the quality of my thoughts and search for expression.

My project is not a statement, not a conclusion or answer but a search for truth, abstract notions of truth of who we are, us, these humans. My art work really is better described as a journey not a conclusion. To ask what my work is about is to ask "What has moved you in the past year, 10 years or in fact since you became aware of anything moving you at all." And just how does one give an answer, a concrete solid answer with brevity..? It's always that is in the art work, it's not the isolated moment that is in it. A life philosophy becoming visual, tangible, solid. A sharing of intimate concerns and searches, that is what the art is. Of course I have no expectation that it is that to you, to the audience. But I hope it shows. A section of the inside of my thoughts, on exhibition in St Luke's. From the 30th of May for 2 weeks only..

My spelling makes me laugh: a wether is a castrated ram... (wether = ram; whether ..)

graceful movement with aim to ascend

someone else's words that move me, words that do the speaking for me, words that somehow catch the essence of tonight

Enrico Lunghi
wrote this for the 52. Venice Biennale

"So here I am in an indistinct place filled with strange sensualities. I abandon myself to feelings that are welling up into my consciousness after obscure stays in the depths of memory. Shameful desires reverberate in the indefinable scents that surround me.

And yet the approach was vague, around the back of a courtyard full of promises. Venice makes so many of them, and keeps so few. Then, without warning, a corridor indirectly puts me on the threshold of a sense of deja-vu. Here, a fan breathes air that has come from afar. The colours and materials also seem to have become stranded in the present. Sounds, again, remind me of elsewhere, of evenings, of other evenings.

I move forward. I can feel my heart pounding. My skin brushes against an atmosphere charged with possible touches. The rhythms interlace like lovers' sighs. Outside, the daylight, the water, the boats. Maybe I don't even see them, but it is enough that I am imagining them.

I let myself be carried along by the passing time. I open up all the pores of my being to what is reaching me from outside. I trust in what I am, in what I want, now, in this place. On the other side of the wall, across the windows, work follows its course, as does the day, and the water, too. Lives pass. But it's on the other side.

Then, as desire at last pushes me further, I find myself in front of two door leaves. there, the presence of the other, although inaccessible, becomes palpable. Like memory of a sweating body from an unforgettable film. I remain, for an undefined moment, the perpetual desirer, while the disturbance that permeates the walls moves away like the foghorn of a ship leaving the misty quayside.

Now, another, different story begins, for me and me alone.

2 zwei

“The Dungbeetle and Sisyphus”

A narrative, humorous and maybe semi-tragic tale and live art performance piece that resonates with some poetry and Cumbria’s faded clay industry.

The project takes a sincere/humorous look at the life of a dungbeetle placed in parallel with the mythological, eternally punishing, futile and hopeless fate of Sisyphus. (Alluding to questions about meaning in life, but light-hearted in presentation. The ball of clay, the act of rolling it as life’s task and purpose/dharma.)

(Sisyphus : punished in Hades for his misdeeds in life by being condemned to the eternal, futile, hopeless task of rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, from which it always rolled down again.)

Live Art / sculpture: The artist will be the dungbeetle, will be Sisyphus and roll a giant-human-sized ball of clay (dung) around sites in Cumbria and conduct interviews with passer-byes.

Films :
Performance: (live art, as described)
Interviews : involving local volunteers (chance street passer-byes & recruited ones), telling their versions of Sisyphus, mythologically correct and flawed, volunteers will be encouraged to elaborate… (I have conducted tests and people are surprisingly easily engaged in telling tales and reminiscing on further interpretations.)


Motivations other than existing interests:
Lost industry- changing industry / lost identity-changing identity.
The lost and changed clay industry of Cumbria.