RED SOCKS and RUBBER BANDS

Time is measured by a clock of blood

a bit about PINK

In the wild wood - thinking about PINK

the show is more Pink than red.  Pink and red have dominated my work over the past year so I have decided to pay more attention to the history and breadth of the colour pink in the development of future work.

How does the brain process the colour pink?  Are girls more prone to the reception of pink and if so why?  Questions emerge about the colour of pink re gender and how this has reversed since WW2.  If pink was seen as a more dominant and more certain colour than blue doe this translate into the current phenomena of girls choosing pink as a result of being more certain and in control of their world.  Are girls attracted to pink through a complex set of cultural messages attached to it or is there a biological pre-disposition?

PINK and Gender

This posting will capture my research and interested in the colour PINK.  If you have any comments please add them using the comments link at the bottom of this blog.

One Year On

It seems hard to believe that almost a year has passed since I received a request from the Saatchi Gallery asking to be placed on my blog.  At the time I decided not to place the link to my site as my work required no specific reference to the gallery for the development of my work.  I have recently been to the USA Today show and was very inspired by much of what was on show - very refreshing. My work has significantly changed since this time last year, so I am now adding the gallery as requested as I hope to visit there often, a great site full of useful links and a comprehensive list of artists.  worth a visit.

Saatchi Gallery

I am also posting a link to my new business venture Educe Drawing Out Potential which seeks to find ways of using visual language to draw out the potential of people from many different walks of life

educe - drawing out

about spring

about Mike Neslon's Darkroom before I had to think about the SAATCHI Gallery

I love the work of Mike Nelson Mike Nelson in Margate , hidden, uncertain, ambitious, low key, not making a big deal of itself, allowing you to explore what appears to be the stuff of the everyday (or is it).  The world has suddenly turned green, then red.  Being in red is a very worthwhile and exciting experience.  I have been to Margate today on a 'mini' adventure.   I now have to have some thoughts about art and galleries of a very different kind (see below).  I love days like this, the juxtaposition of two very unexpected events that somehow can speak to each other.  It is now time for my visitors to start some conversations.  I have been patiently waiting now for many months so please add comments no matter what they might be.  Lets have a chat about something interesting.  Oh yes and while I am here, I have helped to save the Small Mansion so lots of exciting things planned for exploring art.  Thanks to all those who have helped by adding their names to the petition.

Dear Linda Jane James, my name is Kieran I am contacting you from the Saatchi Gallery, London. I have been greatly admiring your website and page’s specifically the links section related to the art galleries. I wondered if our galleries website www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk <http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/>  could be included on this list?

The Saatchi Gallery, London is at the forefront of Contemporary art with a large resource section and educational facilities on a variety of artists including those related to the ‘Triumph of painting’ as well as ‘other key artists’ (http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/other-key-artists.htm) 

I look forward to your correspondence. Many thanks
With Kind Regards
Kieran

Saatchi Gallery

77 Eaton Square

London

SW1W 9AW

Tel: 0207 823 1461

Fax: 0207 823 2334

www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Kieran

Thanks for your interest in my weblog and your request to be listed on my site.  I have a criteria for putting things on my blog and they are typically related to my need to visit sites of interest that somehow connect with my work, primarily as a source of reference -my sketchbook if you like, places I need to keep visiting to sustain me in some way or places that inspire.

It is an interesting request that you have presented me with.  It gives me a moment to think again because as an artist starting out in my career I have already developed a pretty strong opinion about the Saatchi Gallery that I developed as an art student about the accessibility and influence of the gallery for me and artists in general.  Cost and overdue influence on the shape of how art is perceived was and still is a significant factor. Whilst I value highly the collection and the artists represented and have a very high regard for the fact that someone is prepared to make a point of collecting work and is therefore a role model for other collectors, I have always felt a little uneasy about the whole ‘razamatazz’ thing and power that is associated with the Saatchi Gallery and there is something about being ‘more ordinary’ that is missing for me. My dilemma is whether or not I wish to point my visitors to your site knowing that I am not one of your ‘visitors’.  I prefer to go to a quieter space to look at the work of those artists represented.  It has been easy for me up to now to avoid having to reconsider my views about the gallery as I get my interest in art met from so many other sources.   

So, how does this leave me? How might you make it onto my list without me feeling in someway that I am supporting you without reference to my concerns about your power and influence? Why for example would you want to be on my web, are you becoming like Tescos?  Only Kidding but not to be dismissed. It is also interesting to note that I can think of very few other galleries that would cause me to raise this question, that is both a good thing and potentially not such a good thing - an area to be explored.  I think it is an interesting area for dialogue.  It is late and I have spent the day inside the space of Mike Nelson in Margate so it is probably not the right time to begin this dialogue – but I am interested in exploring it further. 

So, for now at least, I will not include you in the galleries section but will put a link in from this space which I will post to the web and maybe we can begin a conversation and ask others to share their views - how does the influence and power of the Saatchi Gallery shape the behaviour and opinions of people making, presenting and receiving art in the UK today?

SAATCHI GALLERY

Linda

07977 059074
http://lindajanejames.blogs.com

in silence

about not thinking

birds

It has been a while

all over the place

It has been a while since I last posted, but it gets like that for me in august when the accounts and tax returns have to be done.  It is a time of great headaches and frustration as I fight against this necessary task, but not to complain, it is almost over and during this time I have managed to fit in a trip to my show in Nottingham, visit the Venice biennale for a glorious week of art and today made a trip to Leeds to meet a group of photographers to begin project y: Denby Dale , a new body of work I will be undertaking in  Denby Dale with over 20 other photographers who are meeting to work together for the first time.

I have also been busily preparing new work for shows, started to do drawings and paintings again (I need to find a way of  working that keeps me away from the computer due to aches and pains etc etc).  Daisy dog - a previous posting of mine along with another photo of a dog have just been shortlisted for the Kennel Club Photographer of the Year 2005 award , which is mad but exciting.  And I have had my 'because' flower series made into mounted works.



Going to the biennale was a fantastic experience and I have needed to let the mass of influences seep their way gently into my thought processes.  it is not something I feel able to describe for anyone but I have taken away a need to be more involved in a drawing based process around my  work, but of course it all ebbs and flows and really is dependent upon the places and circumstances I find myself in.  a particular favourite of mine (which has nothing to do with what I have just said) was Willie Doherty.  A film of a camera revolving around a man's shaven head.  a very strong piece of work for me in that it appeared to be one thing on the surface but had a complex interpretation through the association with words and thought, challenging personal judgements and beliefs and through endless watching became something that completely tranformed and transfixed me into another place.  you had to be there.



there will be no electricity, there will be no art, I will make your dreams come true

(Willie Doherty Video installation at the Venice Biennale 2005)

about how we create a sense of place

through my work I am trying to find a way of locating myself.  it has been the hardest thing to do since leaving full time employment.  I know what I am interested in, so I guess that is a start, but trying to find a context, to locate it, that is quite another.  it helps to some extent having grown up in a small village.  I know what a real community is - or do I.  I know how it made me feel, I am not sure I understood what made it tick.  but then I was very small.

It is incredibly hard to find a way of locating yourself.  It requires a lot of soul searching, defining your values, working out why you need it, what you need.

I am in what some might consider to be an envious position.  I do not have a contract for work, I don't have my time regulated by anyone but myself.  I don't even have my own family.  I have no-one to direct my time or take me into contexts or social groups of their own making.  I have to shape and define my own sense of place.

It is from this luxurious, but quite tricky blank page, that you begin to get some sense of what directs people to become attached to religion, to clubs, to gangs, to anything really that allows you to find a way of being, of knowing, of existing.

in the following link ideas and thoughts on what makes a community, Macmurray argues that we only fulfill our personal nature through personal relationships, that is how we discover ourselves. 

Aristotle stated, "without a fully active role in community life one could not hope to become a healthy human being." Within a responsible relationship in a community "genuine freedom leads to a personality which is quietly confident; fully sensitive to others but not egocentric in petty and aggressive ways."18

Without a context, a connection of a part of ourselves we become isolated, closed and in no position to grow into rounded human beings. For this to be possible it is important for us all to recognise the important part we can all play in opening ourselves up to welcoming people into our communities, to recognise that who we are and what we do is as important to us as it is to others.  To make time to look out for and create a dialogue with those who have found us, allowing them to explore freely for themselves the possibilities for them to develop into the healthy human being that they need to be.

It seems that this is a topic that I keep coming back to and a reason for my next project in the place that I live.  I value the sense of community that is created by the place that I live in, although I make my own choices about how to take part and contribute.  It is important to me to recognise the independence of people and organisations and hence why I struggle tremendously with the corporate world that dictates the agenda, the reason I ended up leaving.  It is the attitudes of successful business that often goes against the ability of us all to become healthy human beings in a community.  they talk a lot about it, demonstrate it to a certain extent but miss the point on so many levels.  An example recently: I was politely told by the manager of a chain that has arrived in the high street that I could not photograph their shop front and that I had to get permission from their head office.  The shop front has become a part of the community that I live in, I see it everyday as I pass on the bus.  It is an unremarkable shop front.  To engage in a community it seems - I have to have permission, I have to be invited, selected, chosen.  That cannont be right.  Sometimes we should just throw away the rule book, our predjudices, and try to understand what brings someone to us, being more open to new possibilities and allowing people the space to develop and grow.

'It is community that brings together autonomous individuals who have freely chosen a conscious set of values  and goals. They have not been coerced but have come together naturally,  and largely stay together. The key would seem to be common values, and  a task to do'.