Working really gets in the way of making art. These days I’m finding it hard to spend enough time in the studio each week. I have loads to do. One of my works in progress is Reading Room, an archive project of sorts involves images and articles gleaned from the glossies and re-filed, and therefore recontextualised. For a tally of the titles I’ve so far consumed this year see flipability on Turnstile. Today I managed to get through a measley thirteen magazines, however, I also managed to spend a good few hours photographing around Chippendale. Back to work tomorrow, but not after a night at the Sydney Opera House to see Battles. Very excited.
Tonight in the studio I sifted through all the random bits of paper and card I’ve been collecting over the years. Some I wondered what had originally excited me about it while others triggered memories of places visited—Berlin and Paris were the stand outs. There were bar codes, food tags, fortune cookie readings, the bottom of suduko puzzles pointing to where solutions could be found, file labels, slips of paper with the names of all the check out assistants who hadserved me over the past year or so, recycle labels, CMYK print tests and more. I got some pleasure from sorting through these odds and ends, the little things that few us pay any attention to. I wonder why I do what I do sometimes…
I was in the studio last Friday working on a few things. Three little projects that are really more about having some fun than finite end results at the moment. I’ve been collecting certain things for sometime: magazines, tops & matchbox cars. Last week I was was able to begin laying out these collections to get an idea of what was going and what kind of number I was going to need. I’m going to need a heap of plastic bottle tops for the crochet carpet. If you can help please let me know. I’m based in Sydney at the moment.
The matchbox cars too will need some bolstering. I’ve got about a tenth of what I need. If you can help please let me know. They can be in any state, but I do need hundreds.
As for the magazines, I spent a solid few hours skimming through a good range of titles—see Flip-ability for a full list of titles read so far this year. The lasting story, or rather headline, was from Cosmo: Does my vagina look big in this? There seemed to be a theme in Cosmo: on another page there was a rather lame article about a vagina day spa which proved to be an eye-grabbing coverline. I recall a coverline from Cleo now: Read his bum.
At the moment I’m living in Waverley, a Sydney suburb which is just a quick ten minute walk to the beach. Early in the week, late at night I go down to the recycling room to pick through the spoils before the bins are taken to the streets. The aim of my wandering is to collect as many bottle tops as I can muster for my crochet floor piece and to see what magazines I can gather for the Reading Room project.
