It’s been a month since I made the [Big Move back home to New Zealand, after Eight Years in London]. It is somehow difficult to come up with words on the other side of the world; I don’t know if it’s the biting breeze or the tremendous task of ‘settling in’, not like how snow mysteriously comes to rest as a thick blanket, but like how ice kindly burns.. It was the winter welcome I expected; stripped bare of my friends, my ‘network’, my coherent spaces, my particular framework of conversations. Apparently I had some sort of ‘warm thing’ holding me down, and for that I am thankful, but I could feel I was still in a Serious limbo, and it was far more dire and monumental than any metaphoric embrace for me here. I felt threatened by the growing distance between myself and ‘The Art Practice’, and it makes me think of Liversidge’s 1000 year proposal-installation consisting of an everyday tape measure, monofilament, and a piece of paper to stage the almost-impossibility of representing the growing distance the moon moves, Away from the earth since the moon landing. Every time I reach closer to [what I think I should be doing as an artist] the tape measure clicks just one more inch, and it was painful to fully digest that I was at that common, relatable, ominous stage after graduating from a fine art degree and taking on a full time job only to realise there is practically no more creative energy left over in the grinding gears and relentless crushing of capitalism.
It’s a cliché and all artists seem to Make It Work in their own admirable and mysterious ways. I genuinely loved my first real job at central saint martins, if you know me I was always talking about it and I was proud I got through so many new challenges thrown my way. But I could feel if I continued on a similar path I would become robotic, steel, and even my laughs would become empty because of the almost-impossible grasp of the practice that felt more like a side step on the pavement than the glorious dance it was remembered as. And that is the real coldness. It devours as ‘every artist’s worst nightmare’. I feared it in ignorance. I recognise I have the immense privilege of removing myself from the intense grapple with financial and creative survival in the beautiful, bustling, and brutal city that is London and though I will miss it as far as it has taken me, I am very grateful that I have family to return to back home.
Anyway, that is why I descended into an unbearable hiatus in this space, and why, sure, Events have Happened but I did not document them here and therefore did not celebrate them properly; which means they did not truly render in my mind, and when I am not documenting you know I am not in my right mind, and you know I may have left somewhere and may never return, and you know I have been in a detrimental limbo space where I do not know where I am going because I do not remember where I have been. And so I had to make the drastic Big Move even though it means a displacement doubled; but I am hopeful and I am crawling my way back out of wherever I was that made me cold. I needed to know who I am outside of this institution, this wondrous place I gained so much from, from which I have to break free. I need to know who I am as an artist right now, and if I am still floating in the air over the rolling oceans in between us, that’s okay too.
I will be posting some past documentation of events which I anticipate will be difficult to recall, the distance between me and It pushing and pulling in every direction, it may be my poor sense of time and memory from dyspraxia or the natural chaos of my mindset or the harrowing global scene of the past two years or this quiet fight of being a perfectionist. my mother told me not everything has to be ‘perfect’ and done ‘100% in your mind’, that people have different criteria for perfection anyway. it’s better to have something there than nothing at all and she said I will run out of steam and freeze and stop in my tracks and she is right and that is what has happened again and again. A mother knows. at least every mark I make will be honest, and perhaps I will make a note for each event instead of twisting open a running dialogue like I am doing here, because sometimes when I write it’s like a volcano slowly erupting and, whatever happened to the lava you kept so safe for me?
And no, I do not know how to carry myself in this climate yet, how much weight I should hold in my stride, how many breaths I should release in my demeanour. These weeks I have been trying to feel the cold in my fingers as a sensation that is mine, operate my body through these unfamiliar streets in a city I have not spoken to yet. These days I can only assemble furniture and assume their positions, put things into motion and place, then do my best to fill myself in the gaps. Only then will I know what shape I hold to the new world. I will emerge just as I had been all this time. And you will be my witness.
