Summer Residency 2022
From the 4th July - 18th August 22, I was aboard the ONCA Barge, Brighton for a 7 week research based residency. I kept a weekly informal blog diary recording my time by the Marina.
Week 1 | 4th July 2022.
Welcome to my extremely informal blog.
I’ll be treating this course of writing as a lighthearted diary, a shopping list, a memory conserver - nothing overly precious to document my residency on the Barge.
Today is Monday the 4th of July, the height of summer & America’s ‘birthday’. Bizarre! Or maybe not bizarre - just a funny day.
On the bus this morning to Brighton Marina, I recalled a childhood dream, I’m not too sure what triggered this. In this particular dream, I wandered a hazy summer field, overrun with wildflowers and enclosed by fluffy trees. So here is where the surreality overthrows. Every 10 metres in any given direction, there would be an ancient labrador, greying around their eyes and muzzle, giving birth to vibrant helium balloons. I don’t know what this could have insinuated in my young reality but the dream ended with a bearded trout, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a monocle, giving me a wet kiss. I woke from this dream with a salty taste in my mouth.
As I arrive at the Barge with references of childhood floating around my mind, I feel excited. Paccha always described the Barge as being alive, and us being creative parasites in its belly, the hull.
I apologise for the lack of direction or insight but sure I’ve only just arrived! I thought organising and setting up is not quite as exciting as a childhood dream. Next week's blog will be a lot more informative as I begin my voyage.
Week 2 | 11th July 2022.
I’ve been walking to the barge, along Madeira promenade, past the sea lanes that used to be. The bottom of my docs soften on the hot morning tarmac - I imagine if it gets any hotter I’ll have a rubber trail following me. I’ve been settling into the barge, usually there’s a gentle lilt rocking me like a baby when boats pass as I work in the belly, but today it’s still. I’ve been drawing and planning, looking at Raphael’s landscapes and Jaqueline Du Jong’s suicidal paintings.
This week has been slow, a time of unpredicted reflection on the past few years as moving away from Brighton comes fast approaching. I feel uneasy about how my mind can’t keep up with life, but my instinct to hurry has been muffled, I don’t know why.
I also don’t know how this has surfaced now, it’s a bit of a pain in the arse. I brought some books in a suitcase with me earlier this week, rumbling through the boardwalk, upsetting some seagulls fighting over churros.
Week 3 | 18th July 2022.
It got bloody hotter.
I’ve managed to slightly get over myself after last week’s premature emotional attack, except my inner deliria has spread. Brighton is currently having an internal reckoning, 33 degrees… No one is safe, we’ve been hypnotised by the heat.
There is a collective unspoken rule - a communal state of crisis - of having to bake on the beach and you wouldn’t dare suggest otherwise. Most people I know can’t even hack the heat, myself included, pretending that this is the ultimate utopian state while my face resembles a sticky basset hound with a knarky little temperament.
The cool barge has been a haven, where I draw, read my book, sip my coffee, living up to this fictional life I’ve created online. But actually I’ve been wiped. It feels like I’ve been lying to a secondary school teacher about homework but this is my space, my shopping list. I keep having to delete whole sentences and paragraphs which ended up being mini hate letters to myself! Isn’t it just relentless!
It’s gotten cooler and I’ve got more time on my hands. I don’t know if this is entirely appropriate but here I am venting out the window.
Week 4 | 25th July 2022.
Hasting Beach.
Week 5 | 1st August 2022.
New source images have given me a surge of motivation and almost meaning. I think those Jenny Hanivers from last week came, found me and helped pull me from the sludge. Little findings revealing themselves in times of need like an optimistic prophecy.
I had a conversation with gallery manager and curator Lydia Heath from the ONCA gallery about the importance of drawing within one’s practice. I didn’t believe in it. Drawing TO ME is not thought provoking nor aids me in focusing on understanding things in this world. Drawing to me seemed forced and unessential to the worlds that I create. I guess I have a naïve idea of drawing though, thinking it must be pen and paper, when actually it’s a form of comprehending the different sides and forms of a thing, a method of meditation or conversation between the individual and the subject. Lydia put it quite nicely but I only jotted down ‘drawing doesn’t have to be drawing’…. arghhhhhh. I’ll have to ask Lydia again and get it tattooed on the insides of my eyelids.
My version of comprehending or ‘drawing’ is through photos and collage. I build almost all of my compositions with photographs I take on my phone of found objects and fish counters in supermarkets - that’s not to say that some elements of other photos that weren’t, in my eyes ,destined for a painting don’t reveal themselves.* I manipulate these photos in photoshop and then a composition is born! Although I usually translate these into paint sometimes they work better as they are in their own autonomous right.
*Horribly written sentence
“Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see.” – Edgar Degas
Week 6 | 15th August 2022.
I’ve come to the end of my research residency on the ONCA barge after spending the last leg in Colwyn Bay, Wales gathering photos, words and thoughts. A perfect finish to a contemplative period and coming to terms with the end of my time in Brighton. This residency has been a blessing both for practice and personal life - challenging my creative process by immersing it in quiet, dark, floating tank - a thinking tank. The space yet sometimes intimidating provided any experience I could only wish for for my emerging career. I’m prepared, raring for the next step.
It’s been a lucky pleasure working on the barge for the past six weeks, in my quiet haven. I’d like to thank all of the ONCA gang (Izzy, Persephone, Lydia, Amie, Lu-Lu, Maddy, Sally, Paccha, Charmaine, Ishtar & Peanut) for the opportunity, love & support. Cheers to residencies, cheers to nature, cheers to life!
A little excerpt from my brain from an experience I had in Llysfaen.
A wave of contentment washed over me, sheer simple contentment.
Looking around me and noticing. The feeling of waking up from a decade long slumber - almost in tears as I witnessed my first revelation.
I sat in the grass and noticed everything so delighted and humbled by eachother’s existence - trees kissing, nature in play, dancing butterflies, happy dust. Broken glass on the path sparkled with intention.
Fluff floating kissing petals during flight.
In that moment I had woke up. Enjoying the privilege of stillness, a revelation of leaves.
Everything had purpose, doing what they know by trade. On the eve of the sturgeon moon, a supermoon.
I was so happy to be awake. The best high I’ve experienced, entering the temple, my lens widening.
Worship at it’s finest.
Now I feel sleepy again which I can’t fight, but I live for my next rise.
