linkage exhinitoin statement

steve and i have now selected all the artwrks from artemis, and have some linkage photos left to get, but we need to write a statement for the entrance way, i have started this and steve suggested blogging it, so here it is, we would like comments please. or additions. cheers

LINKAGE
This exhibition includes 35 examples of artwork from the collection at Artemis, interlinked with images Kate and Steve have taken on their mobile phones.
The mobile phone is omnipresent in contemporary life and used to record: passing moments; significant discoveries or random stumblings. These digital files are often never downloaded, forwarded, or printed out, remaining within the device, building into an archive of captured moments. We accumulate this temporary collection, often discarding it as we change phones, all without significant consideration.
As artists, Kate and Steve are interested in collections and as such have utilised their mobile phones to enable a journey through the Artemis collection and provide an insight into their practice. Like a game of Chinese whispers, we can move from one image to the next observing the lateral ponderings.

Artists Art and Artefacts sees artists Steve Pool and Kate Genever working on a year long, Arts Council England funded, project at Artemis: Education Leeds artefact loan service. Working both individually and collaboratively the artists are researching, exploring and responding to Artemis’ collection of over 10,000 artefacts.

Abstract

I like this abstract bit because it concerns what our collabertion is really about which seems to be exploring a theme in different ways and how each of our approaches if valued in the correct context helps everybody to progress thinking. This is slightly different from the original bid where Kate P and Lou are written in more to support the artists CPD and reflection on practise. So for me it's become far more collaberative which makes the AAA conference thing seem more relevant. Perhaps we could unpick some of this and use it as narrative entry points to our paper - Also I'd like to suggest that we make the trip to Boston part of the work (Artististic concept based) which gives us licence to shake things up a bit.

So I think I've written about this before but on our first trip to Artermis for the very first meeting Kate Pahl started to tell me how she really didn't want to steer the artists and wanted to position herself with enough distance from the project so she wouldn't influence the ideas too much. It seems to me that this is her constant personal battle to find a position in relation to the field which allows her to activly engage with people , reflect, and observe without impacting. Due to excessive enthusiasm Kate is very bad at this but perhaps this is why we want to work with her.

So after deciding on her epistomology she suggests that the project is about canoes and Cargo. This comes from nowhere and is supported by a story of the change in british ethonography over thge last 50 years. I brush this off don't think about it much and suddenly find myself 6 months later asking if an object is a canou or Cargo and strangly understanding what this means. So Kate provides another lens to veiw the work/world through and I get a lot from this - she also provides a different context for ideas. as Artists we try and grow all our ideas ourselves - Like my disfuntional allotment my ideas are all strange shapes don't really look like what they are supposed to but taste really nice as long as you don't try and keep them too long. I don't want to grow veg for a supermarket but sometimes I like to know how it's done. This is a strange metaphor but the phones ringing and I need to go - it reminds me of that film Being there with Peter Sellers in it.