Commissioned as part of DAO's Diverse Perspectives programme, based at Salisbury Arts Centre, and juxtaposing the motivations of creatives and their audiences, Creatives in Con.Text is grown from conversations around access in it's very broadest sense. Con.Text pieces evolve through performance conversations to present research and evaluation as textual art.

Endelig - progress

24 March 2013

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In the process of getting in 'People Like You' to Salisbury Arts Centre, I was delighted to meet Liz Crow's tech team who made a very professional job of setting up her Bedding Out installation and who will be there masterminding Bedding Out - Live.  At some point in the day, and during the consumption of quantities (at least on my part) of chocolate cake, we had the kind of conversation I dream of. The one about presenting Con.Text creatively on DAO and since Trish was part...

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Reading will be a bonus

4 March 2013

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Now that DAO has this sophisticated new image and things are settling down again, it's time to think about publishing 'Creatives in Con.Text' online. It has been ready for a while and I have been considering how to physically present it for 'People Like You' - the exhibition. Originally I had planed to screen it, but from conversations I have gathered that there are a lot of people in Salisbury who have had enough of screens. From a dithery wilderness I finally decided on...

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Getting ready to exhibit...

8 February 2013

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'Creatives in Con.Text' has come together, the incubation period is over, the edit is almost done. Some things have become crystal clear, others still nudge at the edges of consciousness. Progressing the work worried at me while I was still refinding me. Impractical notions for its presentation raged in and out of conscious thought while I was clutching at my hot-pad, ignoring the spaced-outness of painkillers and telling myself that tomorrow all would be brilliant. Eventually I let...

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Assembling Con.Text

14 December 2012

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I have ambition beyond my current skills. Con.Text evolves in my head. The whole process of producing these works has steadily evolved, but in spite of my efforts to grow alongside my ambitions for delivery, the necessary technical ability remains elusive. 'View: the Con.Text' appeared in a simplified format that was sort of ok because it was the first and, with a second project: 'Underwater Con.Text' already underway, I was happy to keep imagining the development and pursue the process of...

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ConText within FLINT

20 November 2012

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Amazing weekend! Con.text within FLINT was an experiment, being an intense process of working in the space with artists and audiences for the duration of this Microfest - ca. 13.00 to 22.00 on both Saturday (at Salisbury Arts Centre) and Sunday (The Pound, Corsham). It was also the first Con.Text piece where I asked people to leave traces of themselves as documentation of our meeting and conversation. So I now possess two tiny booklets stuffed full of creative evidence. And of course a headful...

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Con.Text workshopping

12 November 2012

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Conversations with artists running workshops at Salisbury Arts Centre connect me with its more frequent visitors - people with more regular and planned engagement with the arts - but maybe not all quite as regular as I had been led to believe by quite a number of artists proclaiming that teaching was the way to financial survival. And the match, that elegant dovetailing of offer and perceived need that seemed apparent on the surface, was also not quite as I had imagined.     I craft...

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Is this working for you?

11 November 2012

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Reading through the Con.Text Blogs, I don't get much sense of the conversational adventure. While the project itself is taking shape, the conversations need always to be beginnings. I did want the blogs to go somewhere, to have a story, but their story of making needs to be the blank canvass on which Con.Text takes shape.   The words and poetry that make it into a blog are like preparatory sketches and may, or may not, be revealing the essence of the finished piece. Extreme situations,...

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Difficult Con.Text

5 November 2012

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My work exists only to say that it shouldn't be here. I channel all my protest into it's creation; people say it is beautiful: where can they buy it. They miss the point. It should't be here.   Degrees of passion differentiate the artists absorbed in the issue of sustainability. The desire to change people motivates their practice. This results in my most difficult Con.Text conversations yet. My own creative striving for the degree of detachment and impartiality that validates Con.Text...

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Conversation and performance.

4 November 2012

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Conversations with performing artists can feel a bit like a guessing game. How much of it is performance? I may not know, or guess. Halfway through it may dawn on me and I might make a hasty revaluation...not to ignore something, but to change how I present it.     Its an offer. Take it or leave it. I'm only trying to hold up a mirror. What you see is inside of yourself; You are your own story, and for that you, and only you, are responsible. Take as much as you need; all you can...

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Order in the chaos of diversity?

22 October 2012

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Working in the Cafe Space, I observe the Arts Centre visitors. Most people are busy chatting over a coffee, but in one of the groups I cannot help noticing a man whose eye is frequently being drawn to the enigmatic video installation already mentioned in the first of these blogs. He is part of a lively conversation yet still seems powerless to resist the image. I decide to invite him to talk about it and head that way. Instinct pauses me when I am almost there. A lone guy with two glasses of...

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Who thinks about access?

21 October 2012

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Running through the background of this particular Con.Text experience is the free offer of visual arts displayed in Salisbury Arts Centre's walk through Gallery Space. Here the artists face the challenge of catching the eye of, amongst others, ladies who lunch, suits with meetings, time wasters; bird watchers, mums groups, people who come regardless of the arts and people who are drawn to the creative environment without really knowing why.   The current exhibition, Doctoring Practice,...

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New Con.Text 4

8 October 2012

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Con.Text conversations with artists are reasonably straightforward, but sometimes conversation with an arts venue visitor can be quite overwhelming; some in a good way that results in great text, like when I find myself chatting to someone who is just so open to what might be on offer, keen to make forays into something other, hopeful of finding some kinds of clues to the adventures of life; hints or clarifications to the mysteries that surround them unfolding and beckoning through the artist's...

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New Con.Text 3

7 October 2012

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I do have Con.Text conversations in other places; the main focus is Salisbury Arts Centre, but I cannot resist adding words from other venues. Words gathered in a preparatory stage of the project (some of them from Unlimited at the Southbank Centre) help me to find the universal in the individual and also help maintain the anonymity of those who relax into the conversation only after reassurances that they will remain anonymous. These blogs are not reviews of work, and where work is mentioned,...

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New Con.Text 2

30 September 2012

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I work my way into Con.Text pieces allowing gut feelings to lead me until the work begins to shape it's own identity and acquires a title. The conversations are performance in their own right, and as such have a sufficiency that does not demand automatic documentation as a text. The ephemeral nature of this work is starting to feel out of place in a world where everything is recorded and perhaps also at odds with it's nature as research and evaluation. I have begun to list names, but am...

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New Con.Text

29 September 2012

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I've been struggling with how to blog about my DAO commission: the conversations that are influencing the development of the soft sculptures and inspiring and informing the new Con.Text. This new work is based at Salisbury Arts Centre which is beginning its autumn season with flair; with an appeal that has a personal quality, enabling me to relate to the diverse programme of work as if it has been chosen especially for me. My conversations with the practitioners and performers and with the Arts...

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