A group of students on a creative 'gap-year' program from the USA spent two days around me and my home filming and photographing their way about. I was the subject of their documentary project(s?). Before their visit I had shared one piece of information via the program director : 'I don't believe in documentary'.
There were between 8 and 15 students with 2 and 3 tutors in photograph and film crews. I think I did 4 separate interviews to camera. I enjoyed their perspectives, energy and interest. Being the centre of their attention was kind of dizzying for both me and our two kittens. Interviews have such a peculiar gravity, more so with a whole film crew preparing and aiming their tech at you at the same time. The eccentric weight is ob-scene and by the end of each day I felt inflated and estranged. But I am able to talk about my work... me poor dad's old club mate Jack would have said 'Ee cun tark unda wata man'. Here's one film from the footage edited by it's interviewer Kiara Nisenbaum.
A few weeks before I'd had about 400 people pass through my house over a couple of hours on an tourist yomp called 'Les Mad Jaques'. The organisers had contacted me wondering if I might be a point of cultural interest on their clients walking itinerary. My pictures are often composed around narratives and when I talk about them I unfold the stories they contain. I find it a little like being possessed. On this occasion over about 4 hours hundreds of walkers passed through my home which I'd set up as a gallery I could and did talk many through. I have no footage of the event, this collage uses pictures taken from the organisers website.
I've been painting in public for several years. Firstly in a studio with an open public frontage making a picture whose subject was specific to that place : Les Trois Ages du Dragon Baligan ; then on the streets of Isigny-sur-Mer for Au Monstre D'Isigny; at a couple of music/arts festivals and last summer in and of the street markets of Le Cotentin. Here's a bunch of pictures from all those events... pictures I was sent, where I was the subject myTHself.
We have become normalised to seeing pictures hanging in galleries. There is an assumption a picture must speak for it's self. That assumption works well for 'galleries' when often the painter is dead or elsewhere. Galleries have education officers giving tours or audio guides, catalogues and sales staff to give context although many of the visitors will be aware of the art or the story of the artist through education or media.
I like seeing old dead painters work and many pictures don't need the artist present especially if their symbolism is sufficiently pop or their method already understood. I've a huge collection of art books that I pour through. But I've found there is a very worth while exchange both presenting and especially making works in person. Its rare for 'artists' to be present at their gallery shows... discussing or making their work. Maybe an artist, particularly with a large public show could be - should be there?
Once I was with my pictures in a gallery and began to speak to two visitors about the painting they looked at. They were sophisticated and metropolitan. Parisians on holiday I judged. They walked quickly away to look at another picture, one saying loudly 'I hate it when the artist is present and presumes to talk to you, it's so... (I never quite caught that bit).' Fair enough I thought aiming just a little hate at my very personal rejection.
