A letter to my collaborators We are collaborating under strange conditions.
Watercolour pencil in sketchbook
Having spent a significant amount of time working on my ideas for collaboration in lockdown, out of lockdown and in lockdown again, I have watched their rapid rise and fall like snowflakes on a radiator.
I have done collaborations before. I have had to prepare to send work for exhibitions abroad having never been to the exhibition space before. I’ve collaborated with others across hundreds of miles and have travelled to spaces with the expectation to create site specific work, run events, and hang a show with other artists all within a week. But I have never been in a collaboration like MewnRhwng before. There are four of us in the group. I have never met Jenny or Najia in person. We have a certain level of expectation from our supporters. There is a certain artist contract to make tangible the ideas we put on paper and promised to share with a public. However, we have been in a pandemic lockdown. The rules of which have altered weekly. The conditions of which have determined our social behaviours and our boundaries.
Contents of mail
I had sent Becs some of my ideas in the post with fabrics and half-finished suggestive sketches. I think I startled her slightly because I’d forgotten to write a message to say they were from me. All mail etiquette was forgotten in the process and I had just wanted to send them as soon as possible to make tangible connection to her, and to the project.
“No message or return address!!...I was sooooo confused! Bx”
I had wanted to post several works to Jenny also, but after the recent changes to the lockdown rules and the tears over tiers, I decided to change my rules of how I was going to collaborate.
These thoughts had already been brewing under the surface after our ‘zoom rehearsal’. Jenny was hiding from the screen. Najia had some beautiful fabric that she swirled around the camera and along a line. That was my favourite part. It got my overdrive lockdown mind thinking, what is best*, hostile collaborations or amenable vacancy, playful voids, or suggestive speech?
*best for my creativity and working with and through my ideas in a collaborative manner.
I have been making drawings, as we discussed based on the messages and my response, drawing and connecting. I wish I could see you!
How can a meeting we had last year seem like such a special thing now? To be regarded as crucial to our wellbeing. To be regarded now as inappropriate and somewhat risky.
My days are saturated by time. Gelatinous and globular, wading through a familiar space with unfamiliar terrain. I don’t want to scream; I wish I did. I want to hide. No one wants to hear me. Why would they? When I look out onto the world, the globular glass pulls my image into 360-degree sharpness, my reflection is pulled and curved and upside down. Smile turns to frown and back again.
After I presented images on Instagram last week, I realised that my work has moved from inside the house, lonely anxious space to a venturing out into the world, the bus, anonymous masked faces, games being played, masked stone cut crinkles edge.
Ladies, collaborators, this collaboration we are involved with is a tool. We are creating a tool to use for future practices.
