Je suis ici.

Sorry, sorry. Crap. Haven’t posted for a quite a while by the looks of it. Many reasons. Mostly busy-ness which sounds rather boring, but from this end has been somewhat exciting. I am getting hitched, for those of you who don’t know, in one week’s time. In fact, yep. This time next week, I’ll be getting my slap and frock on, and sipping pre-ceremony champagne. And then I’ll be all wifed. Amazing, huh?

Without descending into the sentimental (for God knows, I will have a big cry if I do), I want to extend my thanks to all who shared Attract/Repel with me, and a super extra special thanks to those who helped to make it happen. In every sense. One of the more rewarding artistic experiences I have had in my body of practice. I am so very humbled by the spirit and generosity of the artists with whom I worked. And gosh, did I ever learn a lot. So, we’re putting her to bed for a while, I’m sure we’ll rouse her again at some stage in the not so distant future. But for me? I’m on to somewhat different projects, after a bit of a well-earned honeymoon.

Something absolutely dazzling which gets to occupy some of my time before the wedding however is this: A few days ago, I received a box in the mail from Elizabeth Hunter Spreen of Ghost Light – containing some objects, ideas, some video, images, to respond to… and then return with response enclosed in box. The artists involved in the project in the US will then go on to respond to my response, et cetera. I haven’t been able to do anything with it for days because I haven’t been able to piece together what needs to be executed – how to put the bits of the pattern together in my mind. Today it has dawned on me, and I’m off to the studio to create my response. I wonder whether I’ll be happy with it. It will be working in a fairly new medium for me.

I might write more on it if I’m happy with what I end up making, and if it sheds any light on what happens next. Some new things are slowly beginning to unpack themselves for me about my work. Some really essential philosophical things, and others that have far more to do with the practicalities of time and mode of practice. And thusly, I suppose, priorities are making themselves very clear to me. I can look back on the last few projects I have done, and say, “Yes, now I would do this, differently, and this, and this, and this.” Some of these things are very much artistic choices, things I wish I had more perspective on. Others are… a matter of mind-set. Seeing some things less as compromise, and rather opportunity, and others, the other way around – perhaps some of the time you must be all the more conscientious. “No, I will not do this particular thing, if it can not ultimately be just that – particular.”

At the gym I work out to my mini-screen embedded in my treadmill. Today on SBS there was a treat – a documentary on the making of, the fact of the existence of Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt). In one section of a recent interview, Godard says with regards to previously made artistic choices, “You must never regret something. You can say that it is bad. But you must never regret it.”

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