THE FRAME

Artists’ group discussion1 – selected themes and quotes

Discussion of Marion Milner paper ‘The Framed Gap’

 “ I like the idea of the frame as just a space that’s different. She (Milner) introduces the idea that there’s a space that’s a normalcy – what we are usually in – and then there’s a different kind of space. Of course one can say that there are always lots of different kinds of spaces and that’s something that I’d be interested in looking at further. Is there really such a thing that can be framed like she tries to do that’s a nothingness, that’s the space of artistic practice per se or are there lots of different….kinds of spaces that differ from one another that one goes in to….people may have only 2 spaces – the normal and the extraordinary - or people may have lots of different spaces and artistic practice may take place in all or some or any of them and can you really delineate it as she tries to do as a frame. Or is it more fluid”.

“For me I just know that when I’m working it’s the only time in my life when I feel in complete control. No-one else can tell me what to do while I’m doing it. I’ve found that if I’m asked to work in another space that people come into when I’m not there I can’t work in that space. It has to be my space and I have to have control over that space”. 

“Things like sitting on the bus thinking as a work space that can take you into another space. And I don’t know how you frame that. It kind of is eventually part of the making of a piece of work…. There’s different kinds of frame, different kinds of space. There’s the activities that involve not just your own studio because you’ve had to go somewhere else o use bits of equipment or something and then there’s your own studio and then there’s the actual medium itself”.

“Isn’t it part of human nature to try to frame things to try to create boundaries around things because otherwise you would go completely mad because you would be totally overwhelmed by this huge wave of whatever”.

STAGES OF ARTISTIC PROCESS/ WORKING METHOD

 “To me there are really different stages and I use different spaces. I’ve got a particular way of working which always involves going somewhere……I’m working on one project now and thinking about another one. It might be that the stuff I’m researching now I wouldn’t actually go to the place for another year but meanwhile I’m working on ….so I’ve got working on location….then there’s working in my studio…then there’s working in my study… and then there’s all the things where you’re floating about somewhere like on the bus when you have the idea and this is what takes your work forward. That relates to me to scientific ways of working –whether or not you believe in a Eureka moment -  we all have processes but then something happens that’s unpredictable…. And all the things work concurrently so I’m usually making one thing but I’m thinking about and preparing others all at the same time.”

“I’ll start off thinking what I’m doing and then I’ll produce a body of work. It doesn’t work if it’s too preplanned. Sometimes you might follow the process through to the end but sometimes it doesn’t really work very well. I have energy and enthusiasm at the beginning and then I’ll stop and assess it and realize I’ve got it wrong….It’s not exactly about what I thought it was about – it’s actually about something slightly different or it’s more subtle than I initially thought or ..it’s not the right language and then I’ll start the second body of work which is the real body of work”

“Alternating between reflecting and acting and then you do things and you’re sorting out what you were doing in the next painting. You didn’t really know what you were doing in the first painting and so on and so on and so on”.

“You can pass things sometimes. That’s what I find. I think I really want to do something and I can’t because I’m teaching for the next two weeks and by the time I get back to it it’s changed”.

“You can’t afford to mess around if you’re teaching or something. If you lose 2 or 3 weeks of work that’s a big hole and it’s like you’ve stopped really and you have to pick up the thread again. It’s really hard to get going again.”

“ It’s not like if you’ve got a period of time and you’ve made just a few days even and …you say that is my working plan so I’ve got to use it.. and nothing happens because it’s designated and you will do something more valuable in half an hour when you’re tired and you’ve come in from work. It’s kind of paradoxical. …..Things that can only come out of doing. Things that come out because you have made yourself do a drawing or whatever”

“ There’s something about drawing that frees up technique… I find the more you draw the less I think about it. I do a lot of drawing that I know I’m not going to want to look at again but I know it’s taking me into where I do want to be. Eventually you find you are making drawings that relate to what you do want to do.”

“ I have recently found that my working process has changed. I used to produce very little – like one piece every 2 years or something. I used to find it very hard to get myself to work. Not because I didn’t have time but because I found it really difficult – getting into the studio was a really difficult process for me. It’s changed – I found that I sometimes just sit myself down in front of the computer and start looking at my images with no particular direction– just because I want to find an image that I like. And I want to start working on it and I enjoy it and I before I realize I’ve sat for 5 hours at the computer and I come up with a piece of work that I rally really like. I suddenly remember that I made this image 3 years ago and I made this image 2 years ago and I pull them up together..and I start working on then together…. Whereas in the past it was you’ve got to come up with some work because you’ve got an exhibition in 3 weeks time and that was the only was I used to work.”

STATES OF MIND

‘Ehrenzweig and the Hidden Order of Art – unconscious understanding does make sense to me in terms of things that are difficult to get access to through language  where time can change when you are in the middle of art – like a chanelling. There’s definitely something in this other state” 

“It does bring in the aspect of play. And time is an issue there   …. For me one of the anxieties I’ve had is that time constraints have stopped me from that open approach”

 “Why are you working…for me the taking pleasure in the work ….always is just painting – just being in the moment of painting –being in the moment and almost being outside of it at the same time” 

“I don’t think making work is ever emotionally neutral. I think that’s what makes it dangerous. I don’t know the circumstances of where it’s going to go. …there’s some tension between the starting point and the emotional experience of making it which are very different. There’s a tension about whether you can get anything out of those interactions that stands up”.

“ I run a continuous critical commentary on what I do and there are very occasional moments when that voice switches off and those are very precious moments for me. It is in those moments when there’s a break from that evaluation that something happens. It’s permission and play. It’s a moment in which I make a space which is why I am so fascinated by the idea of the frame. …I work a lot with what is framed and what is between those framed……fundamentally I think there is one moment when thinking is suspended in the normal kind of category which does not mean that thinking is suspended in terms of where to put a colour or how to change a shape..there is a thinking going on – I’m not mindless suddenly -  but there is a suspension of a whole number of other things that usually take place.”

“ Your conscious voice is not the predominant one and it is what she (Milner) says when she says absent-mindedness….absence of conscious mind or absence of conscious directed or critical mind…..the work expresses all these different levels of conscious, verbal, preverbal, and that’s what it is really about. The work expresses something that I am not clever enough o describe or to catch in the frame” 

“My conscious mind there’s a control thing going on all the time. It’s inhibiting especially creative processes. And it’s moments when it’s lulled into less than fully conscious states like sitting on a bus gazing out of the window that this other stuff – I think of it as behind that – can get out.and I become more aware of that. For me there’s a really strong element of trust and letting go of it….I feel quite inhibited in the studio a lot of the time”.

“If I didn’t feel angry I wouldn’t be able to work”

 

“The voices in the back of our head can be many and various. They can be the gallery owner, the friends that we rate, our parents…they can be many different voices and I’m battling with them the whole time. Some of them can be really fruitful voices and some can be really damaging”.

ARTISTS’ BLOCK (OR HOW TO GET INTO THE STUDIO)

“We create a whole lot of frames to facilitate catapulting ourselves into this space and we hopefully get better at manipulating the frames so we get there quickly”

“It might be out of doing or it might be out of walking along the road and you can’t say. …I have huge difficulty getting into the studio and the only way I can do it is to run in and quickly start and I almost haven’t thought about it. Because I can fiddle about doing nothing”.

“ I have something that I can work on that I know is OK. And I have something else that’s not really working and I don’t know why I’m doing it but I know it’s not working but I still carry on working it but I’ve got something else that I know is working that I go back to….. the other stuff that I do…it might lead somewhere so it’s important to be doing it but it’s not really pleasurable”

“ There’s a pleasure in the thing that works and that is important and ….it doesn’t mean that there’s not a danger attached also but there’s a very clear sense of pleasure that makes me want to do it. ……The thing that doesn’t work there’s a conflict at some level and unless you experience the conflict as pleasurable you want to go to the thing that works”.

“Running into the studio is to do with this – to do with not being over-determined. I do things like I quite often make a phone call as I start working and I don’t necessarily want to have the phone call for vet long – I get bored after a bit – but it’s so I can release something. Or I have to have the radio on. Because if I don’t then this other bit – whether it’s critical or whether it’s a really irritating narrative that I have going on in my Head interferes. But then that’s in the active bit. When I’m in the reflective bit I can’t have any noise.”

 “I use alcohol. I really do these days. I need to for some reason. And then you write a load of crap or do whatever you do and then you go back to it when you are sober”

“ I don’t really have blocks as such but that’s because of quite a few years of strategies to avoid blocks which include …I just make myself . I’m not saying that’s good because you might end up with 15 terrible paintings that you throw away…”

“If I have a block I will go and do something that is still work but is compulsive endless repetition of producing images on the computer or video, that’s quite repetitive, compulsive, takes a huge amount of time. Usually something ends up coming out if it eventually but it’s sort of horrible.”

Talkshow is a multi-practice peer critique group of established artists creating new forms of exchange-based dialogue.