Art for Art's sake

My paintings hand been bubble wrapped and bungeed to a trolley in my kitchen for a week. I’d got my dates wrong and - for once - got everything ready ahead of time. So I pulled the trolley into the hallway to start my journey to London to hang the paintings. Almost immediately the bunjee cords pinged off, and the paintings fell off. I hadn’t bungeed the paintings to the bottom of the trolley. I’m sharp but dopey.

After I’d taken my time and done them up again I was off and wondering why I’d decided not to take the car. The train up was pretty painless, but wobbling onto the Bakerloo Line I tottered into someone ahead of me on the escalator and they went mental. After I’d apologised and he was still ranting I said “Mate, you’re gonna have to accept that I’m sorry and move on.” I decided to get off at Waterloo and it was a gigantic pain in the ass to get to the venue at Southbank. I had a huge amount of relief when I got there and started to hang the paintings in an amazing space on four floors. I lugged the paintings up to my space on the third floor and set about putting them up. I was the only artist there hanging their work without help, which was fine cause I’d already worked out my tactic and there were already wall plugs in from previous exhibitions so I used them and drilled some new ones. The work went up pretty quickly and when I realised I was going to have time to spare I was able to relax and enjoy the process. When I know I’m all good in the hood I embrace the logistics and it felt good to be in a creative environment with other artists. I had time to adjust the hanging of some of my paintings and to check out the other work. I even had time to have a mooch about the Tate Modern, which felt uplifting.

While I was looking around the exhibition space in Southbank I saw some messages from mates about a spare ticket for a gig by Yard Act back in Cardiff, and in the spirit of carpe diem I asked if I could bagsey the ticket. I travelled back to Cardiff, the kind bouncer at Clwb Ifor stored by massive rusk and i joined Steve Dixon for 45 minutes spiky Yard Act action. Great fun!

The previous days activities were written large on my face the next morning. I had thought that it would be a pain in the arse to go to the Private View the next day but then I shook myself and thought ‘Bollocks to it! These things have got to be celebrated!’ so I dragged myself back up to London, and it was wonderful. I met up with my mate Simon and we swanned around the four floors of the venue chatting to other artists, and i tentatively approached two men who were looking at my paintings and introduced myself. They asked some insightful questions about the paintings and were very complimentary.

It was a joyous and life affirming experience to have my work out in the world again and looking forward to doing it again soon.