stepping back

I was talking with a friend today about preparing a piece of work I have in an upcoming show at Surface Gallery in Notts and it really made me stop and think. The piece, 'Luck of the Draw', is an installation that unfolded over a long period of time and sort of took on a life of its own. I've shown it once before, and it was an anxiety provoking experience when I installed the work the first time so I wanted to minimise that and be a bit more prepared this time round. As I went through it and thought about how I would put it all together again, I kept thinking, gee, if I had realised certain things whilst making the work I would have done it a lot differently, and been more organised in the choices I made.

So I was explaining this to my friend and telling him how it sort of bothered me and he said something that really stopped me in my tracks. He pointed out that an integral part of this piece of work was the fact that it had evolved over a long period of time and that that was evident in the way it was made, which he saw as really important. He called it a 'time line of the work' and pointed out that what I perceived to be a flaw was actually not one at all but rather an asset. And when I took a step back and looked at it and thought about it, I knew he was right.

The other thing he said was that, in his experience, one of the marks of a good gallery is the ability to be able to separate the artist from their work - not in the sense of division, but in the sense of getting the artist to see the work with a fresh pair of eyes. I believe he is right. When we get so close to what we are making, the work becomes a part of us and it seems impossible to step back and see it objectively. We invest so much of ourselves into what we make, after all, and rightly so. It's a lot like one's children in that respect, and it's no accident that so many of us think of our work as 'our babies' because we do actually birth the work. And as anyone who has kids can tell you, it's mighty hard to be objective about your child.

Sometimes we need others to be able to do this for us, or to at least point us towards that window to look through. It's a good thing, I think.