If the purpose of a biography is to explain the series of events that makes up a life it will go a long way to explaining mine if I tell you that from a very early age my mother drummed into me that the most important words in any language are why, how, where, when, who, and what. Anyone hooked on perpetually asking questions is likely to meander and I am no exception.
Since ducking out of school at the age of 16 to seek adventure in London I have, as opportunities and finances allow, mixed bouts of formal education with a variety of jobs*. Producing work that may or may not slot into the category 'Art' is a passion that exists in tandem. My hesitation with using the word art is based on an instinctive uncertainty about the nature of what the word implies. (I am currently applying the word what to this instinct in an attempt to try to drag long-held reservations about its use into the light of day; the resulting essay - What Art, What Science, What? - will be published here in Sept 2010)
Over the next years I would become more and more deeply absorbed by a kind of imploding of time - moments when a buried layer of experience suddenly surges upward to become the new surface of one's attention and flashes news from below.
(Arthur Miller Timebends)
Artists' websites often include a CV, bibliography or biography outlining a timeline that charts consistent progress from college on a professional career path. My difficulty is that my demonstrable association with the 'Arts' is fragmentary when looked at as a linear progression and any effort to write a coherent timeline displays yawning gaps (see my attempt at one here!)
In my case it makes more sense, if only it were possible, to lay out any attempt at a biography as the weft of life's events with the warp of ideas they stimulate. The difficulty of tracking this weave is, as Arthur Miller suggests, that layers of experience constantly shift and give rise to temporary preoccupations only to be superimposed by something else. Not surprisingly, time, its essence, and the difficulty of capturing momentary experience forms an undercurrent to my research.
As I write this my present overriding obsession can be briefly, and loosely, described as the interaction between health professional and patient; how this obsession arose can be used as an example of the weft and warp mentioned above. During MA studies at the University of Plymouth in 2007 I was preoccupied with questioning aspects of memory and consciousness, but illness intervened necessitating a pelvic clearance. News, as Arthur Miller may have said, flashed from below and my relationship with surgeon Prof. David Jenkins, who had operated on me three times, rose to the surface to be questioned - how could someone else know my body better than myself, and how could they tell me the story of how they had remade it during the missing timespan of my unconsciousness when influenced by general anaesthesia? Could they remember for me? Asking this has given rise to further questions about the nature of the relationship between health professional and patient. The questioning continues with the project - selves portrait
*Areas of study for varying lengths of time and to varying levels are philosophy, media studies, web design, fine art, and graphics. The jobs that funded these educational activities include call-centre operative, teacher, graphic designer, chambermaid, laundry manager, salesperson, stores manager... I currently fund my activities by working as a cleaner at the University of Exeter.
