In America everyone seems to be in therapy, not just the mentally ill or substance dependent. No bad thing. We can all learn, unburden ourselves of baggage we carry. I wonder too if we all shouldn't at some point have a breakdown and enter rehab. Some never get chance to stand back, gain some perspective, take a long hard look at themselves.
One of my favorite popular artworks of recent years was a work by Michael Landy. He made a machine that incorporated a conveyor system that carried objects to their destruction. Over a two week period he destroyed everything he owned. Such a liberating thought.
When I first exhibited work at the annual show in Cheltenham my girlfriend of the time was at art college there. I invited her and her friend along to show off. They weren't impressed. Nothing to trigger thought, nothing you were allowed to interact with. I couldn't explain it. For half an hour I could see how others might see what I did. Rather than accept their view I hid behind the artists alibi of 'you don't understand.' I liked my stuff and a few others but agreed that most of the stuff there was self indulgent. I tried to seperate my work in my head. These may be my peers but I'm not like them.
From then on I have not felt comfortable. Hardly anyone can afford it, no one in my socio economic group and so you communicate to few. No one who matters to you.
Is it healthy to spend so much time dwelling on objects?
The deeper you get in to any system the less able you become to escape. You have to believe. Your life depends on it. Like a priest who falls in love and succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh I have lost faith.
Working against your intuition is a route to depression, even death. There was something so close to me I dare not distrust it. My sense of self was dependent on it. I had bought in to it.
I even taught others to follow in to a world I could no longer defend.
The route to homelessness, prostitution, drug dependence, extremist politics is hard to see. How do people end up in such a mess? It is through small, incremental steps. It is by the support of wrong 'uns.
I began in trade joinery. A seemingly benign occupation. I could help fix peoples homes.
I returned to education having had to wait until I was a mature student. I had filled the years between learning a trade. Rather than abandon this I used it as a step.
At college I mixed with others who supported an unhealthy world view. We aspired to make decadent objects. We became materialist to a perverse degree. I went on to work with other materialists. Joined a forum where everyone agreed. No outside voice to tell us we were perverse. I met middle aged men who described furniture as 'sexy', very disturbing. Beware of the internet. You can find a forum to support any view, however dangerous.
Once I had been to university I no longer saw how trade had been perverted in middle class hands. The designer craftsmen were not working class folk who had learnt the craft through apprenticeship but Ruperts and Ashleys rejecting their backgrounds to work with their hands.
Think of the name Designer Craftsmen. Rejection of the humility of trade; a need for authorship. The name says it all, it is equally about the maker as it is the object, it is about the pleasure they get from making. Ultimately self indulgent. It isn't furniture made for living. It is furniture that says, 'look at me!'. Furniture about making furniture. The Prog Rock of furniture. Furniture with 20 minute drum solos furniture to show off with in tight spandex pants.
I was good at it. That made me continue. All around showed approval . But it wasn't where my talents lay.
Most of my work operated like conceptual art. It illustrated a theory. Ideas existing in words. Linguistic constructs.
All other work was just to pay the bills.
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