Therapy
I’m ok. Exertus, Newcastle Upon Tyne. Photo by Conor Lawless.
Performance, live music and installation. With Daniel Green and Adam Thomas. Exertus, Newcastle Upon Tyne. 27th June 2007.
Thomas walks into the studio and immediately notices two words written upon a wall. Walker stands there, beneath them, looking or perhaps working. This is not work, Walker tells Thomas later. This is not my work.
The day approaches three o’clock. A library of records leans against a partition, dust is caught beneath a wall’s white emulsion. Thomas gesticulates. He wants to talk about notions of quality within art. Thomas claims he led him to this point. There is a smile. Somewhere outside the gallery, footsteps can be heard.
This is not work, Walker tells Thomas.
Next to a false wall is a brown box containing materials for a previous project; the box has been opened but remains full. Walker’s previous installation had been cancelled after one day. He spent four months working on it. Thomas asks for the name of the new project. Therapy, Walker replies.
By the door are eight paintpots, arranged in two stacks. There are also two tables in the room. It appears that Walker uses one for writing and one for painting. Thomas looks away but cannot avoid looking at the two words on the wall. It is not always possible to talk about what it is that one is seeking to recover from.
A ladder holds its place near to the entrance. Elsewhere, various everyday objects are scattered throughout the workplace. Some look as though they have been broken, others look as though have been fixed. An office chair with wheels waits invitingly in the centre of the room. This is not work.
Some people feel that art and life inform each other. Thomas looks at the uncut logs set upon easy circles of wood-chips and splinters, he looks at the keyboard, the Marinucci organ and the xylophone. In the corners of the space, uneven grey floor-paint curls at the edges. He looks at the words on the wall once more, he cannot fathom why. Here, somewhere, there is an interest in etymology and slippages of meaning. Thomas sits on a red chair.
What is that blanket for, Thomas asks. Security, Walker replies.
Audiences are detectives, readers are operatives. In exploring the relationship they have with their own art, artists question the autonomy of meaning. Thomas looks once more at the two words on the wall, questioning. There are slow rewards here. Justification, fulfilment, finality; all are sought and seldom found. Yet still we look. The typewriter and paper, seemingly the focal point of the room but not always noticeable, sits on the table. The paper is blank.
This is not yet work, Walker says. This is the beginning of the work, the start of a tangent from itself. This is not work. Footsteps can be heard again from outside.
Thomas looks to the two words on the wall and understands. They are over ten feet high.
Adam Thomas
Photo by Conor Lawless.
