Journal

weekend journal - Friday 6 december - Saturday 7 december 2002

Friday

Busy busy day. Tonight we have a private view, death and the maiden is
the exhibition, paintings by brian bushell. Brian has decided to go for
the atmosphere in a big way. He has commissioned six giant candlesticks
to light the exhibition. These are being constructed by Baldwin, our
mad blacksmith friend. Earlier this week Baldwin discharged himself
from hospital with a severely gangrenous leg. I suspect that his
blacksmith psyche is already encouraging him to start work on a really
nice metal leg. Baldwin, who is only ever known by his surname, arrives
limping hideously, in a van full of giant candlesticks. We unload in
the rain.

As well as the candlesticks we have to achieve total black-out, because
of the invasive yellow sodium street lights that fly in uninvited to
the gallery walls through the mainly glass frontage. I despatch my
business partner off to maidstone to pick up a gillion metres of felt
to cover the windows. I managed to acquire the myrhhh incense discs
from a homeopath who supports the gallery. So far, everything going to
plan. We won't know how the exhibition will look until twilight, about
an hour before the private view begins. This is fairly standard
practice at our gallery, it lends a note of immature indulgence to the
process.

I get a phone call, one of our workshop artists is missing. We are
running workshops in six local schools, building lanterns for a
procession. I find a replacement, but she costs twice as much as usual,
to cover her childcare costs. I am just grateful that I don't have to
reschedule the workshop as we only have five more days of production
time left for the procession. I get another call that the street band
who were due to play on the procession, as one of three bands, has
cancelled. I decide to ignore this problem until Monday.

Brian and I hang the velvet and talk about everything. Between the
routine of gaffa tape, staples, measuring and cutting the velvet,
moving the stepladders, we cover a lot of ground, and a lot of windows.
In a flash of unexpected rationality, we decide to eat something. The
prospect of a long, wine-fuelled private view, on an empty stomach, is
not exactly confidence-inspiring, so we have truckers food, sausage egg
and chips. We sit in the cafe and gaze across the boating lake at the
gallery, with it's blacked out windows, and are thoroughly pleased with
ourselves.

After food, I type up the price list, explanation of the exhibition and
brian's biography, whilst brian clears the gallery of tools and bits of
velvet. The gallery looks beautiful, the paintings have a strident
spirituality, dark and erotic. To hear brian talk about them, he is not
fifty eight anymore, he is ten years old, or five, or a hundred years
old. I copy an extract that brian is using to illustrate how the
renaissance covered the themes of this exhibition. He worries that the
particular translation of the extract refers to the maiden, touched by
death to the point of rapture, as a child. His concern is that in our
sensitised times this may cause problems. When I point out that the
extract is dated 1837, and that in those days we were allowed to be
romantic, allowed to form expressions that were lifted directly from
dreams, he seems happier about using it.

Brian goes off home, I get the chance to check out our new toy, the
digital camera, put the batteries on charge, lay out the gallery promo
stuff and the catalogues, prepare a comments book, unpack the glasses
on loan from waitrose, fill a bin with ice for the beers and white
wine. One last walk around the gallery, a space that when empty is as
peaceful as the crook of a loved one's arm. I set the space heater to
it's maximum, it's like having a hawker harrier jump jet in the room,
with it's energetic roar and the circle of corusculating blue and
orange flames. I smell. Go off home to shower.

Arriving back at seven, half an hour to go, no brian, no business
partner, no nobody. Except three freezing arty types, who all mis-read
the private view invitations, or who were deadly keen, I invite them in
to the gallery. Then I have to light the candles, huge church candles,
forty eight in all, my lighter gets hotter and hotter, and the
stepladder I use to reach them, has a habit of leaning in irregular
biases.

the candles lit, the music hasn't arrived yet. for the exhibition we
will be playing a piece of music recorded for the event by our "
in-house" improvised music group. The mini-disc player only has some
compilation on it, but the only tracks I can find are the doors,
velvets blah blah blah.

At last the music arrives, I slam it in, light the myrrhhh incense
discs and kill the last two halogen spots in the corners of the
gallery. For the first time I see the exhibition in its warm and muted
illuminations. It works. After five minutes it works beautifully, After
ten minutes, one beer and one cigarette, it works enough to elicit a
little moistening of my soppy eyes. Brian arrives late. He rowed. Usual
thing. He hugs, I hug, we hug.

Brian's family arrives and its all so hunky dory. Then guests start
arriving, I end up serving drinks, my nightmare, I want to be out there
schmoozing. My girlfriend arrives with her favourite psuedo-aunt in
tow, she comes over, we exchange stuff which is private.

The glitterati, intelligentsia and the downright flaky all pour in
through the door, we have transformed the gallery from its normally
pristine white curve, to a catacomb of candlelight and musky smells.
The russian girls arrive and stake out the available men, out of a
weird survival instinct that never seems to let them down, and they are
soon being guided round. Tracey Emin's brother Paul arrives and is full
of stories and gossip from the heady world of power-art-showbiz people.
Roger, who is rampantly weird, insists on telling me why this one
particular picture "works", even though he always manages to reduce
aesthetics to a formula derived from fractal mathematics, bless
him.

I am drunk by half eight, snapping away with the digital camera.
Luckily there are a couple of very photogenic children who are carrying
maglights. We have a great time. My attention span is down to three and
a half minutes, I manage to acquire a new artist for the 2003 summer
programme, and I also manage to promise something I shouldn't have, to
a landscape artist whose work could never hold these walls on their
own. A mixed schmooze. I covered a lot of people, and sneaked off to
the office to dump the digital camera pics onto the computer.

There is a party after the show, at brian's extensive gothic pile, and
so we shoo the public out in that direction. The gallery is a field of
glasses, beer bottles, and good memories of a unique moment, an evening
where the dark and erotic was given audience by the audience, and
gladly.

The party was a blur. or a blut as I just typed in error. I went home
blutted and slept diligently until noon. Returning to the gallery to
pick up my car, it had been broken into, glass everywhere, my rucksack,
hidden under the passenger seat, gone. documents, working notes, poems,
notes on the book I am working on, gone. I find a few useless things
scattered on the grass nearby but the irreplaceable is still
untraceable. I can't weep. I can only sweep the glass up and
concentrate on getting a new car window, and on a Saturday too, after
all, I have to take the kids swimming tomorrow.

xxx