NOTEBOOK

This podcast series features conversations with artists and makers of all kinds that SPILL has presented, worked with or admired from a distance. 

In this, our first episode of the series, Robin is in conversation with London based performance artist Louise Orwin.

But with humans now living longer than ever before, many people alive today will be elders for forty years or more. Yet despite the fact that many of us will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, old age still remains ‘…a condition to be dreaded, disparaged, neglected, and denied.’

The title of this entry is of course a reference to the Joni Mitchell song that so articulately describes what it means to lose something of value. As you will see, the reference to a parking lot in that same song is also pertinent to what follows.

These images were doing the rounds on social media sometime around 2014, and at this time, I would often start my public speaking engagements by showing them, referring to the demolition of these buildings as a metaphor for arts education being ‘in ruins’. Since then, out of the rubble has emerged a new building consisting of hotel-like accommodation for Cardiff Metropolitan University students; clean, sleek and well appointed, this new usage is as far from my own rough, dirty, chaotic art school experience as it is possible to imagine

It took me ages to get round to it, but I finally wrote a curatorial statement. No great fanfare, no big deal, but the realisation is that writing a statement of intent as an Artistic Director is no easier than writing an artist statement. It has been interesting to see which of my concerns as an artist have carried over into my curatorial role - for example, exploring the relationship between the marginal and the mainstream.

Last week, I was helping to tidy up our White Room in the Think Tank. This is the space at SPILL where our visiting artists present performances and talks, or hole up for a few days for a residency. On the huge whiteboard that takes up one wall of the space, I saw some words scrawled.