This year I have been busy organising a summer camp. A summer camp that doesn’t yet have a set moment, location or singular intention to take place, and actually may never actually happen at all.
My endeavour of ‘Summer Camp Friends Forever’ provides a speculative framework in which I am conducting research, exercising skills and establishing a network in preparation for this upcoming event. It it a means to search for reciprocal collaborations with other artistic practitioners whose skillsets could contribute to defining the possibilities of the camp. As a collaborative process it requires defining different roles; Right now I am the founder of the camp, which means I am directly concerned with trying to land upon on the right conditions for the camp to be ‘ready’. More formally, I am also undertaking the role of the sign maker, through which I am producing paintings that are starting to aestheticise the idea of the camp based upon the title, and (literally) giving direction to whatever aspect of the camp is due to be developed next.
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My approach to art making is informed by ideas of the artist as an all round instigator, that involves participation in artist-initiated structures, organising, and curating from an artists perspective. Within this there is a focus on communal qualities of events and other moments that nurture the ideal that we as artists are always one amongst fellows. When the time comes to make things, my practice involves a wide range of drawing, painting, sculptures, installation, performances and events.
My work is often trying to come to terms with its own apparent logics. I find myself employing premises as an approach to the production of both autonomous works, which begin to dictate formal aspects such as references to familiar objects - and developmental decisions for events in which I aim to bring people together for moments of appreciation and discovery. In terms of event based projects this can come across as a sort of pseudo social experiment - where the very nature of participation or degrees of involvement, that are centred around discourses in making and showing, are the means for possible discoveries and new interpretations. I once made a wooden window under instruction of my fictitious wood workshop teacher, and my insect hotels were trapped in the infertile show room of the gallery space. In more sculptural works my drawings have shared growing bags with dark potatoes, and I discovered that no one wanted to buy my home made bath bombs because most people only have showers in The Netherlands.
