Always On My Mind (Part 2) opens Thursday 31st of August 2023 and features the work of 16 artists including:
Q) What’s always on your mind these days and is it having an impact on your art work?
Geraldine Swayne: "What’s on my mind is a kind of general non stop anxiety about climate change. It has maybe changed my work in that I’m making pictures of what’s in front of me more, like memorials, especially the stained glass things I’m making."
2) Can you name an art exhibition, art book or artist that changed the way you think?
"I remember coming down from Newcastle to see Gilbert and George at the Hayward in the 80’s and feeling pretty bent out of shape, and like I was entering a new world. Like I was allowing myself to think I was becoming an artist. More recently the Elizabeth Price show ‘In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy” at the De La Warr Pavillion was overwhelming. I went back maybe 5 times; music; film: Enfield poltergeist photos; funeral cloth; icebergs next to marble girls next to GavinTurk’s sleeping bag. The way she curated that show changed me I’d say. It was utterly brilliant."
3) What work are you thinking of putting in the "Always On My Mind Part 2” exhibition?
"I’m thinking of putting in a double, leaded portrait on glass of a friend and her dog."
4) The National Brain Appeal provide much-needed funds to support The National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery and the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology – together known as Queen Square. This is one of the world’s leading centres for the diagnosis, treatment and care of patients with neurological and neuromuscular conditions. These include stroke, multiple sclerosis, brain cancer, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Have you or your loved ones ever suffered with any of these things?
"Yes unfortunately I lost my brother to a very unusual brain disease. And my dad and aunt died from the effects of dementia."
5) When the critic Jerry Saltz was recently asked what it is he’s looking for in art he answered “A sense of necessity, someone working in their own voice, doing what they can’t not do.” Do you relate to his way of thinking and do you think your own work is something you just can’t not do?
"I’ve been enjoying his postings on Instagram, and he seems to have found a new vocation as a salty pedagogue. Funny too. So I agree with him that working in your own voice is the heart of it. It’ll keep you insulated. Finding the voice can be tricky in the clamour. It’s easy to get distracted sometimes, by all the awful art-scene painting around, and how the art market pedals nonsense, so maybe I should add Gwen John to the list of shows I saw years ago that changed me. Her paintings are so strong and so quiet but charged. Not like anything else. Something you can’t not do? It’s hard to paint, so I sort of hate it and love it, but am wedded to it. You do it so long I guess eventually it affects your genes. But yes, it’s something we can’t not do."
The opening party for Always On My Mind part 2 takes place on Thursday 31st of August at Fitzrovia Gallery, 139 Whitfield Street (30 seconds from Warren St Tube)
6pm till 9pm
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