The Display Team

As a part of a display team, I have been helping to set up our annual arts and crafts summer exhibition, with over 600 exhibits on show this year – paintings, sculptures, and many varieties of ceramic and craft work. There is no selection process, so everyone can put in more or less whatever they like. One entry was a huge Wallace and Gromit-type sheep made out of cardboard tubes for legs, plastic bottles for a head and a white plastic sheet wrapped around soft material for a body.  One senior member of my team, nearly tried to remove the plastic sheet because she thought it was a wrapper when in fact it was actually meant to be the main part of the sheep’s body! I alerted her to this fact and just managed to prevent the inadvertent destruction of the piece in the nick of time. That was a funny moment.  Other works were literally more weighty, including a 25Kg horse’s head made of Portland stone which I and another guy helped to lift and it nearly did my back in, some amazing paintings and pots and ceramic sculptures of all kinds.

Our job was to decide where each piece of pottery, ceramic work and sculpture was to be displayed and in what manner. Not an easy task, and I don’t think I contributed very much, partly because every time I suggested something could go here or there it was kind of ignored, as my other team colleagues seemed to know exactly where things should go! So I had plenty of things to notice going on with the mind, including thoughts such as, ‘What’s the point!?’ ‘This is a bit of a waste of time’, ‘I’m only here as the token bloke to do some lifting now and again’, ‘I don’t really fit in – they are all in the same branch of the society and I’m not’, ‘Why was I volunteered for this?’…. and so on. All thoughts that were a bit negative and down on myself.

There didn’t seem to be much by way of collaboration – things just seemed to end up where they were meant to be and I got a bit bored.  I found myself playing with the idea that each piece could be displayed completely differently, almost randomly, and that would be just as OK too.  In my mind I indulged my obsessive eye and mentally nudged pieces an inch here and an inch there just for fun. Then I even started doing that humourously for real, and actually, it was OK with the others – they didn’t frown on me anyway.

Then to break up this reverie, a man from the press came and asked us if we would pose for a few shots as if we were discussing various pieces of work. I immediately went to grab my sculpture which had been lying on a table behind us waiting for placement in the hall. I always seem to make stuff which doesn’t quite fit the bill. In this case, a sculpture which I made to hang from a wall, instead of free-standing on a plinth. Consequently, as usual, no-one quite knew what to do with it.  So anyway, the photographer loved it and was so impressed he wanted me to stand in front holding the piece to camera with the others gathered around me. I was really embarrassed and kind of pleased at the same time, and he kept asking me questions about the work which only made matters worse, because then I enthusiastically told him some of the story of the piece and described its construction which just fascinated him more…. “It’s made of a welder’s mask found on a beach and given to me by a friend, a uniselector telephone relay switch from 1940, the same as those used at Bletchley Park in the first computers for code breaking; also given by a friend, a glass reflector in a box I bought from an antiques fair, with a mirror behind - I use mirrors a lot in my work….. and it’s called ‘LOS (letting go)’, LOS standing for loss of signal, which is a computing term…..‘  Talk about self-promotion! I went from a hang-back slightly on- the-edge person to centre-stage in an instant. I could see this happening and I wondered at the same time what was going through my colleagues minds and it all happened so quickly.  I also noticed that what the photographer was writing in his notebook bore little or no resemblance to what I was saying.  Ah well, at least the photo would be an accurate rendition wouldn’t it?

On reflection, through each person’s art work, I guess we are all there to promote and display the Self. What you notice is how different all these Selves are and underneath it all there may be the common purpose of ‘Look at me!?’  The whole point of the exhibition is for people to exhibit their work for all sorts of reasons I guess, sometimes monetary, but mostly I imagine because they want to be seen and appreciated for something they have made - we even get awards and presentations for doing this. (PS I got a ‘Highly Commended’ but who cares? What does it matter? Well… I guess I do a little bit!)

I can say for myself, that I produce what I make because of a creative urge to express my feelings and convey ideas about Mindfulness, but that’s not exactly letting go of Self is it? In fact, the truth is, I become so attached to the works I make, that I find it hard to let go of them at all. Fortunately, no-one so far has said they want to buy any of them anyway, and in any case the ‘LOS (letting go)’ piece is definitely ‘NFS’! The work has deeply personal meaning for me and I think I will never be able to let it go even though the title would suggest I am letting go of stuff inside and around it. The object of the mind remains firmly attached to the objects themselves as assembled.  - There’s attachment for you - Maybe one day I’ll let go of it all.

Working with a group of people I didn’t or don’t really know? It’s a strange experience because there are some folks I don’t see at any other time of the year, and it’s as if we never really get beyond the awkward start-up phase of conversation. Does it matter that I don’t really know them or that I may never really know anyone properly including myself? It feels as though it does, but I suppose what really matters is that we connect in some way. Whereas before, I felt a huge distance and sense of being an outsider, (a feeling I often experience), in this moment, as I write this, I feel a great surge of gratitude and closeness towards others. Maybe we’re not as different and distant as my mind would have me think.

[For those of you who might be around to see the exhibition, it's open until next Tuesday -  http://petersfieldartsandcrafts.org.uk/]