An appointment took me to the National Archives today. If i were asked i would have said ‘i am on my way to the archives’ and perhaps waited for some weak wit. I was not asked then but later. I was some hours reading documents connected with an active project dated to between 1897 and 1919 with the majority between 1908 and 1913 and ending ‘your obedient servant’ in most cases. I raised the odd eyebrow though most other attendees were there for professional reasons and intent upon their work. Time slipped by until i was finished with my research returning the fourth of four archive boxes. I washed a century of dust from my hands and joined the inevitable queue for a cup of sweet tea and sandwiches. The man in front asked me if i was to do with the Administration, i apologised that i was not, he may have been indignant about the queue. The man behind, with colleague, said it was nice to see someone nicely dressed to which i gave thanks and smiled and looked away. His colleague after if it was for an event, i replied every day is an event. This was the first time this reply has seemed appropriate, but it is weak. My implication was that this is every day for me and not associated with some event, but it does not go to enlighten and the reserved fellow was curious. I know not how to share the matter of it without sounding high minded and grand, or banal or eccentric and easily ignored. It is about the enduring role of history in everyday life, how people are much the same though the culture has changed about them, about the importance of elegance in dress, about how an artist is more than a producer of unique objects but also a lifestyle devoted to expression. I shy from ‘getting people to think’ or ‘challenging contemporary concepts of’ and such grand art-jargon. I still seek my reference point in 1904 that connects Me Then Now with contemporary art. I took the train there and i took the train back. I walked Burlington Avenue with its well mannered Edwardian terraces fitting in as only i can.
Development
After some consideration of recent work and the insight gained from it into the ongoing project Me Then Now there is some sense of the direction development of the project is beginning to take. It is the next step to be a person of the past living Now making work Now. A person of Then, as faithfully as is possible, working as an artist in the great breadth of contemporary art, that is, early 21st Century contemporary art.
There is already some suggestion of this in my painting, but there is further opportunity for expression to be found in other aspects of contemporary art. Site specific installations have so far been looking back, I need to develop my practice to use Then to comment on Now. So the project becomes travelling forward in time to Now.
Press Release – Me Then Now At Kingsgate
Me Then Now at Kingsgate
Anna Sullivan
7th May – 23rd May 2010
Preview: 6th May 2010, 6 – 9pm
Kingsgate Gallery presents artist Anna Sullivan’s ongoing performance ‘Me Then Now’, the making of her life as a Painter in 1904.
A work of Live Art with painting at its heart Miss Sullivan expresses her struggle for an independent living as an Edwardian Artist, a person of the past living now. Passive and unstructured the artist can be seen going about her daily life living and working in North London.
For this exhibition Miss Sullivan will include a number of landscapes and views, with works concerned with time and context, and a mural view of Kilburn in 1904 completed in the gallery over the duration of the exhibition.
‘Me Then Now’ involves painting, a traditional output of the artist, and contemporary Live Art. This ongoing work is to travel in time as individual creative expression through the making of a life.
“I have taken the decision to create my life by choosing to travel in time. It has always been difficult to make a life as an artist and I see the social restrictions of Then persisting in a different guise Now in a culture ever on the verge of change.”
Anna Sullivan is a recent graduate of the MA Art & Media Practice course at the University of Westminster Anna Sullivan lives and works in the borough of Camden. www.anna-id.co.uk
For further information and images please call Adam Holmes-Davies, Manager (Gallery Manager) at the KWT office (tel: 020 7328 7878), Email: adam@kingsgateworkshops.org.uk or visit our website: www.kingsgateworkshops.org.uk
Year Of Birth
Supporting Me Then Now i sought to understand the path of my life up to 1904. I assumed the year of my birth to be in 1874 exactly a hundred years before my actual date of birth.
Looking at the year of my birth from within the work i would be 30 years of age in 1904. I think i could still be thought 30 years old for a little longer but not forever so i reason my notional year will actually have to move back in time and with that the influences on me in growing up would be increasingly Victorian, in a way.
In settling on 1904 i have stopped time, in a way. As i age the year in which i live will remain the same. I expect my choice in dress, for example, will change over the years through the variety that was available Then. I expect this will be expressed more noticeably in my choice in dress which as i age will take its inspiration from my ever receding youth.
About
I am making my life as a painter in 1904. It is difficult to make a life as a painter and this has always been the case, my interest in history drew me toward evoking the past, and through Live Art expressing the similarities between my life Now as a woman and my life Then trying to gain my independence.
It is a time seemingly very different from Now and yet of the 20th Century in which most of us were born. It is the time into which my Grandmother was born and through my direct connection with her i had a personal connection with Then.
The year 1904 is 3-score-year-and-ten, a lifetime, before i was born and can be considered a lull in an often overlooked period of British history. King Edward VII acceded to the throne following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and reigned until his own death in 1910. This short period, often incorporating the years to 1914 and the outbreak of the Great War, mark the end of 600 years of social development. Overshadowed by the great changes wrought by the Victorian period that preceded it and the devastation of World War I that precipitated the social modernity we live with today the Edwardian is a time often overlooked. By 1904 mourning for the late Queen has passed but the more recognisably Edwardian traits have yet to manifest themselves; it is a lull, and i am quite drawn to this quiet time in history.
I have taken the decision to create my life by making conscious decisions over how i choose to live. I choose to travel in time to the Edwardian expressing myself as a middle-class independent woman in sympathy with as a middle-class independent woman of Then. I see the social restrictions of Then persisting in a different guise Now while living in a culture on the verge of great change.
