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I shiver as I pull my arms across my chest.
‘Here,’ Rehana takes off the peacock blue cardigan she’s wearing over her long black robe. ‘Put this on, you’ll freeze.’
I put on the cardigan and run my hands through my hair, shaking out the water to land in dark drops on the concrete floor.
‘That could be like ten second art.’ Chloe points to the fading spatters.
‘You’ll go far, oh daughter. Ten second art about sums it up here.’ Charlie points to Horizon dot comon the wall behind us: scraps of computer paper printed with coloured spots.
‘They’d argue it’s all about process, the concept…?’ I’m anxious for some reason to defend this work by someone I’ve never met.
‘Process? Concept?’ Charlie looks around as if searching the air. ‘At best it’s a not very clever visual pun.’
I do a quick check that no-one’s listening. Charlie is only articulating what I think about a lot of the work here, but I’m afraid of seeming frumpy and out of date in this Emperor’s New Clothes world.
Spotty Dick and Hawk Beak walk past to stand in front of Tonal Detritus, consisting of two tiny TV monitors on the floor crackling with out of focus visual white noise.
‘…hackneyed interpretation of the tonality of the banal…?’ Spotty Dick drones to Hawk Beak whose face freezes in a look of pained enquiry.
‘Is it me?’ Charlie asks as we move on.
‘What is this Tonal Detritus?’ Rehana says with a frown.
‘I suppose you could see it as the meaninglessness of information overload,’ I suggest.
‘It means nothing. Art should communicate surely.’ She turns to me as I pull her cardigan closer, buttoning it up over my chest. Her headscarf is the same colour, and she wears a large blue stone on her middle finger. The touches of blue against her black coverings give her a vibrancy in the cool gallery light.
‘I can cope with conceptual,’ Charlie says, ‘but I do want to see some effort, a bit of craft, if that’s not too old fashioned?’
‘It’s just, it’s not how they’re taught these days.’ I don’t feel comfortable placing myself above my fellow exhibitors. Even after my momentous decision two years ago to rent the studio, I have remained very isolated from the contemporary art world. The people in my block are mostly jewellers and potters, but I should have made more effort to connect with other artists. The dread of exposure looms close now, and I know I’m desperately procrastinating.
‘I quite like this one.’ I guide them to Transition 2: a shimmering construction of translucent fabric, suspended from the ceiling and stitched to suggest an emerging female form.
‘That’s right pretty.’ Chloe’s reaction feels refreshing. She moves to read the blurb.
‘… using temp-or-al form and structure to explore the trans-form-a-tion-al potential of trans-i-tion-al spaces.’ She stumbles to pronounce the words, lifts her arms in a search-me gesture at Charlie.
‘Well, it’s beautifully constructed,’ I say, impatience rising in my voice. ‘You don’t have to totally get art to appreciate it.’
Rehana pulls back and Chloe looks down at her gladiator style sandals.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Was I ranting?’
Charlie puts a hand on my arm and steers me gently across the gallery.
‘Pat, you don’t need to be defensive. What do we know anyway?’ He pulls his sheepish apologetic smile.
‘I’m sorry. I suppose I’m just so nervous that you’ll think the same about my work.’
I look across the gallery; there are a few more people now. A young woman with peroxide hair in a forties twist, dressed in floral housecoat and block heeled shoes. She looks stiff and nervous with a very ordinary looking older couple who I take to be her parents. Two almost identical looking young men: stick thin in black drainpipes, paisley shirts and pointy shoes. Hair brushed to one side and falling in their eyes, one of them blond, one dark haired.
Chloe and Rehana are in front of the Bedsheets Triptychnow – violently coloured naked body prints on mounted sheets. Chloe giggling behind her hand. Rehana looking grave.
‘Rehana’s right,’ I say. ‘Art should communicate. If all it can do is shock for no reason, then, well it shouldn’t.’
‘All very Brit-Pack and passé,’ Charlie says. ‘But Pat, I know that’s not what you’re about. So, you have to take a risk on it, don’t you?’
I nod. It’s what I would say to someone else.
