Beach-Combing Show: Flotsam and Jetsam
Some photos of the exhibition, and reflections on how it went
Now that I’ve taken down my Pyramid Club beach-combing show, I’ve updated my website with some photos of it, here: https://www.rosiewhinray.com/flotsam-and-jetsam
It’s the early hours here, blackness outside the window. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to write. It’s just started proper-raining, waves of sound.
Putting on this exhibition was a massive learning curve for me. I went from not-showing my work (aside from a few pieces in group shows here and there) to a solo show. People have been telling me to show my work for years,1 but Dan Beban offering me this space and time for an exhibition felt different, maybe because his suggested topic was something I don’t consider my real work.2 Beach-combing is just a thing I do for the joy of it, and the images I’ve made along the way are a record of my finds; the aesthetics are emergent, almost accidental. (Literally emergent, too: the look of objects suspended in blackness made me think of Te Pō, as if the artefacts were being created out of the dark.) Also, Pyramid Club is a grass-roots space— not a fancy gallery— which meant total creative freedom: I knew I could do things my own way, and I hoped to create a magical cross-pollination (beach to city, images to a sound-space).
After the relentless graft of getting everything ready,3 the opening was great, buzzy, Kedron called it yesterday, which is an apt descriptor. The randomness of the mix of people in attendance was perfect for a found-object show. I love a party where people from totally disparate parts of life meet, the glitch that causes in my brain. My favourite thing that happened at the opening was when a friend told me they loved a certain piece but had no money, so I gave them a test print— which made them cry.
Receiving so much attention and affirmation was also good, if a little overwhelming. (As an artist who works alone, virtually always for self-generated reasons, such praise-fests are few and far between.) I could really feel how feedback functions as a kind of energetic fuel. Being in the newspaper was fun, too. I know it’s an honour to be asked, so I overcame my usual secrecy. Ke-Xin wrote a beautiful piece and Monique did well with putting me on the other, less-comfortable side of the lens, and got photos I didn’t hate— those who know me will know this is a rare feat.
The talk I gave last Saturday (postponed from the weekend before because I got reinfected with the horrible cough4 that I think of as Wellington’s cough because I hear it all over town, but which is probably New Zealand’s cough) went down well. There were about twenty people there. I said most of the things I’d meant to, and then a few more.5 It was a strange feeling to try to speak to all the people at once, most of whom I know and have a certain individual flavour of talk with. (It’s like writing in that way: addressing multiple people at once.) People said nice things about it afterwards, and Osha made a sweet walk-through video on her phone that I sent to a number of friends who’d wanted to come to the exhibition, but couldn’t.
I still can’t sing from coughing my voice away, so Shanty Bro Tony ran the shanty session, bless him. (My singing session facilitation ambitions have had to be postponed for the moment— but it will happen!)6 Good acoustics in Pyramid Club: totally logical, as it is primarily a music venue. We sang in the main room, the stairwell, and the small museum-room, then afterwards me and Tony went to the pub: it’s traditional.
On the very last day, when I was due to take the work down, I delayed the dismantling so three other-Mothers could come and see it. Hester, Ann, and Liz: they came in with great energy and love and hung out for ages and looked at everything and talked to me about it all, so that the ending ended up being just as great as the beginning. My Mum said she had FOMO, or was it ROMO?
Everyone was going to me for your next show and I was like Hell no, I’m never doing this ever again, but maybe it’s like having a baby, where after a few years you forget the agony of labour and just think about how awesome it would be to have another one, its little sweet-smelling head etc. Time will tell.
Mostly they mean my daily drawings, though.
An interesting creative phenomenon: when a thing I do becomes— in my mind— the main thing I’m doing, the nature of it changes. It becomes more meaningful, therefore less playful. Making writing into my Main Thing has been my most successful attempt yet: so far I still love it, and find it engaging and fascinating.
Hard lessons learned, but I got there in the end. Main (fairly obvious) advice I’d give: thinking you can do things cheaply is a false economy. Remember the Iron Triangle— Fast / Cheap / Good: you can only pick two of these three options.
Moral of the story: don’t go to parties, kids!
I think if I had to do such a thing again, though, I’d set it up as an interview rather than a lecture.
No phones allowed! My imaginary session, my rules!