Yvette Hawkins dot com

I was featured in the November issue of The Journals Culture Magazine.

Officially this was my first interview and it was really hard coming up with the answers especially the one about my favourite artist.  I’m a consistently fickle Gemini so under the circumstances I think I did alright. The interview came about after I’d sent our a press release for the Cluny Gallery Re-Launch so the publicity managed to do its job.  Anyway here is the interview in full.
What’s your favourite outdoor spot in the North East?
I love going to Belsay Hall and Gardens, or walking through Jesmond Dene, anywhere that’s green really.  The Ouseburn have these nooks of greenery that I often forget are there, I’d like to see nature invading the city more often.

I like proper English tea rooms like Whistlers on Northumberland Street that serve tea in little cups with saucers that clang.  I also love Belle and Herbs in Heaton for big hangover breakfasts and of course The Cluny for great beer, tasty food and um a rather superb art gallery?

It’s difficult to choose just one.  I like the work of Michiko Kawarabayashi who makes large installations using traditional textile techniques like weaving and dyeing.  I’m quite obsessed with seeing laborious processes on huge scales.  I also like Henri Rousseau’s paintings because they are bright and have animals in them and that makes me happy and I like to laugh at David Shrigleys drawings.  I like art for lots of different reasons so it’s hard to choose only one.

I’d like one of Andy Warhols shoe drawings please, the Elvis Presley one.

Blink - I don’t know why

There used to be a Korean restaurant near China Town and a very beautiful lady would bang a gong when you entered but that’s not there anymore so I will have to go with Utong (Numjai)  The people are really friendly and they have the fattest stickiest rice in the North East.

It depends on my mood I suppose, I can’t stop listening to a band called Tunng at the moment, they’re an electronic folk band and they remind me of the comforting beginnings of relationships.

I would take some dice, a map, a notebook and a camera and roll the dice and see where I end up.  I prefer not to plan a day and just see what comes of it.  I would secretly hope that the dice would point me towards somewhere green.

Instructions for a Woodcat

Lick the butter from your feet
find your own trail
cover up your past with the
swift sweep of your shadow

claw at disfigured debris as if
they were your enemy
find your siesta
don’t fight it

lie amongst the insects
give names to them
trace the constellations
but don’t think of home

think of the new day
of the hard edges of walking
the cold yawn of morning
the consonants of language

create gestures with your body
invent a new sign for sorry
befriend sparrows on washing lines
watch them scarper

send me a letter
of the war that you’re winning
replace my bone marrow
with your worn out shoes.

Homecoming

I have flung you across six rivers
swapped dishwater slugs
for inquisitive moths
dosed in Orangina
on the sunny side of the city
and when you left
through the window the length of your body
as tall as your ears will allow
you’d take with you the tin moon
memorise
every corner of dust
count every brick
remember the colour of rainwater
on the doorstep
smell the leftovers from the painters
and their cigars
I loved you when you came back
locked you inside my clothes
your skin as dry as nylon
remembers the breath of my words.

The Cluny Gallery launched on November 3rd with an exciting new exhibition on the theme of Environments (personal, private and domestic).

Sam Taylor and I had spent 6 months planning a pilot programme which involved lots of meetings in pubs with Erdinger and Strawberry beer as our companions, lots of meeting other people who wanted to either be involved or help in some way and lots of persuading people with money to give us some so we could put on a good show.

The night came but not without its hiccups, I could tell you some stories about projectors, film formatting and the nightmare between apple macs and PCs that could give minor strokes but I won’t becuase it’s boring.  There was even a speed ironing feat by myself only an hour before the start.. see I told you it was dull.  We hopefully didn’t disappoint.  There were more folk who came for the art than for the bands we put on to trick people to come down to see the art.  It seems art is in demand, people do want to see it and more importantly people want to come again!  Brill!

The highlight of my evening was FATHoM a dance collective who we’d commissioned to perform a new piece of work in the venue space.  FATHoM characteristically used the space to invite the audience to become part of their performance, so they intentionally didn’t use the stage area and used props including tape that was playing hauntology sounds which was also used as a tool to inform the use of space through movement.  This piece alone showed the flexibility of the space of the venue and the space of the gallery, that the two could co-exist in ways where the audience and performer are not distinguished, breaking down notions of ‘us and them’.

The whole evening was well attended and the works were brilliantly received and we went out with some great music from Richard Dawson and The Pilots and some pretty ispiring but competitive dance-offs later on led by the FATHoM crew.  See the photos here.  I got a bit snap happy I’m afraid.

I was truly overwhelmed by our fantastic response and really do hope we have started something special and that will be around for a while to come.  The next exhibition is already underway.  Expect some promotional beer mats in a pub near you very soon.  The current exhibition runs until November 27th and is open 12pm - 11pm at The Cluny, Ouseburn, Newcastle Upon Tyne.

I have new buttons which have been designed by web king Gavin Logan who I shall link to as soon as his professional website is up and running.  If you like the look of the site and fancy some help creating yours then email me and I shall pass on your details.

This week has been much less busy creatively which I have found odd and I slept in until 2.30pm today which was LUSH!  My most excitingness of news though, is that I won a return flight to Korea (my other country) and I’m having just the best time with maps and the Rough Guide and my imagination and memories from Korea circa 1985.  I dreamt about putting on my Hanbok (Korean traditional dress) from when I was six and it fitting perfectly, then I woke up to find a missed call from my Dad and when he rang back he told me that he’d spoken to some members of my family down south who we’re spending christmas with and that they’d found my old hanbok in the cellar.  I can’t wait to see it again.

I’m completely behind on my posts.  Life seems to creep up on you.  You seem to wait around for something to happen and all of a sudden things do and then they’re over and you wonder what it was you were waiting around for in the first place (I suppose that’s what Mr Obama must be feeling right now).  That’s what the last few weeks have been like and all I can think about is Saturday in bed, writing, reading, thinking, making imaginary plans to visit South America, eating pancakes in bed, lying very still.

But first of all, an update.

The exhibition that I have been working towards for the last few months arrived.  I made two pieces.

Epic depicts growth and the beginnings of knowledge.  It is made from cut up classic novels including David Copperfield, Vanity Fair and Dr Zhivago. I have wanted to make an extended book structure since I discovered the coptic stitch and thought that a book needn’t stop, it could keep on going, be set free from the spine.  Four metres later this happened…

I wanted to stop at 3 metres but the obsession sort of took over.

My Gentle Undoing came about at the last minute when I discovered I could do something that made better use of the space.  The other artists in the exhibition wanted to use two corners so I had the rest of the space to play with.

This is an installation of around 100 sawn fragments of books folded into flower like structures which appeared to have grown out of the wall and creeping across the floor.  It depicts recycled beginnings, uncontrolled growth and beauty.

The other artsist in the exhibition worked with books as a starting point and developed work in a very unique way that was individual and relevant to their own practice.

Kelly Gardner makes dresses cut from book paper and bound with copper wire which are then lit from the inside, while Stephen Livingstone manipulates the pages directly and inserts them re-forming, re-illustrating and re-titling them.  The books are then chained together in a way which monitors and controls the knowledge of the books.

The exhibition runs until the end of November at The Oriental Museum in Durham, UK.

This week I have been mainly folding, piercing and sewing

I also came across my first ever hand made book.  All the other books I have used have been glued by a machine but this one was sewn, I got quite excited about that for quite a while before I continued to shred it to pieces.

These were an experiment but I like them a lot so I’m going to do something installationy with these for the show.

After these have been finished I’ve decided to work on some non booky things. All the way through this work, I keep thinking I can’t wait to get onto the next thing which makes me think I’m perhaps not having as much fun with making book sculptures anymore, they have dominated my life for the past three years after all, it’s definitely time to move on.

This is an image from the WLTM exhibition in August.

After submitting a dating style questionnaire artists works were coupled and presented together. I was coupled with Sarah Turner, a film artist.  A condition of the exhibition was attending the preview so that we could meet each other and find out how compatible we were but both myself and Sarah couldn’t make it, so instead we conducted a long distance correspondance in the form of a question.  The results of which were read out on the night.

Sarah Turner to Yvette Hawkins:

What are you afraid of?

I am afraid I may never fold all the pages in the world, that books will no longer be needed.  I am afraid I will never learn how to drive and that when I do I will kill someone.  I am afraid of squishing slugs between my toes in the bathroom when I get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, I am afraid I will never see Korea again, that I’ll forget the route to Grandma’s house and good Young Hua and bad Young Hua (my cousins) won’t remember me.  I am afraid of looking down very long spiral staircases I am afraid of looking up them (though I always do)  I am afraid of the sea at midnight in the same way I am afraid of being flung threw the air by very fast fairground rides with fancy names, I am afraid of buying whole milk instead of semi skimmed.  I am afraid of EAST 17.  I am afraid of sudden collapses in public places, of celery, of sitting on my cat by accident, of wearing my clothes inside out at interviews, of farting during sex, of losing my keys, of laughing inappropriately, of child beauty pageants.  I am afraid I have never loved, afraid I will never love, I am afraid you never loved me anyway, I am afraid the last one sounded a bit like a Corrs song, I am afraid I’m not as cool as you, I am afraid of arthritis when I’m old, I’m afraid of a painful death, afraid of a slow painful death, afraid that there’s nothing after death.
Yvette Hawkins to Sarah Turner:

If you could choose only one memory to take with you into the afterlife, which memory would you choose?

The second time I went to Bexhill on Sea to see my boyfriend, it took me 9 hours to get there. We sat chatting for hours. It was beautiful. That’s when I knew I loved him.

I loved the whole format of the exhibition, it really grabbed my attention when I read the opportunity and instantly wanted to be involved.  Anna Francis, the director made posters based on circus style posters, mine depicted a woman smoking.  I don’t actually smoke, but I must have put on the form that I was a social smoker or something, I can see why though.  My piece was called ‘I opened my mouth and you fell out’ so the marrying of the two things seemed obvious.

I’m not entirely happy that from all the things on my form that was the thing that was singled out, however there’s a risk involved when you submit so much of yourself and so little gets exposed, or at least not the parts of you that you believe might.

Actually in a way I like the lack of control, it’s interesting to see how other people perceive you and really that’s the way it is everyday whether you like it or not, we can control what we wear and what we buy but really we have no control over how other people perceive us.

Today has been a relatively pain free day.  Now that’s not a very interesting statement to make unless of course you’ve had a migraine for 6 weeks which has not been fun very much at all, but today it was bearable which I am muchly pleased about, it made cutting bits of paper and piercing 600 holes a lot more exciting than if I’d had to deal with a head pain as well.  However the cat did piss on my bed so the balance is probably restored.

Bethan Lakers exhibition on Saturday was a huge success, even after the debacle of having to repaint a gallery wall (in record time) when I tried to wash some marks off the wall and instead rubbed the paint off and then not knowing what shade of off-white it was and when we looked at the colour charts we had to go off Julians (the manager of the cluny) memory that it can’t be Sunrise Haze because he would never allow a paint onto the premises that was called something as ridiculous as Sunrise Haze and insisting that it must be Sea Mist so running around trying to find Sea Mist which turned out to be too blue and then going back with a completely different paint which I can’t even remember the name of.

Then at the Star and Shadow Market I met lots of fine folk and was asked by a few people if I would fold a book of their choice. It had never occured to me the importance of actually knowing what the book was before it folded, it’s never been important to me. Some of the people asked me if I could fold their favourite book which I found quite odd. Even though I am a book folder there are books I would never fold, they sit on my shelf and I like to open them and smell and feel their pages. Sometimes I even read their words.

It’s quite funny because I see the process from the beginning, what the book was, discard the covers and away I go. I suppose I can see how the not knowing what the book was before I folded it can be rather intriguing and it just reaffirms my belief that (generally speaking) people need to know everything, how things work, how things began, which I suppose is why we have this interest in celebrities taking out the rubbish and Big Brother. I’m such a fan of untold endings, that’s what (in my opinion) makes stories timeless. The not knowing. I love that scene in Lost in Translation when she whispers somthing in his ear but the audience doesn’t know what it is and it’s just a secret between them. I like not knowing, I always find the truth to be disappointing which is why I fold pages… to frustrate people.

are happening this weekend.  First of all there’s an exhibition of Bethan Lakers drawings at The Cluny Gallery which opens today at 5pm.  Then tomorrow I’m making my prescence known again at the Star and Shadow Market (11am - 4pm) where I will be selling papery things.   Superb!  Come down if you’re about.

This is the new exhibition that is coming up at The Cluny Gallery on the 14th September.   We had a bit of a frantic time trying to get the space sorted in time and the artist we had originally booked cancelled at the last minute but luckily we came across Bethans website and were enchanted by her ‘wonky drawings’.  I’m really looking forward to it.  It will make use of the existing space in a way that hasn’t been done before and hopefully will kickstart a revamped style, experience and flavour for the gallery, that is new, consistent and well presented.  That’s what I’m hoping anyway.

The preview is on the 13th at 5pm.  It’s a Saturday, there’s free drink and you’re all invited.

Today I’m packing up all my things to move house, it’s the biggest move I have ever done, or at least that’s what it feels like (and I should know, this is the 41st time I’ve done it) I think in the past I adopted the family mentality of living within my means and living light. We were never allowed to keep too much stuff. I had to sacrafice my comics so that my brother could keep his action men. The one place we refused to move on though was Lego, we would have rather starved than give up the Lego, much to Dads frustration.  I think my love of hording stuff is some sort of rebellion against my childhood. Anyway I’m backing down, this move has given me a three week migraine, which has been just awful. The hording must stop!