75 Artists in one room....bound to be trouble...!

The UKYA event was this weekend in the lovely city of Derby and all of us 75 artists who had been selected for this citywide miniature biennale were there to meet each other

So we buzzed around Derby, gorging on exhibitions, installation , lectures, artists talks, poetry, dance, networking , beer, wine, our heartbreak and romances, successes and failures, lots and lots of laughter, fried breakfasts, and far too many late nights ( I decided dancing in a car park party prob was a step too far , but hey I can robot with the best of them….!)

We took part in a speed networking session which was quite insane and left us all befuddled and confused as to who we were, let alone anyone else! Brilliant ! We forged what feels like lasting connections and relationships

75 artists full of promise and brilliance, all trying to figure out how to navigate this complicated world. To survive. It felt like such a priviliege- like how art school would have felt if I had been in the art dept, endlessly fascinating conversations ( and silliness) but also interesting because we had all been out in the real world for a little while.

I don’t know how the organisers did it, several venues, accommodation, lecture series and us artists! I am still recovering now, I wonder how they did it, but full of so much happiness and hope they are proud of their massive achievements.

Something else I am noticing is that there is a curator inside me , in the way that a lot of the curators who work with us at Core are coming into it as artists; I start seeing connections or works that I really want to show in some context…..We are yet to think about next years programming properly but I know we need to get a balance between what we want to show ( a lot) and we can actually physically manage. It is breakneck at the moment.

Liz and I had a meeting with the marvellous Amy Mckenny who runs Coexist in Southend. Firstly the Fiona Mcdonald and Phyllida Barlow show is excellent, secondly Amy is brilliant in all they have achieved down there. We are going to set up a different kind of Relay for next year in a cross artist led collaboration! Very exciting. So all in all a pretty marvellous couple of weeks.