#326: Empty

A blank canvas.

#325: Déjà vu

Imagining something you have imagined before but had forgotten until now.

Or

An artwork resembling one you have imagined before.

For example:

#326: Desk (Self-portrait II XXI)

If your desk, or workspace, was an artwork, what would it say about you?

(I cleared and tidied mine in preparation)

#324: Hall of Records

Oil on canvas.  A painting showing a Hall of Records relating to you.  

At its entrance, you can be seen, sitting at a desk, acting as a gatekeeper to these records - a mass of shelves lined with books, records and other items.  

Beyond the desk multiple versions of yourself can be seen looking at or going through the records, which are ordered into different sections, each with a sign above the shelves.  

In a far corner is a door marked “Restricted Access”.

At the bottom of the frame is the inscription: “I need my memories. They are my documents. I keep watch over them.” - Louise Bourgeois.

#323: Let memories come to you

Oil on canvas. A medieval hallway scene painted in the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  The scene flows through from a console table on the left to the open front door on the right but is set in two halves.  On the right, someone is answering the door.  At the door is a younger version of themself holding out a sculpture of a lightbulb to them.  On the left hand side, the same person is turning away from the door, reaching out to vases of dying flowers each filled with one of the following - rosemary, tulips, forget-me-nots, sweet williams and periwinkles. A runner on the console features a simple pattern containing buttercups.  

On the wall behind are several pictures, from left to right, including a spider with very long legs that go straight up giving it a tall appearance, a hand reaching out and being received by two open hands, a wire framed cage with a spiral staircase inside and a woman with a house for a head.

Along the bottom edge of the frame the following is inscribed: “I need my memories. They are my documents… You have to differentiate between memories. Are you going to them or are they coming to you? If you are going to them, you are wasting time. Nostalgia is not productive. If they come to you, they are the seeds for sculpture." - Louise Bourgeois.

#322: No Surface : All Feeling (3 Ideas)

Oil on canvas.

A painting of a naked, flayed person in the style of The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci - but with their eyes closed, grimacing, and with full colour and detail.

Or - Someone naked, and uncomfortable at their desk in a large open plan office.

Or - A canvas spilt into four equal parts: a scene of people praying in church, one of people walking through a winter scene, a flayed naked person, and, finally, a painting of someone asleep in bed, a representation of their dream on their forehead.

#321: Solitude

Oil on canvas.  Pictures of the solitude experienced at different times of life.  Some scenes show good times, some not so good, some bad, of people being alone on purpose and being alone, or isolated, without wanting to be.  Every side of solitude is shown: playing as a child - operating my train set, playing in the garden, kicking a football around pretending to be other people, walking to school through the park, all the dreams in my head, listening to songs, reading on a beanbag, writing in the University libraries, reading or listening to music or watching the world go by from the commuter coach and train, walking through London, listening to music in the car, reading on the sofa early in the morning, reading on the train, reading on the bus, working from home, living in Wing Island, a mother at home with a new born baby, a prostitute waiting on the street, a prisoner in a cell, a housewife working, a crane driver, a train driver, a lorry driver, an old person in a chair, an old couple sat together, one of whom does not remember the other, a person in a crowd,  ….

#320: Either ignore it or celebrate it (What is to be done?)

A collage of all the worst events and people in the world, both now and throughout history, underneath which are the following words:

'Either ignore it or celebrate it.' What a fucking futile attitude. Don’t say anything bad, just ignore it or celebrate it. So what about fascism then? We don’t like it, we’ll just ignore it.

(I ask you again what is to be done).

Nicky Wire, The Quietus and 30-Year War.

#319: You have to do the work to earn the rest

Oil on canvas.  A painting of a man in an armchair reading a newspaper.  Behind, his wife can be seen hoovering, making dinner, cleaning the windows, making tea, dusting and other jobs.

#318: Masking Tape Reminder

Take a reel of masking tape.

Stick lengths of it along the edge of a shelf, or shelves, across your headboard, along a wall… somewhere you look at a lot. 

Write a meaningful message for yourself along it.

Preserve. 

Refer back to it whenever that message is needed.

Along the shelves in my imaginary office-slash-writing room:

There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

The wintergreen, the juniper

The cornflower and the chicory

All the words you said to me

Still vibrating in the air

The elm, the ash and the linden tree

The dark and deep, enchanted sea

The trembling moon and the stars unfurled

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

John Wilmot penned his poetry

Riddled with the pox

Nabokov wrote on index cards,

At a lectern, in his socks

St. John of the Cross did his best stuff

Imprisoned in a box

And JohnnyThunders was half alive

When he wrote Chinese Rocks

Well, me, I'm lying here, with nothing in my ears

Me, I'm lying here, with nothing in my ears

Me, I'm lying here, for what seems years

I'm just lying on my bed with nothing in my head

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles

While writing Das Kapital

And Gaugin, he buggered off, man

And went all tropical

While Philip Larkin stuck it out

In a library in Hull

And Dylan Thomas died drunk in

St. Vincent's hospital

I will kneel at your feet

I will lie at your door

I will rock you to sleep

I will roll on the floor

And I'll ask for nothing

Nothing in this life

I'll ask for nothing

Give me ever-lasting life

I just want to move the world

I just want to move the world

I just want to move the world

I just want to move

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

So if you got a trumpet, get on your feet,

Brother, and blow it

If you've got a field, that don't yield,

Well get up and hoe it

I look at you and you look at me and

Deep in our hearts know it

That you weren't much of a muse,

But then I weren't much of a poet

I will be your slave

I will peel you grapes

Up on your pedestal

With your ivory and apes

With your book of ideas

With your alchemy

Oh come on

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send it all around the world

'Cause here she comes, my beautiful girl

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

Or: Keep going, keep finding things, keep writing, let people know.

#317: Be Natural (How easy is it?)

Three word paintings, evenly spaced and sized, hung across the wall of a gallery.

The words on each painting are a follows:

1 - Be natural.

2 - No acting.

3 - No pretence.

(But no fighting please).

#316: Another World/Drive By/Nothing Will Be Done

A photograph of a rental scheme bike stood up and surrounded by bags filled with someone’s belongings.  Another collection of bags sits nearby surrounding a sleeping body. 

Everything is pictured underneath a flyover and next to a roundabout. Cars can be seen queued up and driving past - both behind, on a slip road, and to the side, on the roundabout itself.

#315: Living Seascape (Land's End)

A view of the ever-changing (and not always uniformly) seas around Land’s End livestreamed into a gallery onto a huge, and wide, screen in high definition.

#314: Living Landscape

A livestream of a landscape (looking across a valley, hills of different shapes beyond) shown on a large and wide screen in a gallery.  

#313: Is that all there is?

A blank canvas.

#312: What they think is real

Text reads: "We have to fight what isn’t real or true," above a gif of an animated puppet show showing the villains of the day.

#311: A Sunny Day

Imagine a sunny day.

And what you would do to make you happiest to enjoy, or avoid, that day.

Close your eyes, imagine and, hopefully, smile.

Or, if it is sunny, put this into practice.

#310: Echo Chambers

A large space through which have been set up several paths that fork several times.  At each fork the visitor is sent on a route according to their beliefs.  Each route ends in a space with chairs, tables and refreshments where visitors are encouraged to sit and socialise.

#309: Eavesdropping to an End

Listen in to the conversation of someone you don’t know and use what you hear to create a picture of them and their life.

#308: Vague surrealism

What you can remember of a recent, or memorable, dream recorded as art.

Oil on canvas.  In the dark corner of a bedroom, an alien with an elephant’s head, holding a ray gun, the end of which looks like a large light, stands still on a square plinth in front of two cupboards at right angles to one another.  It is on guard, ready to shoot anything that moves.  In the foreground, a child is awake in bed, keeping absolutely still and rigid, a look of fear on their face.  On the floor is a book.

#307: They got a skin and they put me in it

A person being pushed and pulled and forced into a skin suit by a group of men in regular suits.