Deadlines are part of the job. Do you panic before handing your work over?

All the way through life we are faced with time sensitive tasks. Some will be rigid with an exact brief and perfectly described stages that must be done methodically, others not so much. The brief for #untitled10 commission wasn’t a rigid brief.

It was fairly simple in its aim: Choose something in the collection, or associated with the museum, and create some artwork inspired by what you had chosen. Spend 6 months investigating, enjoy and share the process via social media.

My past projects have been much more heavily focused on face-to-face audience participation. I use the public as my assistants in exchange for teaching them something interesting. Working in this manner means that I have to have clear plans, stages, and objectives in mind because you have to know what you’re doing if you’re working with the public.

I have been asked on a few occasions if my work is too democratic, and whether I run the risk of losing my voice amidst all the others. I’m not worried about that personally, but it did get me thinking.

For this project I thought I’d let my ego run wild, and that the participation element would be sharing the journey. Let everyone follow what I’m up to. See the method in the madness. Here in my blog, and via social media. It’s been interesting, and has shown me that my solo voice is still there, and it’s in damn good fettle.

I hadn’t finished everything I had wanted to do for the project. The deadline was on Friday, but I got called in to cover at work, so sneakily gained an extra weekend.

You’d think that 6 months would be enough, but I’ve found that rather than confirming an end point to the journey, that it just brought into focus all of the other ways that I could find out more or add to the body of work.

So, I didn’t panic as such, but I did get extra time, and I made the 3 Polaroid images on glass after my research visit to Gibside.

The #untitled10 exhibition opens on the 11 October to the public at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle.