Saturday 16 October 2010

friday night / saturday morning


2 pieces from my new collection of work Johnny the smoker cushion and Keeping your socks on monoprint
My favourite time of the week is always Friday night/Saturday morning. It's often a strange time. I write This feeling a little jaded after a wonderful night out at Nuit Blanche. It was magical, full of wonderful artists really interesting people who worked together to give us a magical forest, light and sound installation at St Mary's church, meeting up with those sassy knitters The Outcasts http://theoutcasts.co.uk/2010/10/a-cautionary-tale/ knitting bed caps, parcel fever, people taking pieces of art work wrapped up so the exhibition could be unwrapped throughout the night and morning all rounded off by a dawn chorus and breakfast. I did not make the breakfast and by the time I woke up it was more Friday night Saturday late afternoon. I have long been fascinated by the whole Friday night/ Saturday morning thing and have for the last few months been working on a body of work to explore this idea. Why is it like no other night of the week? A group of psychologists have just announced that it is the day where we feel at our most positive and Tuesday the least. It seems Tuesday is the new Monday morning. I have been conducting my own research purely in the name of art you understand, as to what it is that makes this time so fascinating. There is always an expectant feel in the air, an evening of possibilities lies ahead meeting up with friends, gossiping, spying who's out and about, laughing, drinking, fighting, falling in lust, love???? I love looking at the bus stops, full of people all dressed up with somewhere to go. So I have been out and about taking photos, drawing my poor unsuspecting friends, strangers and even the cat. And then after the Friday night comes the Saturday morning, where the mood has changed the music stopped playing, people have found love and lost it, the aftermath of the night before strewn across the floor last nights jewellery, clothes, bag, lipstick, telephone numbers written on bits of paper as I can never know how to get them on my phone. And every now and again a random item. In my student days very random items. When you have woken up with a life size cardboard cut out of Johnny Depp standing in your room a guitar and still wearing your big fake fur coat and Vivienne Westwood shoes and you can't remember where Mr Depp came from, that then was deemed a good night. I love my sister's story of her and some friends who went out drinking with the captain of a ship, they woke up on a mango boat that was off to the Netherlands, lucky for her she was woken by the ships engines revving to set sail. These are the stories that become the legends of your life. Then the Saturday morning comes piecing the rest of the night sharing the stories and dissecting the past evening's events. Now my Friday nights are not quite so wild as they once were but every now and again they are heady wonderful nights. And I just love them.