ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 142

It must have been around 1999 /2000. It was a book event to do with Sue Heap as she invited me to come. I’m sure it wasn’t a walker Books event and I can’t remember if it was a book launch or another kind of literary event. Come to think of it I think it was a book launch, actually I am not sure. Maybe not.

Those were the years when it dawned on me that maybe the idea of me being some kind of artist was delusional. Until Katarina and I came to live in London and got married (1998) I somehow believed that I was an artist. I obviously knew I wasn’t a successful one but I had a belief that all the jobs I did were just to earn money; that I wasn’t a waiter, a grill chef, a barista, a painter and decorator, or any of the dozens of jobs I did but i was an artist and these were undercover jobs I had to do.

In ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” by John Le Carré, there is a bit where the main character, I can’t remember his name, is questioned by the East German secret police and, ah sorry I have to mention that before he went back to East Germany he had to spend a bit of time keeping a low profile in london and he took a job as an assistant librarian and, oh my God, this is terrible, it was supposed to be a simple clever literary quote and I am struggling to remember the plot in a book I haven’t read for years. The plot is actually not important for the point I am trying to make but if you haven’t read it, you should. The point I was trying to make is this: the main character is a spy, not just any spy but a very important spy, this is what and who he is, definitely a spy, but when he is interrogated, they know he is a spy but the ask what is his profession and he answers “assistant librarian”
Up until the late nineties, I thought of myself an artist and if you asked me what was my profession I would say whatever temporary job I was doing at the time.

But around that time, I realised that maybe I never was a spy.

But also, around that time I saw at the Tate a work by Emma Kay called “World View” and it inspired me and made me want to make art again, not that I did anything for quite a while.

This work is a history of the world written from memory, no internet obviously but also no books or any kind of reference material. Just what Emma Kay remembers having learned or experienced.

I can imagine her starting with a blank page starting to write about the Big Bang. She is not a historian, her knowledge is something I can relate to, her project is something I can imagine myself attempting to do. The idea of subjectivity and relativity of memory is something that interested me then and even more so exactly now.

This work in book form is even more powerful. The fact that it is typeset and printed makes the facts within it more believable. I also love the way how time and space and memory work: the first few hundreds of millions of years takes up one paragraph; Big Bang to humans, 15 pages. By page 37 it’s 1216 with what she remembers about the Magna Carta. Page 80 is the beginning of the 20th century. There are gaps between paragraphs, sometimes smaller sometimes larger depending on how much she thinks she has omitted.

The cover is from another work: “Map Of The World Drawn From Memory”.

Back to my story, my memory. I told Sue about this work and she said that she knew her. I don’t know if she invited me to the event so that I could meet her but she said I will introduce you to her. I said no, really, I would rather not. She insisted and I said no, I don’t know what I would say to her and she is busy. Sue insisted, she said, Fiona I would like you to meet Daniel who also is an artist. She politely said “hello” and after a few uncomfortable moments I mumbled something and went somewhere else.

21.5.2020.

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