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‘Imponderabilia’. Indeed it is. This performance piece is, for me, the highlight of the Marina Abramovic show at the RA. I went twice in two days and I am expecting to return several times more with friends and clients over the forth coming weeks - I am going to be interested to observe if my reaction to this work changes or evolves. Because right now it is one of mostly being terrified. “Where do I look?” “Should I try not to touch his willy or her tits?” “What happens if I inadvertently touch his willy and it excites him?” (OK I realise this might be a stretch now from this 50 year old woman but I still feel 24 remember 😂 ) “What if I touch his willy and it excites ME?” “Or worse, her tits?! “Do they excite each other when they stare into each others eyes?” “Do they ever fall in love” “Do I face her or him?” “What does that say about me?” “Should I look into their eyes as I squeeze through?” “Why am I doing this?” “Is this even right or appropriate?” “What if I have bad breath?” So to the event itself - well both times I was laughable. In squeezing through and trying to touch neither willy nor tits, both times I kind of stuff up my weight distribution and end up in a kind of stuck, locked, straddle position between both touching, ironically, both willy and tits for what seemed like a lifetime. My left leg is forward (I decide to face the woman) but all my weight is on my back right leg and I don’t have the momentum to move either. LOL. So after an awkward pause I kind of lurch through more with sheer willpower than any kind of athletic grace. The first time I worry I’ve scratched the girl’s tummy with my finger nail whilst trying to not scrape her with my handbag. And the second time her nose manages to get stuck in my ear (yes right in 😂) and we share this odd moment of breathy nasal breathing into that orifice. Most strange, but oddly comforting. I remember thinking “Isn’t this what that woman did with those horses?” I cry the first time. And the second I want to but manage to keep it in. ‘Imponderabilia’ by Marina Abravomic. Indeed. Indeed. Go see and feel. ❤️

Thanks to the kind invites from a couple of galleries to the opening of @friezeofficial sculpture on Tuesday night I had the joy of listening to the poet laureate of Lambeth @abstractbenna perform his poem ‘In Memory of Hopping’ as part of @jyll.bradley installation ‘The Hop’. As you can tell from this rather crumpled copy I have been carrying it around in my bag and have been dipping in and out of the poem over the last few days. I’m sure in some ways it’s a very nostalgic view of the golden olden days, but there is something about the lines in the middle verse ‘as a working holiday it put the fun in funds’ that somehow stopped me in my tracks. It brought back the memories of the days when I picked apples in New Zealand. Happy, simple and joyous times. Waking up in the morning and cycling to the orchard as the sun rose. And picking the first apple off the tree, cold, crisp and covered with dew. And the bright clear Alexandra sky. And the people I picked with. Some a little itinerant. Some, I now realise, on a journey to finding themselves, some running away. Some picking to survive financially and others for some pocket money. But they were, we were, all hard grafters. And boy did we laugh over a cold beer at the end of a long day. I miss those simple days in many ways.

Spot the difference was always one of my favourite games in those 1970’s puzzle books. And so here is my version. The first photo was sent to me by my client and I asked her to send me one with none of the bits and bobs in it. After sitting with the two versions for a while I’ve decided I much prefer the one with the chair, the bag, the pair of socks and what looks to me suspiciously like a mouth guard holder 😂. Why? Because this photo was sent about a day after this work was installed and it already looked like it was part of the furniture, like it had been there for years and was loved like an old friend. It looked like it had already settled in. I source art that people love for real people’s homes, with real people’s lives, with real people’s stuff and socks and everything more besides. Sure, I have clients who have a few quid and I have clients who have less. But they all have homes that they love and live in and leave socks hanging around in and want to find art that they love for it. A two hour consultation for your home or 10 ideas for a space costs £175 plus VAT.

First day of term. First day of work. The end of the summer holidays. The end of my summer of love, a big birthday and a breath (that felt more like a lobotomy towards the end) between jobs. The beginning of Autumn. The run up to Christmas. Another chapter. A turning over of a new leaf. A few in fact (at least 3 kilos worth I hope 😂) And so as I sit here and think about today, my first day at school (well a new job actually but the feeling is the same) I think about the passing of time. I think about how two out of three of my kids do not have their first day of school and I wonder where did that time go? I feel enormously grateful that I only have to get myself out of the door this morning but also absolutely devastated somehow that those years have gone. I can’t look at the photos of them on their first day at school on doorstep of this house without wanting to sob. I find the passing of time terrifying at the moment. Truly terrifying. Hopefully an ironic function of having had too much of it on my, ahem, hands. I’m hoping it’s just a stage, that by 5pm today that moment will have passed. I found Maarten Baas’s ‘Sweeper Clock’ @museumvoorlinden last week didn’t help. It just absolutely bundled up all my fears, all my terrors into one charming and sweet and oddly meditative video of two road sweepers just sweeping their pile of rubble round, one minute at a time. Is my life rubble? Is everyone’s? As I said. Terrifying.

What a joy The Hague turned out to be - offering up not one but two James Turrell works. The sky scape @museumvoorlinden didn’t move me as much as the two outdoor ones I have previously experienced but the Celestial Vault in the dunes in Kijkduin did once I’d worked out how to lie on the bench (note to anyone going to visit - you lie with your head at the lower end of the bench not like we did for the first 20 mins wondering what all the fuss was about and saying “arrrgh we are a few inches too high to see it properly” 🫣). A wonderful end to a summer in which I’ve had a proper rest and now am ready to hit the ground running again. I feel truly blessed to have spent the summer with people I love. Now it’s back to some routine, the gym and my clients. Here we go 💪

I’m very happy to pop back up here on instagram to announce that my social media detox has given birth to my long overdue CSR pledges. There are three of them (go to website link in bio and page ‘Three Ways I Pledge to Give Back’ if you’d like to know more). Whilst art is fun and wonderful it is not without its impacts and I have wanted to do my bit for sometime to try and offset them. The first pledge I would like to talk about is ‘One Client One Tree’ - this is where I will be donating one tree to be planted in the Amazon for every client that engages my services. More trees will donated if we place some works in your home. To kick this off and as a thank you to my lovely clients who have already supported me and my business to date, today I donated 1000 trees to be planted in the Amazon. I’ve chosen @onetreeplanted as the best people for this job - they have won several awards in their field and crucially work with local communities to ensure the trees they plant get established. I’m popping back down now for the rest of the month - back again in September when I will talk about my other two pledges then.

I am delighted to say I am now hanging up my Instagram boots for the summer and I will be enforcing on myself a much needed digital detox. Whilst I’ve not been working in my PA job for the last month I’ve realised I am not quite bouncing back quite as quickly as I expected. Either the degree shows this year really were mostly a pile of shite or I’m tired and jaded. In the spirit of giving the art world the benefit of the doubt I’m going to blame it on me and say I’m just too tired. I can’t thank everyone enough for their business and support this year - I’m truly grateful - but am creatively drained and at risk of losing my art mojo. I’m taking the next month to rest my eye, celebrate a big birthday with friends and my family and yes, as you can see, do some lovely walks in one of my favourite places - the Isle of Wight. @wildernesshq here all 12 of us come. What a joyous blessing. See on the other side.

Clients chose a cracker cinema poster for here. Love how the legs echo the light. Thanks to the fab @rachaelhardinginteriors for asking me to be the art consultant on her project. She has such a great eye for colour and form it’s a joy to work with her projects as there is always something interesting to riff off. Thanks to local @roframes for a super framing and installation job too.

@claudiaceramics is a potter whose work I love and have personally collected and so was most concerned about her personally and for freedom of speech in general when I learned about her appalling treatment by @unioftheartslondon in 2022. I do not wish to misrepresent the situation for either Claudia or UAL so will post a statement her from her lawyers Levins:

Oooooooooooooooooooooh. I actually think paintings are like people - you don’t really understand them until you’ve hung out with them in all lights. And it was an honour to hang out with these @alison_watt_ at a client’s home quietly and meditatively one evening this week. Pure class.

My favourite thing in the Summer Exhibition today. Mostly because of the utterly fabulous confusion it created. The guard standing over it hadnt been briefed. Or if he had someone was playing a joke. He thought that it was actually a polystyrene box that had “something in it” (I have to say I am fascinated by what he thought that might be as he was guarding it extremely diligently! 😂). Another man told me that I was wasting my time photographing it but then ate his words when I told him that this was actually a painted bronze (he was lovely and said thank you so much for explaining the work) and then I had a lovely chat with the lady whose foot you can see in the background and we talked about the oddly satisfying squeak that we could imagine of the polysyrene lid coming off and I said how I wanted to pick one or two of the balls off and get them statically stuck to my finger. Except that we couldn’t do either as the, by now utterly confused, guard wouldn’t let us touch it and of course it was not polystyrene at all. Go and stand by this and tell people what it really is. It will be the best fun you have in an art gallery this summer.

I wake up in Glasgow this morning to the news that Banksy has been secretly installing a major show at @goma. This will be cool. First batch of tickets have been released on the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art website.

Art For Your Home

!cid_4DE579E3-21B1-4F7A-9C62-60F1C9A323AE@home — Portait Painting

Botanical Art

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Louisa: +44 (0)7855 803509 louisa@louisawarfieldart.com

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