Drawn Here

On one or two days in June [to try out the idea] and in two weeks in September as part of the festival I met anyone who came to talk to me about their origins and why they or their family moved from place to place. This took place either in the Public Library or in the Arts Club in St. Ives, Cornwall in 2008. In return for their information I gave each person a drawing of themselves, quickly done while they sat with me but keeping a carbon copy for use later along with my notes of what they said. These meetings were brief but very vivid. The drawings are as good as I could do, a record of that moment of meeting, meeting with people with whom I would otherwise not have had those conversations. I was inspired by Keith Piper's work, seen in Derby at Quad Arts, in which people answered a computer questionnaire which showed everyone to be in some way either an economic migrant or an asylum seeker. My version of this involves personal contact, a relational aesthetic, hoping, by an exchange of gifts, to avoid exploitation. The artwork was in that meeting - but now I make a book to record it, to reach other people, a second work of art, and this time for sale. A signed limited edition of 36.