'Just Sometimes'
Luke Jerram b.1974
Deck Chair with Printed Seat
Deckchair dimensions when flat = 1300 x 600 x 60
2010
Priceless (or £100 from the online shop)
Exh. 'Deckchair Dreams 2013' Royal Parks
2013.020
Rare though it is for something to enter the transparent collection on the day it was received because I do not do things 'in order' - for this, I'm making an exception.
I worked with Luke as a project mentor on his project Aeolus in 2010 and have continued to act as a sounding board up to the sale of the work earlier this year.
Luke has been following this blog and offered me a work.
Did I want 2D or 3D? I said I was relaxed about it but that he should bear in mind where I live and so this morning a parcel arrived addressed to 'the relaxed Christian Barnes'. I haven't been relaxed recently, I've been stressed, so stressed I haven't made an entry in here for ages. It is pouring with rain today so the umbrellas are appropriate and the photo is in the kitchen and not in the garden. But none the less I love it.
It also brings to mind a particular discussion with Luke. Aeolus went on forever, was hugely unwieldy, caused a lot of worry (not least to project co-ordinator Carolyn Black), financial risk and cost a lot of money - around £500k. It was eventually engineered by Arup so what else do you expect? It was fabulous and fine and has just been been bought by Airbus. There is a happy ending! Luke is always sunny side up. 'What could possibly go wrong?' and it is true that people with no plans who are open to opportunity are rarely disappointed!
The project did bog Luke down however. It was challenging and difficult and delivered in a very different economic and cultural climate to the one in which it was conceived and in the middle of it Luke went off to Rotterdam to the Witte de With Festival where he had a few days to do a commissioned event project. I seem to recall that while he was there, there was a bust up with the first project engineer (not Arup) arising from that curse of the email age the accidental forward. There were some anxious calls from the hotel though I may be off about the actual timing.
One of many ideas he proposed saw him buying a load of umbrellas and chucking them (tr. ‘arranging randomly by placing them upside down like paper boats’) in the waterways and he loved doing it. Quick. Instant.
It also kind of matters that Luke is colour blind, the element of not seeing the same way and not over designing, occupying a space where randomness and factors that that you can't predict or control occurs is key to the work.
It sits among his preoccupations around ideas of gathering and dispersal that suit festival type programming and also alongside his preoccupations with perception at the margins of both the senses and consciousness from REM sleep to mirages.
It is the light touch that he does best.
The relief of thinking quickly and just doing it was the perfect antidote to the Aeolus project.
After three days they were gathered, given away, and are now revisited for this Royal Parks fundraiser.
I will enjoy sitting on the deck chair and as I write he has offered me another - if they ask him next year, this time of the Sky Orchestra.
It also reminds me of the work of an 'artist, dreamer and blagger' living not far from here who works with umbrellas on water too. How spooky is that! I have seen quite a few of his umbrellas upside down in water in my time... not usually to the same positive effect.
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