xelovnebis saerTaSoriso Jurnali - Artisterium

MOLTEN BORDERS AND HOuSE-KEEPING
Anthea Nicholson
The long and fruitful contact between artists from the UK and the Caucasus is a good example of the way that creative dialogue refuses to
submit to the constraints of political boundaries, cultural divides and language differences. Since 1992, when Bristol first saw the work of
Georgian artists at Arnolfini Gallery, a bond has developed; a stretchable, flexible link that shrinks and grows as the climate permits or detains
growth. It is a complex set of people, art, ideas, conversation, frustrations, real projects and future dreams. For me it has been a relationship of
love that is inseparable from my creative practice. My partner and occasional collaborator, Mamuka Japharidze, is as bound up as I am in the
peripatetic passage between the UK, his native Georgia and to other parts of the world.
Artists these days are rather like global nomads, we belong to a restless tribe who easily transfer themselves from workshop to workshop, city
to city, culture to culture. We are unshockable, us artists. These calls from beyond one’s native land are often pivotal moments for creative
realization, we await them eagerly, we initiate them ourselves when we can. Mamuka and I have also followed this path. Tbilisi feels like just
another touchstone when seen in the context of this International contact and travel. Bristol, where I live, is also just another touchstone, as is
London, Delhi, Yerevan, Baku, Belfast, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Taipei and on and on beyond the big cities to the less known towns,
the valleys, the seashores and the deserts of the world.
This is not to say that everywhere is the same, but to feel at home on the earth and to say that making art is a kind of home-making, a kind of
house-keeping of the human state. There is a mood in art practice in the UK that embraces this attitude of creative house-keeping, where the
line between art and the everyday or the banal activity is almost erased. There is a sense of the artist-at-work cherishing the ordinary human
scale of events, of nurturing involvement with the public by engaging in socially inclusive activities. Sometimes it is hard to say if the results are
art or social work, creative statements or therapeutic sessions. The uncertainty, a kind of melting of borders, is exactly what makes the work
interesting. The point being that neither high nor low matter, but that what matters is the underlying readiness for response to the call and
preparedness to connect to the context whatever its status.
Molten borders and house-keeping – that seems to sum up the nature of Mamuka’s and my way of being creative. Of the handful of collaborative
works we have made over the last twelve years the key quality has been connectedness to the context, poetic free association and a light touch
with materials. It is not easy to be both partners and collaborators and more often than not Mamuka and I go our separate paths in art and life.
Trust is involved.
I believe artists have an unusual propensity for trust and we ask in exchange for the trust of our audience. It is a strange business. A very
human business is our fragility often exposed and raw. Our fellow travellers, whether they make art or not, recognise in each other’s footprints
- our leavings and droppings, our creative tracks - the weight and moment of being a human. Meeting, somewhere in the world, it is an ancient
desire; to make camp, build a fire, cook food and sit around the flames telling our stories and listening to the experiences of the other. Art-life
constructs new versions of real-life and when it brushes closest to real-life a kind of static builds up, an energy that jumps across the so called
divide between the art and the non-art.
A work titled Table, which I made in collaboration with my UK colleague Bruce Allan and with Mamuka Japharidze embodied the attributes of an
energetic, connective friction between art and life. Table was inspired by the Georgian concept of Supra, where a meal shared around a table is
given poetic significance and raised to a sacral level by the intoned toasts and songs which come unplanned, out of the moment, and yet have
a timeless ritualistic quality.
We organized a banquet for one hundred guests; the constraints of space gave us the number, the site (a community hall in Bristol) gave us
the zone from which most of our guests would arrive (although several special guests came from abroad). In the months leading up to the
banquet, using our network of artists, friends and contacts we sent out a call across the world. The call was for a postable ‘something’ that
would represent the sender in some way. The ‘something’ would be placed on or near the banquet table and in the absence of its sender it would
speak for their presence. We were overwhelmed by the response, the care and the quality of the various objects, texts, images, recorded film
and music that came in tenderly wrapped packages through the mail. We had not been able to offer any fee to these contributors, the things