Exhibition

Tuesday 14th November '06

I’m writing this, post beans on toast with two fried eggs on top. Ah well. In four weeks time I shall be holding a show at uni. It is essentially a fake exhibition – a retrospective at a generic and unidentified ‘Museum of Art’ featuring me as if I was a famous artist. There are no dates or indication of whether I am alive or dead, but there is an elaborate fictional story of my life. This includes such golden nuggets of information as the time I won the Nobel peace prize, and received a damehood from the Queen. Intended as a playful critique of the fake and mercenary atmosphere of the art world as I see it, and the unnecessarily competitive attitude of some of my fellow students, the show will be a play on the myth of the artist as genius and how that can be manipulated to one’s advantage. In it will feature a self-portrait in oils, and several photographs of me dressed up in my fifties attire. It feels such an alien thing to do, promoting myself like this, even if it is intended as a joke. Doing a self-portrait is also a strange thing to do as you have to study your face in such minute detail for extended periods of time. Hopefully all this will help towards the transformation of myself into a myth.