Until the Flowers Die

An autobiography and sixteen biographies of a shared day

Reading University 

For my final thesis, I sat reading various philosophical texts whilst drawing and writing my thoughts with my head framed by a cut out rectangle in a screen. Sixteen friends simultaneously wrote and drew until some tulips, placed in vases without water, slowly drooped over the time, approximately 24 hours. I also photographed myself by holding my camera in all different positions around my head, a work I later extended as a performance with a Polaroid camera, building up a composite and also in various other collages. These writings, photos and drawings became my thesis. The triggering question to myself and the name of the dissertation was “what is art and what am I doing in it?” Art as life or life as art? Was I keener on being a non-specific searcher rather than an artist?

No matter how radical, questing or unique one’s visions, art has rules which circumscribe the results, even if only perceptually. I was very conscious of nurturing a recognisable style as being the way to attain art world acknowledgement. I found it mysterious how one achieved this style; it seemed so arbitrary and artificial and unstimulating. I was interested in the multiplicity of being and endless potential of ‘whom’ one could be. I wanted to push buttons such as embarrassment and fear and complacency, both within myself and in those around me. I wanted to challenge any stability I might feel. I sensed that when I disappeared in the work it had the most potency.

I placed all the results from the day in a very smelly herring box and tied it above the door of the art history department. I also included some of the letters I had just opened, written as a teenager from myself to my older self, questioning who I am, who I was, who I will be.

My final exhibition reflected the spectrum of work I made and opened the realm between the two. Firstly, I made a minimal installation ‘Maybe a painting,’ grappling with the idea that as soon as one begins attempting to execute a painting, one is confronted with the impossibility of capturing ones vision. Secondly, I made a performance with Moodies to mostly baffled Reading University examiners and external examiners.

Much of my work from Reading University was re-visited in Autobituary, an installation and publication at Matts Gallery in 2005.