Yesterday evening I was given the use of a gadget called a ‘Cool Scan’(it’s all in the name). Actually when I think about it; it’s a Nikon Cool Scan the same Nikon who make Cool Pix cameras. So they’re cool? Or so they say (is it cool to say you are cool?) Anyway…

I have spent a good proportion of my day scanning the negatives from a camera I made out of a matchbox from the shop; Shop Girls shop.  Surprisingly enough, a few images actually appeared.  In fact I can make out four or five individuals who I cajoled into posing for a picture.  I assured them it was hit or miss as to whether any image would be captured by me – after all I am Shop Girl and not Photography Girl.

When I asked people to pose this usually meant I had to reveal my ‘secret’ identity as Shop Girl – undercover artist (oh Sophie – why can’t I be like you?).  Ok, so they laughed, rolled their eyes, but sometimes they seemed genuinely interested in the process, how it worked, and what I was doing and going to do. I really want to develop these pictures and show them in the shop. I would like for them to be appreciated – not because they are good photographs (which conventionally they are not), but because it is something special which has come from this wee shop in this wee village, and that in my eyes is a job well done.

I have been watching this program on Sky Arts called Work of Art: Next Great Artist.  It’s a reality show of sorts where the contestants are artists who have to make artworks in a very short timeframe – mostly one day until midnight and present them to the public, to art critics, curators and established artists.  The winner gets a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum.  Every week they loose one artist contestant and the presenter China Chow always says there’s only one rule in art and that is: does it work… and this week your piece did not work for us.

So does my art piece work? And what does that mean? In this context what does the word ‘work’ mean? Also she does add ‘for us’ at the end so the decision is not finite.   It is the rules that they have to loose one artist contestant every week.  Maybe sometimes the art does ‘work’ but not as well as the other artists pieces or maybe more than one artist’s art does not work but they just have to pick the least effective. I am just speculating, and we are talking about a TV show here, but basically the ‘not working’ thing really happens in context with other art works.

So let’s take this Shop Girl project; images of the village shop created using a matchbox pinhole camera are developed onto paper made out of the receipts from the shop.  Is there a set of artworks where it could be judged in context? At this point let’s call this project a documentary.  In context with other documentary projects like say a film or a series of photographs or a collection of writing how does it compare?  Does it tell us something about village shops or girls who work in village shops?  I just remembered when I was in 1st year at university I was really struggling financially and I went to see the international student advisor about what I could do, he told me to go back home and get a job in a shop. This was enough to inspire me to endure my hardship as the last thing I wanted to do was follow his advice – funny how things pan out?

As it happens I sent an image of the exterior of the shop to a photographer friend today.  He said that apart from identifying it as a street scene there wasn’t enough detail in the image to identify the building, the location, or at what period in time the image had been captured.  It is a very vague image, but on the other hand its vagueness means that it is open to interpretation.  Here we might come back to trusting the makers’ word I mentioned yesterday.  Does this fit with the idea of documentary? Trusting the word of the person presenting? Well when I think of Louis Theroux documentaries I find myself trusting what he presents.  Does a document mean fact? It is a fact that the image is of the shop.  It may not be very clear but it is a factual document of the light that passed through the pinhole and burned an image onto the celluloid for as long as I held open the cardboard shutter.

So the images alone, seen without me telling the viewer the fact, tell us very little, what about what it is printed onto.  The paper is square, it has an uneven texture, it is different to paper you can buy but maybe reminds you of some exotic paper you may have come across, but you cannot tell from what it is made from.  But it is a fact that they are made out of the receipts from the shop. 

The viewer is given no clues as to where these objects came from.  At this point there is a choice to be made; accept that these are ‘kind of nice’, ‘interesting’ or dismiss them entirely they do ‘not work’ for you, investigate the objects further; ask someone else, read this blog to find out the facts or the other option; imagine what they are and make up your own narrative like when you see an untitled abstract painting. The viewer is presented with bare facts without words and it is up to them to deduce what indeed this document is. Hmm, it’s like CSI!

This evening a poet who lives near here dropped by the workshop to see Ian and Oona, he was quite charming and asked about my project.  He said the paper I had made was beautiful and suggested it would be perfect for writing little Haiku’s.  I was flattered by the connection to Japan (the paper is square I think this influences its potential use). As he is a poet I showed him the words I’d torn out yesterday. I spilled them out of their paper pocket.  We had a giggle putting unlikely words together.  The more we discovered the funnier it became and the funnier it was the more we laughed, until the breath we expelled from laughing prevented us from assembling the words and made them disperse all over the table and onto the floor. The poets name was Cathal and his visit spread a little joy to the perplexing feeling I had around words yesterday.

What is a receipt?

It could be said that it is a document that proves that you purchased something at a specific time, date and at a specific place. 

What is paper that has been hand made using that receipt?

 It is another document; but the information which proves that it is indeed a receipt has been lost in the process and the recipient of this sheet of paper has no proof. And so by erasing this information; which proves beyond doubt that an economic transaction took place, there is now only the maker’s word.

Should you trust the maker’s word that this is what it is, when you have no evidence? 

A number of things come to mind on this blustery night in the mountains. 

In Marx’s Das Kapital he talks about value in terms of objects that have been processed so that they have a ‘use value’.  He gives an example of the value of a length of linen compared the value of a shirt. The shirt is something that has been designed, cut, sewn and finished so that it is a usable object – and there is a ‘use value’ in this as you can buy the shirt and wear it immediately.  On the other hand the length of linen, although very useful is an object that requires the buyer to then ‘do’ something with it, such as make a shirt and so therefore it has a different value.  It is up to the maker and the purchaser to negotiate a value for the shirt. This then leads to the question of what method was used to make and how much time it took, whether it was done by machine or by hand – so now we are looking at value in terms of time. 

The receipt took a few seconds to print.  The sheet of paper took several hours. Am I adding something or taking it away? 

I recently learned that in Chinese fashion history a machine made shirt was much more coveted and therefore of higher monetary as well as social value than a hand sewn shirt, even though the machine shirt took a lot less time to make and was the same as every other shirt that came out of the factory.  I would seem that the value of a hand-made or machine made object also has to do with culture. Unique objects or one-offs are not always prized.  Sometimes we want to be the same as others – so we fit in.

The other thing I was thinking about was the earlier works of the artist William Pope L; who uses, amongst other things, food in his work.  Of specific interest to me; he made Eating the New York Times, a performance where he ‘ate’ paper.  He is interested, as I am, in the notion of consuming; eating, taking in information and purchasing.  The receipt has is a result of a purchase, something needed or wanted.  It also contains some information.  When I reflect on Pope’s works I find myself questioning they way in which we consume.  Most of the time I have no idea of the origins of what I consume whether it is food ;a current example being the horsemeat scandal, or information; I listen to and spread idle gossip, share information online and have private phone conversations in public.  The media and press mirror this activity and print and broadcast information based on what’s on Twitter or Facebook.  To some extent it is a great liberator and allows stories of public to come to light much quicker but I suppose what I am saying is that we may consider what we consume but it is difficult not to get sucked in and expose my mind and body to things that given an informed choice I may not consume.

Anyway, getting back to the receipt and the paper; I’m also thinking about Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and the value of the essence within this paper juxtaposed with its repetitive yet hand-made process. Is the essence evident? Is it of value? Is it important to retain something human, perhaps imperfection in the things we make and use and see?

And another thought floating around my head is words; mainly because I started to tear out words from the receipts today.  Will this retain some of the proof I spoke of, or some of the essence, will a sheet of paper with a word on it have more or less value, do the words tell us about consuming, how can words be used or do they need to be used – is the whole purpose not to erase the words and cultivate trust in a persons’ own word?

It is only day three and look how complicated it is getting.  Ian (who runs Cló along with Oona and Marjorie) asked me today; what is the simplest way I can do this.  I think the only way I will find this out is by getting deeper into it.  Which may make it more complicated but it’s kind of like a ball of knots, I will continue patiently; at times, hopeful, frustrated but ultimately seeking resolve and eventually (some day before I die) it will become clear.

It’s so strikingly and personally disturbingly quiet here: it’s just not like me not to be babbling away all day, in person or on the phone, listening to music or TV and interacting with people online in some way, but here all of that activity has floated away like a cloud of mist over the mountains. 

 Last night in the residency house, after I had made some food and lit a decent fire (with briquettes this time) I looked around and found that there was no TV no radio and no internet connection.  I was alone and in silence.  I watched the fire burn for a while and felt a bit lonely.  I know it was like this in the old days but maybe this is why everyone would go visiting each other or go to the pub.   For me the pub is a good 8-10km away down a dangerously windy (both bendy and inclement weather wise) road.

So I’d say from about 7.30pm I did not speak a word and from 9pm I had no contact with the outside world in any way.  This morning I got up early, had breakfast; alone and in silence and went to the workshop where I worked steadily for three hours alone and in silence.  Around 11.30am I spoke my first words to Oona Hyland who runs the workshop and also lives on site with her husband and three of her five children (two are at boarding school).  Our interaction was pleasant but brief and so I continued with my work.

I forgot to mention what it is that I am working on here.  Maybe now is a good time? So, when I arrived back from twelve years exile in the UK I returned to my family home in Milford, County Donegal.  I found myself cleaning, baking bread, getting sticks for the fire, making dinners and generally housebound apart from my little excursions on my bike to get more flour for the bread making.  On one such occasion I was spotted in the village shop and approached through a series of personal connections to cover a few hours in the shop whilst one employee was on maternity leave.

With not much else to occupy my time I accepted the position and began life as a shop girl on 8th January 2013.  It wasn’t long before I began daydreaming and imagining that my work in the shop was in fact and undercover artist residency. I was not ‘a shop girl’ I was Shop Girl and so began my secret project. 

I wasn’t very good at keeping the secret because part of my plan was to use the uncollected receipts during my shift to make paper.  I’m no Sophie Calle so I asked my bosses permission to take and use this material and possibly make images of the shop and the people working/shopping/loitering there.  I spoke quite quickly, overloading him with information so that his response was something along the line of ‘I don’t understand – but do whatever you like. . .’ I began collecting the receipts and one night I forgot to take my secret stash with me.  The next day I was questioned by the other staff, who instead of falling around the place in hysterics just smiled, rolled their eyes and then began collecting receipts during their own shifts.

Before long I had bags and bags of waste paper to work with.  Then along came this opportunity at Cló for a month long artist residency at their very well equipped workshop.  I applied and told them about my Shop Girl project, making paper, and making images of the shop with a pinhole camera made from things on the shop and developing these images onto the paper – and they liked it and awarded me a paid residency.  And so here I am.

Tomorrow I have to go back to the shop and work on Saturday and Sunday, but by then my paper will be dry and I will be able to move on to phase two which will be trial and error, quite possibly more error than anything else but I will have nobody to answer to but myself as I plod along alone and in silence . . .

It’s my first day down here at Cló near Gortahork in Donegal.  On Tuesday I took a spin up the road to find out where it was and to practice my very rusty driving skills.  I stalled the car about twenty times and nearly went off the road once but I made it there and back in one piece.  The site is miles from anywhere, deserted in the wilds of the hills and mountains.  There are plenty of sheep a few buildings dotted here and there but for the most part it is isolated and quiet apart from the howling wind.

When I arrived I met Ian Gordon.  He is working on a set of prints which he is making for his solo show coming up in May at the Glebe gallery.  As he was busy working I decided to busy myself with some work and began to locate a suitable workstation for making paper.  It took some time to organise and I had a siesta mid-day to build a small fire in the residency house.  With no obvious burning material I searched outside for twigs and built a fire that lasted about half an hour.  After some crackers and cheese I came back to the workshop and made a stack of paper.

Ian and I chatted while we worked and over tea breaks.  He started off in conceptual land art and moved to plein air painting in the 90’s.  He was making prints of embroidered fabrics which he had buried in the landscape.  Although he had never documented this work by chance someone had asked to photograph a series he had done in the 70’s in London and this was the content of the prints he was making.  We talked about the differences between artistic cultures in the UK compared to rural Donegal, the pros and cons of exhibiting , making a living from your art practice, having a goal however ‘childish’, foolish, far-fetched or far-flung it is and the importance of the artist to remind society that we are a collection of individuals.

After Ian left I pressed and laid out the paper for drying.  I began to ponder again; why am I making paper? Is it because I feel the need to and it is my duty as an artist to fulfil the need to express and carry out activities that have no obvious practical function? Even though paper itself is a very practical material and has numerous functions the act of making it by hand with everyday resources is not at all practical and certainly not economical.  Ian had asked me a lot about my work.  He was perplexed as to why I did not write or make some mark on the paper. It is interesting for me to experience peoples’ responses to my act of making paper.  It seems that this act inspired people to want to do something with it. Maybe some of this has rubbed off on me as I attempt to use this paper to develop images onto.

For now, although it is not yet dark I am very tired from all my new experiences today.  I have just taken a phone call about another project making paper for a band’s new album.  It is possible of course and it could be quite fun but for now I think I will get back to making a fire and turn in for the night.