Washing and waxing the Taxi this am – 'Bound' came down on Saturday and left a cross hatched dust residue embedded on the coachwork. Tea break - and a Mum and her small daughter walk past, the girl looks into the garden (she’s too small to see over the hedge) – she’s looking to see what’s happening with the Taxi – maybe I need a “between shows” sign of some kind?

My approach to curating Taxi Gallery so far has been haphazard, based as much on personal contact, chance, coincidence as upon strategic planning. Initially I wrote to a range of artists, whose work I knew and thought might be interested, inviting them to make work for the Taxi Gallery. Some responded immediately and have already had a show (Idit Nathan, Anna Townley, Rona Lee, Clare Charnley, Lesley Halliwell, Anya Lewin) others are coming up or have yet to make a firm commitment. Commissioning Jan to make the opening show 'Ride' was an act of faith in her emerging (young) practice. Matt Rogalsky came to me with a proposal for perfect imperfect in the Taxi to coincide with their onsite work at Elvedon Hall. I’d seen Rona’s Speaker’s Corner (HAPPY pieces) in another space previously and suggested its re-situating in Taxi Gallery. I was really pleased to meet Desmond and Laura (by chance) because I knew that I wanted a show that would work sculpturally and materially with Taxi Gallery. I met Desmond Brett through my son Liam – Desmond is his sculpture teacher – he’d mentioned to his class that he’d always wanted to make a sculpture for the boot of a car – Liam mentioned the Taxi Gallery …. Through Desmond I met and encouraged Laura to make work for the Gallery also ….. I'm really pleased with the range and variety of the first year of Taxi Gallery's shows - film, soundwork, video projection, sculpture, interactive and participatory works ....

The second year of Taxi Gallery I’m anticipating will be more of a challenge as I increasingly work with people whose practice is less familiar (known) to me … I am beginning to actively seek out new kinds of work / approaches. I'm going to be taking more risks and will have to balance the curating of the sequence of shows with the practical logistics of not having a healthy commissioning budget and relying largely on the opportunity to make work for Taxi Gallery being a useful one for the artists. Stan Downing's show is the first of this more risky phase – I feel positive about giving him the chance through Taxi Gallery to make something very new for him.

From the start I’ve wanted to make a link with the primary school nearby – to set up a project where the children make an exhibition for the Taxi – this is a way of getting some of the adults over the hurdle of the “strangeness” of the Taxi as a gallery … if they come to see their children/grandchildren’s work maybe that will help them realise its not as scary/odd as they think/fear ….. It’s taken a year, I met with the Headmaster and Jen Perry (Yr 6 Teacher) last September – they were very enthusiastic but run off their feet – the bureaucratic hurdles of a funding application to Awards for All took almost 9 months to resolve. But now we finally have the funding! In the meantime I’ve been corresponding with Jen, publicising events through letters home from school and in May hosted a visit to ‘Round In Circles’ by Lesley Halliwell for Jen’s class, we had to split the class in two and do it in two trips – it was raining I put the gazebo up… talked about the exhibition a little, let them all pile into the taxi …. gave out drinks and biscuits and let them have a go at drawing with spirographs. Jen has just told me she’s left the school to return home to New Zealand so I’m going to have to start again making a relationship with a new teacher …. I'm hoping to run a Miniature Portrait project in October with Anna Townley ….

I’ve been ringing the school for two days now – leaving messages – wanting to get things going – to arrange a time to meet with the Art Coordinator and get things moving – but noone is returning my calls – its weird, the person I spoke to said that she’d told the Headmaster that we’d got the funding – am I being unreasonable in thinking that £3.5 grand’s worth of funding would at least be worthy of a bit of excitement and interest – I know they’re busy but still…. I’m just going to go round there tomorrow and grab someone – after a year’s wait I really want to get things moving ……

On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 10:01 AM, k wrote:
Dear Taxi Gallery,
I saw your ad in the Artist's Newsletter and was interested in the postcard
project. However, from looking at your website, it seems all the work needs
to be about taxis and you would not be interested in work on other subjects.
Is this correct?
Thanks!
K

Hi K
thanks for your interest - I'm actually suggesting that the postcards might approach the idea of Taxi Gallery Postcard as a site in itself - which could provoke a range of ideas/images etc just as the gallery itself is a site which artists are responding to in various ways - so the postcards need not be "about" taxis in particular ..... for instance they might be "about" travel, journeys, the idea of a vehicle being a gallery, conversation between strangers, chance meetings or they could be about postcards, about the phenomenon of postcards, .... this is just off the top of my head .... something inspired by the provocation of the Taxi Gallery project as a whole or the idea of a Taxi Gallery Postcard .... hope this helps
take care
Kirsten

I came across Joshua Sofaer's Scavenger project over the summer - I'd love to host a version of it for Cambridge but its just too large scale an enterprise for Taxi Gallery on its own - and anyway I think needs to work within a more conventional art/musuem space for the joke AND the serious ideas underpinning the humour to work properly. I'd love to see it at the Fitzwilliam Museum or Kettles Yard Gallery. I've started tentaively working on making it happen, Joshua's really keen to do a Scavenger's project in Cambridge that involves students and townspeople, that bridges the town/gown divide. Met with Julia Tozer today from Kettles Yard Education dept to chat over the idea - she's really keen but thinks that the Kettles Yard director is going to find it too poppy and "funny" for his taste - he doesn't "do funny" apparently. But she's going to run it past them ....

Met with Cliff, headmaster of the primary school, today to start planning the miniatures project. He's also suggested our working together on a summer exhibition in the school hall that will bring together artwork by people living in the area and some of the children's work from the year. This ties in well with the local community network meeting I want to host sometime soon - bringing together people from all the various schools, groups, clubs etc in the local area - for a bit of a jolly in the Scout Hut - some lunch, a bit of a Taxi Gallery presentation and a chance to discuss what we might want to do together or for each other or make happen ... I'm already beginning to develop an interesting invitation list of contacts apart from the usual suspects of course .... including: Paul from the charity shop, Tony and from the Allottment Society, the retired american artist who lives behind the Leper Chapel, Sue and Julia who live round the corner - Julia's a working class single mum who's just started doing a degree at UEA and Sue's interested in activating the neglected/unused bits of space in the area, Tim who runs the community cafe, Alan the local vicar, John the Local History society buff....

Grants for All funding from the Arts Council has given me the chance to learn some new web skills and re-develop the Taxi Gallery website - today it goes "half live" to previous artists first:

Dear all
firstly apologies for the group mailing ...
hoping you're all well, happy etc etc
I'm writing to you all as artists who've already exhibited at Taxi Gallery to give you advance notice of the new TG website having gone online at the same address as before http://www.taxigallery.org.uk
I've been working on it for the last month or so and I'm hoping that you'll like the extra features (look out for the log book!) and new overall look and feel - any feedback and glitch/typo spotting is most welcome!
It'd be great if you could particularly check that you're happy with how your work is presented on the archive page relevant to your exhibition and you'll notice that I'm wanting to start including artist's reflections on their exhibitions - I've mentioned this to some of you who exhibited recently - it needn't be too onerous - very informal and not too long! - just whatever you feel most relevant to share as a post exhibition reflection - it could be anecdotal from the process or opening event, an evaluation of the work, a reflection on the particular challenge that taxi gallery presented you with, or information on how the work has developed or informed your practice after the exhibition ....however you want to take it ... up for some gritty critique as well .....!
no hurry but sooner rather never and of course very much appreciated .....
hope you think its a good idea
Kirsten

Citi Link delivery man gestures towards the Taxi and asks me "is that a memorial?" - since the show is Stan's homage to Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' - I thought it was a quite appropriate comment.

The exhibition of postcard designs has gone up today .... I've been almost overwhelmed by the range of the submissions .... having to extend the installation to my front room window .... there are so many ! I'm delighted that so many people have been inspired by the provocation .... I'm now hoping that the exhibition will inspire some local submissions, so to this effect I'm putting up posters on the community noticeboards and have asked the school to send an invite to participate home with the children sometime this week .... I've got enough money to print a fifth postcard that will be chosen from the local submissions only - so I hope I get some ... comments have started pouring in via the website and I've put out some voting slips for passersby to post thru the letterbox .... I'm really curious to see which cards are the most popular. At the end of the show I shall host a panel meeting and over a meal some tough decisions will need to be made ... the panel will include my neighbour from across the road as well as some regular Taxi Gallery visitors and a postcard devotee!

Called in at the Community Cafe to leave a postcard poster and to check out that Tim wasn't fed up with the spirograph drawing! - he's not .... in fact he said that people always comment and ask about it and that he's hoping it'll be worth something one day ....

Delivering leaflets about the Postcard Exhibition today to the street - John (across the road) who's always insited that Taxi Gallery is "not for people like us - we don't really understand" - was really keen to tell me that at night the exhibition looks like lots of tiny windows - he was so excited about how amazing it looks. As I left to carry on delivering he had to tell me that "I still don't understand you know".

A month later - and my posting of 4 October seems hopelessly optimistic in retrospect. I received just one postcard submission from someone (Troy) living in the immediate neighbourhood, there were a number of submissions from Cambridge based artists and two of these were ultimately chosen to be a combination card (Stan Downing & Bethany Kelman) - they're great images and I am very happy with the final selection of postcards. Added to this disappointment was the almost complete lack of interest by parents in the opening event associated with the Children's exhibition of Miniature Portraits - just one person came along and that was Julie, who is already a bit of a Taxi Gallery fan (and Troy's mother!). I guess I just have to accept that my neighbours are simply just not interested and never will be or perhaps that they take a sneaky look but don't want to let me catch them doing so! The Miniatures project was a great success nevertheless and the children really enjoyed themselves, the teachers were appreciative .... that should be enough - but I still feel disappointed, I still feel that I'm missing a trick, that there must be some way to get people more actively engaged with what I'm doing here.

But on the other hand, Stephen Rice, who's only every visited Taxi Gallery online sends me this article about Taxi Gallery and I feel so touched by his take on what I'm trying to do - garnered soley through the website materials and resources.

Translocal enthusiasm and local disdain.