Following on from recent entries ... and continuing to yo-yo between frustration and philosophical acceptance of feeling politely tolerated/ignored by my neighbours. I am ridiculously cheered by the slightest of gestures of interest - Tony saying hello to me now whereas a year ago he was pointedly ignoring me or a moment's slowing of a passer-by as they succumb to the temptation to peer into the taxi on their way past the garden. Corné (opposite No 37) is selling his house and in my paranoia I was suspecting that he might be cursing me because potential buyers are put off by the presence of Taxi Gallery in their living room view. But to the contrary, he assures my that every prospective buyer has commented positively to the idea of living opposite a gallery and that on two occasions they completed their visit by popping into my garden to have a look!

Have recently been turned onto Willim James - he has some interesting things to say on the subject of how we human's deal with information that is contradictory to our established world view or opinions or experiences? He sketches out a process which I seen born out in my neighbours reaction to Taxi Gallery.

from http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/opinion.html

The process is always the same.
The individual has a stock of old opinions already.
The individual meets a new experience that puts some of these old opinions to a strain.
* Somebody contradicts them.
* In a reflective moment, the individual discovers that they contradict each other.
* The individual hears of facts with which they are incompatible.
* Desires arise in the individual which the old opinions fail to satisfy.The result is inward trouble, to which the individual's mind till then had been a stranger.
The individual seeks to escape from this inward trouble by modifying the old opinions.
* The individual saves as many of the old opinions as is possible (for in this matter we are all extreme conservatives).
* Old opinions resist change very variously.
* The individual tries to change this and then that.Finally, some new opinion comes up which the individual can graft upon the ancient stock of old opinions with a minimum of disturbance to the others.
* The new opinion mediates between the stock and the new experience.
* The new opinion runs the stock and the new experience into one another most felicitously and expediently.The new opinion is then adapted as the true one.
* The new opinion preserves the older stock of truths with a minimum of modification, stretching them just enough to make them admit the novelty, but conceiving that in ways as familiar as the case leaves possible.
* An outreé explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty.The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing.
New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions.
The point I now urge you to observe particularly is the part played by the older truths . . . their influence is absolutely controlling. Loyalty to them is the first principle; for by far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.

I suppose that I should feel grateful that I'm only ignored - the lack of petitions, protest, abuse, burgulary, vandalism, grafitti etc still feels the most tangibly postive response that I received from my neighbourhood through its noticeable and surprising absence.

Just been to Manchester to give a talk on Taxi Gallery at Castlefield Gallery it was a double bill with Leo Fitzmaurice from the Furtherafield project of artist's residencies in a high rise due for demolition in Liverpool. I was really interested in the latest outcome from the project - a book of artist's proposals for fantasy projects for the new housing estates that have now replaced the Tower Blocks. Lesley Halliwell was at the talk and raised an interesting question about closure for these kinds of projects. We continued that conversation later with Nick, her partner, and talked through my dilemmas regarding how to deal materially with the Taxi in relation to the ending of the project. Originally I'd been thinking of inviting proposals for a final installation that would have the freedom to radically and irreversible 'deal' with the taxi creating somekind of landmark and which would remain in place for the forseeable future. But I'm increasingly going off that idea, mostly I hate the imposition of permanent public art (there are exceptions of course - Angel of the North being one) so I'm surprised I even went with it all. It feels much more interesting to utterly remove the taxi - to create an absence, a space which might stand a chance of provoking an other kind of response from the neighbourhood. My fantasy is that suddenly once its gone people will start to let me know what they thought of it and I will at last discover in what kind of ways it has operated within their everydays. This then begs the question of what happens to the taxi - Nick had the idea of burying it either whole or maybe more practically squashed in the front garden - maybe a heritage plaque on the wall of the house as well. This idea has a simple aptness to it which I really like, but .... maybe I'm just too attached to the Taxi itself - it does feel such a waste - I like the idea of it potentially having another life. Having promised to so many people that they'd have a final chance to propose a work for Taxi Gallery I feel I should still provide some kind of final opportunity to artists in relation to the Taxi - I'm beginning to veer towards inviting fantasy proposals - from the financially prohibitive to the practically impossible - text/image based proposals that sow imaginative seeds rather than actual impositions. Maybe this could form the basis of a final publication - maybe they should have the constraint of one side of A4 - the A4 proposals ....

CJ Mahony's installation has just opened in the Taxi. CJ gave a talk at the opening showing previous works and talking with such passionate enthusiasm about the effect making work for Taxi Gallery has had on her practice and its future direction. It was great to hear someone describing exactly what I'd hoped that Taxi Gallery would offer artists - a supportive environment in which to be challenged and experiment.

My first (and only I hope) experience of being let down by an artist has turned out positively. Visiting Mark Jeffry in Chicago - he's been an enthusiastic web visitor of Taxi Gallery from its outset - always sending warm responses to each mailing about an exhibition. He and his partner Judd have jumped at my invitation made partly in response to the striking presence of vehicles in relation to houses in Mark's current work. Their apartment is littered with model tractors or buses or cars plaintively placed in relation to toy houses and cottages. We've embarked upon a curious email interaction and the plan is that I will install the work - a digital projection - following their instructions. One of Mark's emails provoked me to itemise all that I know about the previous occupants of this house - No 38 ..... and also surfaced other personal associations with the material he was generating.

I had sent Mark some photos of the taxi - his relpy>

Hello!
This looks really great to get all of the perspectives - I have to say it is funny what comes to us - I am very grateful that you are allowing me into this space and place. It seems just as I thought, I think of the morris minor and my aunts disabled car being parked up by front gate of my gran's council house dad would take me and my three sisters their each weekend day so that he could go and milk the cows - Mum had left all us kids for another farmer in the village - Dad was there to look after us all. It makes me think of vehicles that would park by the front - bicycle, wellington boots, tractors, of the ornamental birds in the windowsill.
Last night for research I was looking at director Terence Davies Trilogy - semi autobiographical film that he shot in the seventies - before long day closes and house of mirth.
His work often looks at boyhood, growing up in working class neighbourhoods in Liverpool post-war. The site he places is one of melancholia, this domestic space of interiority - Last week at Judd's family his grandma was there -this was her first thanksgiving without her husband - he died in January of ww2 related injuries (he got injured once and came back to the us and then enlisted again where he received even more injury as he felt it his duty to free Europe) It was incredible to see her exterior in this place of mourning, in this place of shedding, such a sense of loss.
I think what is interesting is the site, of looking outwards from an interior of the home of the house into the projected space - the window always felt as if a place of waiting, waiting for dad to come down the lane on the tractor, in the car, bike, walking over the fields.
I think this piece we make for you will have a certain tone, part memorial, part winter, part melancholic, part domestic, parting curtains to allow illumination of peace and prayer to generations of sons and fathers, fathers and grandfathers, of inter-placed weavings of digital text reflected onto windows, performative acts of memory performed and collage into animated frames - what happens when a site becomes ruptured - the vehicles don''t run anymore because the worker has stopped working.
Ok - I am rambling - some informal thoughts that come to mind as I shift through the photographs.

Mark

my reply>

Dear Mark and Judd
Mark, your thoughts have prompted me tell you all i know of the man who lived in this house before me - it was on his death that it became mine (in a council tenant kinda way) - a house which rescued me and my boys from the turmoil and distress of my marriage break-up and offered itself so generously to the Taxi Gallery dream that I'd had even before I lived here
His name was Richard Cornwell - though I think his friends called him Dick
I can find out more - since Marge my neighbour (87 years old) knew him well - she and her husband moved into their house next door at the same time as Richard and his wife - this was early 1950s - the houses were brand new - I'm only the second tenant of this house - built to last and stay the course these places and people
so they lived together side by side for 50 years her husband died the same year as Dick's wife in 1997
they used to bang on the joining wall to let each other know that they wanted to talk - then they'd meet outside and chat through the gap in the hedge left specifically for the purpose
Dick was a keen gardener - he had a greenhouse (now gone - taken by his daughter)
He made friends with a robin who still comes to chat with me whenever i'm in the garden
he planted a garden of roses and aubretia, lilac trees, violets and daffodils
his beds were neat, edged and planted out with annuals grown from seed in the greenhouse
one year he planted the family christmas tree - it was over 30 ft tall when i had it chopped down as it was souring the earth beneath it
his hedges were always neatly clipped
he hung wall paper VERY precisely - I found graphite plumb line markings on the plaster where he'd carefully measured the precise placement of each wallpaper strip
and whenever he stripped the wall paper from the living room wall he wrote the date up before covering it again with the new design - he decorated his living room in June 1967, May 1973, June 1979 and July 1986 - in June 2002 I painted the wall, a creamy antique white
He used to hold the keys for the Scout Hut that is next door to the house (very fantastic for Taxi Gallery events) and i learnt today that he left all his belongings to the Scouts to sell to raise money - one of these was an old black bakelite telephone - gorgeous object - its still in the Scout Hut - we used it today in a still life arrangement for the art club
in his shed there was a tin box of buttons and I'm always finding buttons in the earth of his garden
thats all i know - occasionally, very occasionally a letter arrives for him - always junk mail - nothing personal . let me know if you'd like me to ask Marge more .. there are a number of people living on the street who will have memories of Dick - Peggy, Ann & John (opposite) and Tony (next door but one - his wife died recently - he was so pleased to see me at her funeral he now gives me vegetables from his allotment)
mourning and men and vehicles .... my beloved brother who died 15 years ago - he drove lorries - he loved it - big BIG HGV lorries - and oh the longing now to look out of my window (as you say - its those views of returning loved ones that linger strongly) right now and see him, Kieron, parking up his monster vehicle and wandering in clutching a white paper bag of doughnuts with a fag on and asking for 5 sugars in his tea - ducking through my doors as he's 6ft 7" in his stockinged size 13 feet - he died in his car - he gassed himself in his car - not far from here beside the perimeter fence of the nearby airfield .... I sold that car to a Mr Fox who was a member of the Anti-Hunt league and they needed a reliable getaway vehicle ...
and there's a woman here now typing in the half light and through the curtains she can see the Taxi glow gently illuminating its temporary passengers and a boy is sitting at the table drawing and the clock is ticking quietly and a bus growls past into the night of a Cambridge Saturday night
K

One of my questionnaires (delivered in August!) has just been posted through my letter box. It's from a woman who lives on Stanesfield Rd, she ignores my questions and lets me know the following:

Hello my name is *** I'm new to the area and I've been so interested and curious about your Taxi Gallery as I am a creative person myself. I love gardening, painting, drawing, dressmaking and all kinds of other art. But as I have been suffering from agraphobia for some time but now I am getting over it one day at a time yes I would like to visit your gallery sometime when I'm feeling a bit more better and I'm able to stay outside on my own for a longer time I would like to visit one of your exhibitions in the near future.

and there was I thinking as I delivered leaflets for each exhibition that I was wasting my time and if I hadn't bothered *** *** wouldn't have had any idea of what was going on just a few doors away from her house. In the New Year I'm going to invite myself round for coffee.

Art Clubs - there have been four, just finished clearing up from the last one (making christmas decorations). They've been really lovely mornings each one - the thing I've liked the most has been the mix of ages - teenagers, children and adults. Parents with their children, parents taking time-out away from their children, parents accompanying their children and getting drawn in inspite of themselves. Slightly disappointed with the take-up but when was quantity ever a a useful guide to value?

Everyone says they'd like it to continue with requests for 3D work and stencil graffiti - too close to it all to really think through how that might happen right now but feeling it was a worthwhile doing and still has a way to go.... want to create a display of work and photos to replace the display currently in Tim's Diner and maybe run a series of day long workshops preparing for the Summer Exhibition ...

Glancing out of the window this morning and saw Marge's son-in-law (early 60's - just recently retired) enraptured, watching the snowstorm whirling in the taxi. He stood there for AGES!! it was so lovely to watch him completely unaware of me. Made the struggle with polystyrene balls and fans all worth while!

A group of lads "trying" to be cynical about the Taxi - they were shouting and sneering to each "that's supposed to be art - that is - the Taxi Gallery - yeah - art" and then one of them, perhaps he was lagging behind a little or was just actually bothering to have a look shouted - "hey there's words on the windows" and I could hear the rest of them stopping ..... and gathering ...... and looking ..........

I’ve started telling people about my decision to close Taxi Gallery in the early autumn and their response increasingly confirms for me that it’s the right decision. Generally they are little surprised and taken aback and then express sadness or that they will miss its presence in their lives. This decision is not about ending my activity as an artist within my local community, in fact it’s a part of that process. I’m curious to see what will happen when the Taxi Gallery is no longer there/here …. What are the effects of the absence of its presence …. just as I was curious three years ago to see what effect its presence would have … . There are other factors of course – ultimately there are only so many ways that the Taxi can be responded to as a context for new work – over 30 exhibitions already – its time to stop before ideas become repetitive or overreach themselves in search of originality. And also, I’m tired. The last year has been exhausting. I’m tired of the demands and draining energy of a predominantly administrative role. I’m conscious of becoming too familiar and confident with it. I don’t want to get trapped into this as my only way of working. How can I work more intuitively, physically and materially upon the ground laid by Taxi Gallery once it has gone?