Dream exhibition

Every so often I wake up remembering a dream, and sometimes it is a piece of art or music or an exhibition. Hopefully I write them down.

The other morning I woke up having dreamt I had a brilliant studio - somehow there was a really big room in the house I just hadn't noticed before. I was making in it pieces for an exhibition - this work is a recurring dream which develops a bit each time I dream about it, or think it through more when I remember upon waking.

In the dream I have collected and selected old clothes - mostly older, men's, jackets, shirts and trousers. Browns, tweeds. Paper bag cardboard coloured clothes like those aprons workmen used to wear in certain hardware shops. My father. Men. The past. Other clothes too.

I experimented with variations of damp and mould. The clothes are stuffed into jars very tightly, and stoppered. It seems random but I have considered closely which parts are visible - buttons, zips and seams. There are a couple of big jars on the floor of the exhibition. On tables, propped up at a reading angle, are frames with other clothes. These are slightly deep, slightly ornate and slightly old frames - reclaimed.

This time there is music, and when I am awake I realise that I have actually figured out how to use music in my work. I have a long history with music, having been a musician, but I have often not used sound - it is too vast a subject. But I have been considering it, and in the dream was the solution - to extract certain elements from classical music - certain harmonies and modulations, and to stretch and layer that. In my head it sounded like rusty classical music. It was just right.

30th April 2012