I’ve been here for a long time, longer than most of the art in fact.
Matthew Partridge decides to take a break, I follow suit, but it’s not completely a break, we go to Frances Goodman’s Garage Show, there aren’t a lot of people, there aren’t a lot stalls, there isn’t a system of tickets to get a glass of lemonade, I can count the amount of work if I wanted to – I don’t want to. I am completely complacent being outside of a convention centre built for stadium rock and inside a garden with a loose gravel driveway sprinkled with the words ‘forever’, but we’re on a twenty minute break Partridge says, so I pick up a ‘forever’ and we leave.
I have been trapped in a fair for four days, circling the same booths hourly, noting the variations in layouts, noting the works that have sold and the reserve teams taking their place on the gallery walls, noting the clothing changes on those who have been trapped in here for four days too, and noting the amount of pamphlets, catalogues and ARTHEATS piling up in my bag, all of which I will purge as soon as I leave.
In Albert Camus’s The Outsider, Mersault stuck in a gaol cell begins to memorise the finest details surrounding him, every crack in the wall and every spot on the ceiling and floor, he then begins to recall and memorise the details of his life outside his cell and sentence.
I remember the outside a bit too, I didn’t look at art for more than five hours without taking a break, I didn’t have a lanyard around my neck acting as a reminder of my obligations, my opinions were not a pulp of art discourse and witty opinions I’d read last week, I liked William Kentridge’s work.