Farewell Morticia

Last week I left the Addams Family Mansion for good, and moved to a nice little semi in Guethary Central.
Moving house is classed as either the second or third most traumatic experience you can go through, after bereavement, fighting with divorce for the silver and bronze medal position. The exact order is academic to me, as I’m doing both this month. But I can’t help thinking that whoever came up with that statistic must have done their research in some pretty cosy, sheltered part of the world. The Surrey commuter belt maybe. What came fourth? Getting your mortgage application rejected? being refused membership to the local golf club?

On the other hand, moving house might be the second most boring thing you’ll ever do, and right now I can't think of the first. Okay, I had the odd flashes of excitement.…. finding the lost teletubby tapes, discovering a euro coin down the back of the sofa, throwing away my ironing board. 

But the rest was extreme, mind-numbing boredom - it makes you think seriously about the consumer society. When you buy mass-produced plastic junk, don’t just worry about slave labour, greenhouse gases and the end of the world. Remember that one day you'll spend weeks of your life when you could have been surfing sorting it all out, boxing it up and rehousing it.

So I was pretty happy when I’d emptied the house of the last Barbie shoe, paperclip, and toenail clipping, and it was time to give back the keys. It was a sociable affair - the estate agent, the owner and her bailiff arrived as I cleaned out the grate with cobwebs in my hair. I felt like Cinderella without a date.

But the house wasn’t completely empty after all. Just as we were leaving, the estate agent pulled a roll of paper out of the back of a cupboard.

“Hang on, what’s this?”

It was a huge collage called Hula that took me about four months to make, at the time it seemed like a work of staggering genius, the best thing I'd ever done.

“Oh my God,” I laughed, “That’s the sort of thing that gets discovered in an attic and sold on the Antiques Roadshow for millions!”

“Ze Antiques Roadshow?” he looked confused.

“Suffice it to say, it’s a priceless masterpiece.” I said as I stuffed it in the back of the car.

But is it? I wondered as I drove away ….. or is it just one more thing I have to find a place for?

It’s always hard to judge your own work objectively, and in this case my artistic judgement has been further complicated by cat pee. With all the grubby little corners of the attic they could have chosen, it beats me why the cats had to pick this exact spot as an alternative litter when the gravel ran out.

Maybe they chose it because of the interesting smell of the glue, or the beach combed objets trouvés. It still looks okay, but it smells way beyond interesting now.

I think I’m going to have to chuck it out, so it’s a stroke of luck that my moving house coincides with the opening of Michael Landy's Art Bin.

For those of you who don’t live in the rarified atmosphere of the London art world, I’ll explain. Art Bin is the hottest, hippest new exhibition in London. Michael Landy is famous for throwing things away. In 2001 he destroyed all 7006 of his  possessions as an art work, which not only did a great deal for his career, but must have made it really easy for him to move house. (I know I’m being a bit neo-naturist and puritanical here, but having gone that far, I would have liked him to put his clothes in the shredder and leave the gallery naked.)

In his new show, he’s moved on to destroying other peoples things. He’s created an enormous bin in the South London gallery into which you can throw your failed art works.... ‘A monument to creative failure.’

Only here’s the catch - not just any old person can throw away their work. Unless you’re one of the celebrity artists who’s been invited to bin stuff, you have to go through a selection process. It’s the modern, cutting-edge version of entering a painting for the Royal Academy Summer show. You get no money, and your work really will be smashed to pieces and transported to a landfill. Nothing can be rescued or resold ….. although I think it’s just a matter of time before the landfill is dug up and sold in plastic souvenir bags. Like holy relics, or the rubble of the Berlin wall, only with a tiny bit less historical significance maybe.

So why would anyone do it? This is the sad part - artists are queuing up to join in, Michael suspects some are even making work specially for the bin. We're so desperate for a bit of recognition that we’re willing to throw away our work, just on the off-chance that it gets noticed on the way to the landfill. Maybe if you’re lucky enough to get binned just after a Damien Hirst a corner of your work will appear in a photo the press. You’ll get noticed like Pamela Anderson in the crowd of a football match, and rocketed to stardom. 

So what are my chances of getting picked?

In my favour I know Michael Landy. He came to stay with me in Ireland once with a mutual friend. When he told me he was an artist, I was so used to the Dingle Local Art scene that I said something like, “What do you paint, dolphins or fishermen?”

There was an awkward silence, but we got over it. We barbecued a salmon then went down TPs bar in Ballydavid and danced to accordion music. So he must owe me something ….. but the end of the evening is a bit of a blur and I’m not sure if it’s a shot at art-stardom or a pint of Guinness and a packet of pork scratchings.

And can I afford to take the gamble and pay for the shipping? Okay ‘there’s no heirarchy once they’re in the bin.’, as Michael says, but before? Are my connections good enough to get me into the most A-class landfill in town. And if not, could I cope with the ultimate rejection of being told my work is not good enough to throw away? 

In the end I decide to be subversive and bypass the art establishment.… I go to the dump at Cenitz, where the selection process is a lot simpler. It doesn’t matter what art school you went to, which private collectors buy your work, or which curator your sleeping with. It’s just plastic, paper, glass or metal. And it’s right by the beach so I get a chance to check the swell at the same time.

“Paper?” The guy at the dump asks.

“Yes, paper.” Finest quality, acid-free Arches watercolour paper, with oil pastel, gouache, sequins, feathers, 24 carat gold leaf. And cat pee.