On a recent visit to an artist’s studio, I was left pondering some very poignant and what now seems Guston-esque advice; that when making work, one must be, quite seriously, simply present. Simply, painfully and horrifyingly present. A plain piece of advice, that couldn’t be anymore at odds with recent times. An artist with a functioning practice, never mind an operational studio, is soon to creep onto many a cities critically endangered list, if it already hasn’t.

Making art in any form or sense is incredibly stressful, and one of the most useful offerings that other artists have provided to me in doubt filled years, was to honestly disclose the ways in which they make work, and more importantly, in the ways in which they don’t. The piece, Feeling BLOB, that I am proposing for the Art Licks Weekend Radio Station will position at it’s core and lay bare, the stories and thoughts of artist friends and of my own which represent the struggle with which to locate where their practice actually exists. Whether it’s a case that things are temporarily on-hold due to bringing up a child, or we’re busy helping out with a struggling family business, the vulnerability we feel when we cannot make work in the form we most desire, can at times manifest into a haunting mumbling voice which incessantly questions our validity as an artist.

Set in the mind, and morphing within chapters, the studio will appear and re-appear in differing forms and in many guises. When no longer a physical space, the studio persists as our primary reality and a 4-hour Clash of Clans binge session can become the scaffold to our practice.

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Contributors: Laura Bygrave, Phil Ewe, James Ferris, Martin Fletcher, Sara Gillies, Richard Rigg, Ross Taylor, Madalina Zaharia