Is it really necessary?

Conversations with myself since SVA’s Revisioning event and the initial idea of ‘Some Vacant Accomadation’. The discussion, the intimation, the invitation, the possibility, the opportunity presenting itself to me, the wish for the ideas to remain in my head …. unspoken. Floating in the sea of unactivated ideas, intentions… bliss. Wishing to just enjoy the excitable, giddy feeling that wells up at just the thought of participating.

Is it really necessary? To act on these ideas or not?

My thoughts lead to finding a way to document these ideas and questions which arise from this decision to be made. These thoughts sit within the context of my current ‘inactivity’ as an ‘artist’, they are site related … this building, this studio space and my perspective as an artist and founder member of SVA.

I am intrigued in the process of following my train of thoughts that are evoked. Happy to have them and then let them move on.

Ideas have related to the history of the building or plotting the history of the artistic programme development of SVA. Other ideas have emerged which could draw on the wealth of material and experience gained through working directly on the design process with the Architects.

And then I started thinking of the ideas that could emerge from the weird and wonderful of quantity surveyors, mechanical engineers, structural engineers, disability consultants, planning supervisors, party wall surveyors, contract managers, project surveyors, site managers, builders, electricians, plumbers, telecommunications specialists to mention just a few.

But the most pertinent thoughts for me are from the beginning….which as a founder member of SVA seems entirely related to the intention of this exhibition.

My thoughts continually rest in this studio space here. A space I always have felt to be my studio space. The studio has hidden memories, hidden whispers of the potential of what could have been. How many times did I sit here? … shaking off the inhibitions of art college… setting up SVA encouraged me to employ different thinking strategies. How many years have gone by?

This building is full of voices ….

…. of conversations of people creating, making, explaining, discussing.

This building is full of voices….

This building has been refurbished with bricks, mortar and paint embedding the memories of the endless conversations, potentialities, planning, scheming, endless projects … dreams and wishes.
This studio represents all that to me. There is a sadness, a loss, a grief with the transition of SVA, the building, of my life as an artist ….but there is also an incredible pregnancy of ideas,
potentialities … it’s all here waiting…

The piece of work on the wall is a drawing from my time as an artist when I worked from the landscape. The drawing is entitled the ‘amid the purity’.

The purity of landscape, the purity of the vacant studio, the purity of the unspoken idea …
the potential of what may come.

Jo Leahy

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“Why do artist’s flawed strategies and small failures attract us? Are they more authentic, more honest, more endearing? Vitality and failure are strange partners, but partners nevertheless as Annika Strom posits: “I guess its more interesting because it creates questions instead of just answering a question, a question only made by an artist … and it shows that the artist is fragile. It presents the fragile parts of us all”. Culturally, it pinpoints the possibility of failure lurking underneath the familiar systems and codes. By witnessing others and our own failures, we experience the frustration of trying to live up to a pre-existing model or expectations of art”
Edith Marie Pasquier. Artists profiles. a-n magazine. 2006