Always remember to smile (and in-between-ness)!

There's something really satisfying about photographying something that tickles you or touches you on the spur of the moment, particularly food! I don't know if it's a bit of a primitive thing because, after, we need food to survive or just something that says a little bit about who we are or how we like to indulge.

I decided to make the most of the bbq weather last weekend (who knows how long it will last?!) when my parents-in-law-to-be were away and indulged in a top notch bbq in their beautiful garden and spent the evening writing outside. Part of me felt bad and even a little unpatriotic as my HTB was watching England play their first World Cup game against the USA for the first part of the night ... but I had an intense desire to write.

This happens sometimes, particularly when I am relaxed and inspired and over time I have learnt that I need to make the most of this feeling; whether I am on a train journey or it is 2 o'clock in the morning. It often feels quite cathartic and seems to be a way of organising and de-jumbling my thoughts as well as something I just have the need and the urge to do; to keep me going. It was when I was sitting outside in front of the crackling fire burning in the chimenea outside accompanied by a glass of rose

and my bbq desert (bananas with chocolate inside melted wrapped in foil and melted - I wonder what that says about me?!) that I sat with my thoughts and smiled. A subtle smile to myself and at the same time a big content smile at the world from ear to ear. A smile at myself for smiling. And a smile at myself for forgetting to smile most of the time ... and I thought to myself ... I quite like this ... I really must remember to smile more often and make other people smile!

I recently came across  the work of the artist Flore Gardner in my research and her exploration into "in-between-ness". I find that it is only occasionally that I stumble across someone that is related closely to some of the ideas that I am exploring so this was a hidden treasure!

(Chiasmus, left and an image from the "Doodles" series, right)

Gardner looks at the link between thought and practice and in particular what she calls 'drawing=thinking' as an inbetween form that has its own language. She has written a great essay accompanying her recent show 'In-between-ness; Embroidering on History' at Derby Museum & Art Gallery where she talks about the process of how she adds extra layers of meaning to found photographs which she sees as fragments of the past where embroidery is used as a 3D version of doodling.

What I thought was really interesting - and also physically quite beautiful was how she uses continuously uses notebooks as a primary research space which is similar to how I use my research diary. She uses them to reflect her own nomadicness between France and Britain and uses a hybrid inbetween language which she calls 'Franglais' through the quasi-simulatenous presence of both languages and crossing over of double thought processes where the exact same thing cannot be said in two different languages. I was particularly interested in how she creates a sense of interconnectedness, crossing boundaries and spilling out onto the boundaries of the photos which relates greatly to Derrida and my own research of alternative spaces inbetween the masculine and feminine. These fragmentary interconnections also link to my notions of intertextuality and intermateriality; where a hybrid painting//writing practice could be a new type of language.