Looking Forward
During COVID I learned how much of my life is motivated by what's 3-6 months ahead of me. Melbourne's long lockdowns (one of the world's longest at 277 days) made clear to me that what often gives me a bit of pep, or a bit of a buzz, is what I've got coming up. Whether it's a holiday, a photo shoot, visiting a part of the bush, a weekend away with friends, whatever, those things are often what occupies my mind and gives me that light at the end of the tunnel. Moving to a 'take it day by day' approach was possible, if only because everyone I knew (more or less) was going through the same thing, otherwise I'm not sure how I would have done.
So, with that being said, I thought it might be a good time to share a bit about what's coming up for me an how it all fits together in this very unique art career I'm building.
For those who are new here, I'm hoping to eventually be a full time artist and leave my salaried job. But a lot of people don't have a good image of what a full time artist, in my case, is. Currently, I do the following things:
a. I run Tall Poppy Press, which is a publishing company that makes and sells photobooks of Australian artists. Through this I sell books and, soon, other products. I also get the joy of working with a lot of artists and market places.
b. I make my own art which I then exhibit, publish and attempt to sell (or get grants for). This is usually about the environment here in Australia.
c. This year I'm also teaching some workshops on book making and publishing.
d. I've started taking photos for others - I did one paid commercial shoot last year and am shooting a wedding in February.
e. I also get paid to write, though not often, I've currently been working on an article for Australian Geographic that, the justice system willing, will actually happen soon (we're waiting for a court case to finish up).
It's worth restating that the reason I'm not a full time artist is purely monetary. If I needed less money, or earned more from my art endeavours I'd leave my day job. But that takes a while to make happen and that's sometimes frustrating but generally an OK place to be.
With that context, I'm really excited about the year ahead. Here's some things that are coming up for me:
Tall Poppy is publishing 3-4 books. The first for this year is a book about photography exhibitions and will be out in March. It's an anthology of lots of unique and interesting ways to make an exhibition. I hope it resonates with a lot of people as it's a bit of a 'bet' for me.
I'm also taking Tall Poppy to at least three book fairs, including one in Singapore. I'm hoping, possibly, to also go to Polycopies in Paris, but we'll see if that shakes out! One of these fairs is one myself and a few others are starting, which I really am happy about. It's good to get something off the ground.
I'm teaching three workshops: one in Melbourne, one in Perth and one in Sydney, as someone who loves teaching I'm really excited to see how this comes together. I think it'll be a blast, but of course very intense and difficult in its own way. Moving from educating within a structure (school or University) to something more free market will be interesting. I hope it's empowering and freeing, but it's worth acknowledging the pros and cons.
I'm visiting the bush for three weeks in March/April and probably again in winter for a week or two. The purpose of these trips is to spend a LOT of time along the dingo proof fence making photographs. Lots and lots and lots of photos. No phone reception, no work emails, just taking pictures.
I've taken an additional 4 weeks of leave at my work, so I have 8 weeks off, I'm hoping to really get some great stuff made, shown and going on in that time.
I'm exhibiting in Melbourne in February, in Hobart in April and Bristol, UK in October - I exhibited a lot in 2022, so a more relaxed schedule will be welcome as I make new stuff and need more time for that.
Some things I'd like to do a bit more of:
Write more articles/press releases/etc - drumming up paid writing is a challenging business, especially as I don't spend a ton of time doing it. I was lucky last year in that a few writing gigs came my way as I put the word out through social media. It'd be nice to do some more - but I find constantly reminding people of this sort of tiring.
I'd like to take more photos for people, I really enjoyed taking commercial photos for a client. It was quite fun and playful, and we had the chance to be creative and get a lot out of the day of shooting. That was a great experience.
Always, spend more time in the field making photographs. But with the amount of travel I need to do (1.5-2 days to get where I need to be, minimum) it's just a very time and resource heavy process. I also need to rent a 4wd this year and that is very, very expensive to do. But my little city car just cannot hack the terrain.
I don't know if this stuff is interesting for you folks, but I hope so. I've been considering doing a monthly video where I talk a bit about how my art making is going to compliment the more reflective and open ended writing I tend to do. If that sounds interesting just ping me back.
Matt