It’s been a while since I posted anything ‘adequate’ on here. In fact I have deleted most of the posts as they were often more incoherent cries for help during the most challenging moments in the last couple of years – far from posts that I valued for any sense of their merit.
I have kept a blog since the summer of 2007, when I graduated from a University Centre building, literally 5 metres across the road from the landmark exhibition that this post is about. Caught between being hyper-focused on this project, stuck between a demanding job, social media distractions and internalised commands to making more of my life, I have found little time to develop the quality of writing posts.
The exhibition had to take up all the remaining energy I had.
And this week I finally managed to open Straight A’: Anxiety, Anorexia, Alcohol, Ageing and Art. An exhibition that is an honest account of my life story, through art, becoming an adult at the beginning of the 21st century, and my experience of the first 25 of it. It is also about my relationship to my home town, the landscape that fixes itself into our subconscious and the people and culture that does the same.
So the exhibition was always going to be collaborative, as much as it would be a project spearheaded by myself.
Because this exhibition is one of the most important of my life, I have a full gallery presentation for this post, from the opening and the week after. Some of the photographs are courtesy of Lucy Dewnsap, Richard Kitson and Jamie Ward.
John B Ledger 