botany 101

So, I was supposed to write this a week ago, that way the story was gonna progress gradually and be an exciting, adrenaline filled, botanical adventure. But I didn't and the first significant event in the story has already happened. It's annoying but the excitement over rules that! So here's 2 installments:

1 - Sunday 23rd May 2010

I have planted 11 Pachypodium Densiflorum seeds. I'm apprehensive as the literature states that they must be kept at temperatures exceeding 25ºc in order to germinate. Never-the-less I have planted them in pots of sand (that I nicked from the park over the road) mixed with cactus compost, and sealed them in polythene bags by the kitchen window... like this:The plan is that the polythene bags will create a greenhouse effect and store heat so that they stay hot even when it gets cooler in the kitchen. To help them on their way, I will also provide them with a hot-water bottle on cold evenings because I can't afford a heat mat.

2 - Sunday 30th May 2010

After a week of keeping the kitchen window and door closed as much as possible, warm hot-water bottles and endless checking upon I have one pachypodium seedling:I'm hoping that more will appear this week. And of course, I will keep you, the rest of the world, posted.

the new sculptures sneek preview

here we come*

i didn't want to be the one left holding the string*

*all titles subject to change

not holding the string

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I've been invited to exhibit at a&e Gallery in Brighton next month. So on top of all the other stuff that I don't have time to do, I am making a whole bunch of new work - let's see what happens! come on down if you're free... the press release says this:

At a&e Gallery matthew james kay's sculptures, drawings and animations come together to compose this exhibition inspired by occurrences of mistake-making, grace, doubt and faith in everyday life. Employing the stuff of common experience, the artist documents his experience of being human, a quest for the mysterious lurking in the mundane.

Steering clear of definite meanings and prescriptive individual interpretations, Kay's work invites the viewer into a dialogue with the exhibition as a whole. Kay's assemblages are reconfigured items of the artist's own domestic life, left over paint from decorating, a ripped innertube, the bees that mysteriously appear (dead) in the living room each spring, a shoe rack there just wasn't space for, an ill-kept bonsai, tokens of affection. This ephemera/detritus comes together to create new objects for thought- disused props that take up the role of protagonists in new narratives.

The artworks in Not Holding the String stand as markers in the artist's ongoing exploration of the domestic adventure as a place of frustration and a process of becoming. The works inhabit a transient place where personal and circumstantial transformations occur in wrestling with the desire for real adventure, balancing our need for contentment and joy with the reality of dissatisfaction and doubt.

The exhibition is open to the public 12 - 27 June 2010 Friday to Sunday 1-5pm. The gallery is located at 38 Cheltenham Place, Brighton, BN1 4AB [view map]

All the details are also at matthewjameskay.com with a whole bunch more stuff, you know... alright.