Up until recently I have been so entirely focussed on this relentless obsession with visual repetition and multiples that I have inadvertently missed the point of what my work is about. Yes I am drawn to this aspect of collecting and want to continue with it, but it is only one element – by now, I feel it’s probably so inherent within my way of working and thinking that I can trust it to be there regardless of how much consideration I pay it.
So, for my work to really progress I needed to delve deeper into the subject of autobiography. I asked myself- what elements of ‘me’ do I want to communicate? How can I explore who I am through my work?
The first thing I realised was that autobiography and memory are inextricably linked. I wondered – Is the representation of autobiography always retrospective? Can an act of depicting one’s life in the present still be considered as autobiographical? I’m thinking that to make a self-referential artwork or a written autobiography involves (re-)evaluating one’s life before hand; looking over significant times, events, people or situations that make you who you are.
Having said that however, I can presume that artists such as On Kawara, Gerhard Richter (Atlas), Mary Kelly and Sophie Calle all took the ‘here and now’ as their material for their work.
One thing I am positive of is that autobiography requires self-awareness. It is a personal search for who you are. This could be a simple documentation process or a deep and profound reckoning. Either way you have to be able to view yourself, know things about who you are, your identity, your place in the world.
“Autobiographers observe themselves and open themselves up to observation by their readers, this equates with looking in a mirror” Steiner and Yang (2004: 15)
This whole idea of being able to recognise a coherent identity for myself offers a real challenge. Initially, I thought it would be easy. A large majority of the work I created in the last two years was, in hindsight, very self-referential. But because it wasn’t stated as such, it left me free to say, or do as I liked.
Anyway, one thing I have established recently is that the activity or process of collecting is not enough. By only changing an object’s context is not sufficient for what I want the work to do. It needs more; more of a narrative, a story, a journey, a process.
This is easier said than done, as the process involved needs to be relevant and help towards communicating my concept- I can’t just carry out any old activity and hope that it fits in with what I am trying to say. Like Simon Starling’s work, the process in making or transforming the object is the tool for communicating his concept. It’s the story BEHIND the object that makes his work.
