Um, so, ever since I heard people, lecturers, talking about ‘art practice’ on my foundation course in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I’ve been curious as to what the term actually means, and why it’s so important to us to have a ‘practice.’ Rather than, say, a skillset or a job or work or vision or commitment or, simply, ‘my painting’ or ‘my writing.’
I started at Chelsea College of Art & Design late, in Winter, having flip-flopped between visual art and philosophy, eventually squeezing into their painting department on the Kings Road after a tearful Christmas holiday. During my first week, I had a tutorial with Lucy Gunning, and expressed how I felt kind of lost.
She said:
‘You haven’t found your practice yet. Or maybe you’re not sure if you even have a practice.’
Throughout varying degrees of lostness in the ten years that followed, the concept of a practice as something to find (within oneself? out there somewhere? via habit?) stuck with me. And I kept on wondering, why ‘practice’? That term comes with vague recollections of Marxist and anthropological theory, and now I’d like to pinpoint those references, and also trace when, exactly, it was that artists started referring to themselves as having a practice, and what it was that they meant.
I work now mainly as a writer. Making a home in Philadelphia, USA, I’ve come to value being an art critic – something that I’ve always wanted to move beyond – as the local community here has wecomed me with me open arms. There’s a lack of critical writing about the work being made here. Now, I regularly fill that gap — perhaps this is my practice and it has somehow found me? Maybe walking my dog is my practice: that’s the most clockwork-regular habit I have.
I think I want to think about practice in more depth because, moving to a new country, things feel fragmented, new, difficult to grasp for a long time. It would be good if I could define something, if something bits felt unified. Having a practice seems in some ways to add order to a messy life – at least, that’s how it looks from the outside. Although, maybe all of this thinking, ordering, rearranging is practice (in the sense of learning) in living with ambiguity.
I’m still not sure if I even have a practice. But, anyway, my plan is to read and write through this.
