UNBUILDING ARCHITECTURE
And so it begins…
The start of my Major Project and final semester at university. It now seems an appropriate time to reflect on what I have achieved so far this year to enable me to push my enquiries even further.
Unbuilding Architecture, the title I chose for my dissertation, first looks backwards to the 1960’s and 1970’s drawing attention to architectural themes that emerged in art during this period. By choosing to locate my discussion within this broader trajectory, I was able to consider whether these concerns are still significant to contemporary artists who are reviewing similar processes when responding to architecture, structure and the notion of space. ‘Unbuilding’ defines the act of dismantling, of taking apart a built space and is a term that I applied to the artworks debated in this analysis, which included Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting and Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth. Part of my investigations led me to Jane Rendell’s texts, in particular her discussions surrounding ‘Critical Spatial Practice’.
This research and writing process really focused my thoughts and allowed me to establish a theoretical position in relation to my own and other artists work.
At this point in my practice I had already been working with architecture, and one question I asked myself last semester was whether I wanted to work with architecture or against it. In Impasse, although the puncturing of plasterboard was anti-architectural, the straight perpendicularity of its surroundings made the participant feel as though it belonged. However, in Wall Intervention I found the single shard of plasterboard projecting outward from the wall most exhilarating. The way this fragment defied architectural logic has now prompted further enquiries into sculpture, space and the possibility of my interventions reconfiguring the architectural order of the gallery.
A weakness of my work has been that I tended to become so absorbed in the strenuous physical making of an intervention that I stopped working before applying fully my critical skills. To be more attentive to how the work reads, throughout R&D I decided to first create smaller experimental models. As a developmental strategy these three-dimensional sketches have been very successful in allowing me to be critical about space, dynamic compositions, depth, layering and material.
All of these elements and everything that I learnt during the writing and making processes will certainly be important over the coming months as I increase the scale of my work.
I have never kept a blog before but I’m really excited to use this as an extension of my studio space and thoughts.
