Setting up a website for the Professional Practice module has been another learning curve, taking into account my limited computer skills. However, having grasped the basics I have found it to be a great way of reviewing my practice and in considering how it has changed and developed over the past five years. The direction and themes have varied because they have reflected my interest in combining materials with nature. When I started writing my dissertation on ‘Defamiliarisation’ in the first semester it reflected my practice, only in the sense that I examined the work of artists who presented everyday objects in a new way. However, I have been aware for a while that my practice is lacking something; a consistent theme; something that pulls it all together; that something that is uniquely ‘ME’.
One subject which has been regularly in my thoughts is where do ‘I’ fit into my work. Unlike Tracey Emin I have no desire to make art about me, but the more I thought about it I realised that I had already made work about relationships and my adoption and identity is a continuation of this theme because it is about people and how we make relationships work or otherwise.
Naively, it never occurred to me at the start of the course that I would be finding out about ‘me’. Overall, the one big surprise in my practice has been my installation work; in ‘Exposure’ I looked at the theme of human frailties and the response of individuals to emotional and physical pain, tragedy and kindness. The juxtaposition of wood and other materials created dialogue which led to the beginning of my current theme of adoption and family relationships.
In 2002 critic Rosemary Betterton writing about Tracey Emin refers to her work as ‘self-life-drawing’ because she includes her own body and experiences in her work and as she points out this ‘poses questions about the relationship between representation, lived experience and the construction of self in art.’ (Betterton, R 2002 The Art of Tracey Emin.
In ‘How It Feels’ (1996) a documentary style film, Emin recounts the events of her abortion by showing the locations of specific events leading up to it.
This links to an interview in 2012 where Emin discusses why she made the film.
http://whitecube.com/channel/in_the_museum/on_how_it_feels_2012/
Thinking about this film has raised my interest in making a film about what I know of my past…
