After a frantic few weeks on not being able to get to the Mill (going away and pesky half term!) I’ve been thrown right back into it by having to do a talk for Leeds Met first year BA art & design students and also having to come up with the name of the show and write a short bit of text for the info board which will be up inside the gallery whilst the show is up. Crikey.
As well as having a head full of unfinished work I’ve got to come to some decisions…Planning the talk really helped me to appreciate what work I’d been doing. And also made me appreciate what great work I’d done in the past! As my practice is all over the place I don’t tend to stick with one way of working i.e. sculpture. I tend to move on from things and I don’t tend to revisit old work and forget what I’ve actually done so it was nice to be able to do this. There always something interesting happens too when you look at something old and maybe see another point of reference.
I divided my hour long talk into two sessions, one part about my practice and the other about the work in the residency. I’m sure you can’t help but bore some of them, and God knows I’ve been to some artists talks where the only thing that I’ve been concerned with was to how to fall asleep but still look like you’re listening! I have been to many good ones though and it’s the ones who are passionate and articulate and who actually care about the audience seem to be the best ones. I tried to incorporate some of that into my talk…of course the work has to be interesting too! I also decided to give them lots to look at and gave them loads of slides in the presentation!
The students are using the mill as a place to work for a few weeks and they have to submit a proposal by next week and then install the work for their opening on the 7th December. Judith Tucker, the course leader asked if I could stay and do some mini-tutorials and I was really pleased to be asked, although my ability to recall artists was really tested, and as I had no internet connection to hand (oh please can I get an iphone?) I was blabbing on about artists thinking that some of the names could have been past Coronation Street characters or something. Anyway I think I got away with it!
The poor things were mainly worried about: a), if they were doing enough work or b) having grand unworkable ideas. Some had fantastic things going on and some erm, didn’t. They’d had a bit of a rollicking last week and they’d all started to make efforts in coming up with things but they did seem a bit baffled with what was expected of them as they were so used to formal education and being told exactly what was required. Ah you guys, you’re in the big bad world of art education, better get used to feeling confused!
Good luck to them all though and I look forward to seeing their finished work.
