Bath School of Art and Design

Some Work (2012)

Some projects never make it out of the studio. Perhaps they are under-developed and abandoned before they get the chance to become work. Other projects are over-developed, banged out of shape by an over-thinking that scares us out of showing them to the world. Some work is a joke.

Some work (2012) is a joke.

We were summoned to a year-group meeting, in which the head of third year presented us with a slide show on what the final few months of our degree had in store. This included much timetable information, and a couple of opportunities for exhibiting work in the run-up to the degree show. He also explained (for the umpteenth time) the marking criteria, and how much of a portion the studio module would constitute, in relation to the overall degree score.

The big screen paused on the marking criteria, and what a student would need to provide in order to achieve such unreachable grades as 90-99 and 85-89 (Outstanding and Exceptional Firsts, respectively – or were they the other way around?). He moved on, but not before his attention was briefly diverted from the screen as he fielded one or two questions about percentages.

The screen froze on the description of what a student would be expected to provide in order to obtain a score of 1-9. Has anyone ever been awarded such a low grade? Probably. The specific text, held there on the big screen for all of a minute and a half, read as follows:

‘Some work, containing virtually nothing of any relevance, depth or merit.’

‘What a wonderful description’ I thought, and jotted it down. Some work was born. I had a large chunk of cut-off MDF from ELVISLIVES (see post #8) and thanks to Graphics departments recently acquired vinyl-cutter, a cheap and easy way to make immediate text work. That afternoon I drew up the text in an Illustrator document and by the end of the day the piece was complete.

It’s such an in-joke that I doubt it will ever go beyond the studio, but it’s great having it there, leaning against the studio wall; useless.



The Personal Statement

Recently, all of my writing time has been taken up by press-releases and exhibition blurbs. On top of that I’ve been trying to write my personal statement – 500 words that go in the front of my research folder, that sum up me, my practice, and my work, all at once.

Part of being an artist is being able to explain why you do what you do. Some of us may feel affronted when asked to explain why our work exists, but artists have a responsibility to understand what it is that they are aiming to achieve – even those of us that are merely groping in an area should at least be able to describe the area in which we grope.

Not that I begrudge those artists that present a bohemian aloofness, when met with the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ questions. God knows, in three years of study I have seen my fair share of visiting artists that have taken that approach. While one is a student, however, one must justify one’s every turn, be that in tutorials, group critiques or a written personal statement that is assessed at the end of the year.

But how?

Having read the personal statement of every student that took part in last year’s Free Range show, I can see that quality varies greatly, and not just in use of language, but in the extent to which the artist clearly defines the parameters of his or her practice.

I started thinking about my key considerations when making work; themes that regularly appear, and concerns that I feel ought to be brought to attention. I use text a lot, so language comes into it, along with interpretation. But what is my work about? I think it’s about everything, but that is easy to say and difficult to prove, because it’s always about something. So it’s about specific things, like how language constructs meaning, and how interaction imparts narrative to all sorts of phenomena. If my work is about language, then it is also about cultures, and perhaps how language and culture are inextricably bound in a kind of feedback loop, where one is constantly informing the other, and vice versa. Authorship is a big issue too; at the beginning, where I take words or phrases that are already in the world and bend and re-present them to suit my needs; and after the work is presented, especially in my more recent work, like Cards, which is about the viewer continuing to have a direct experience of the work after they leave the gallery, and therefore continuing to construct the meaning of the piece long after I have made and shown it.

It’s not an easy task, talking and writing about your work, which is probably why so many of those early student crits are filled with awkward silences, and why so many of those visiting artists just refuse to make anything remotely resembling a personal statement. It is, however, essential to becoming an artist, and that’s the plan in the long term; to figure out the what’s and the why’s, until we reach a point where the work says it all for us, and we no longer have to worry about fitting our entire practice into 500 words for assessment.

UNTITLED LETTERPRESS PROJECT

I took an induction into letterpress at the beginning of the year, and lost myself in the process. That is to say I spent days – weeks even – in the letterpress room, trying out the range of possibilities that this new (to me anyway) technology presents.

I tried printing; I tried embossing; I tried a combination of embossing and printing. I tried repetition, the same phrase printed over and over;

…It’s never too late It’s never too late It’s never too late….

When writing, my natural state is to pour it out and edit later, and in that way I can produce a thousand words really quickly, and come back to refine them the next day (unless it’s a blog post, which are better off posted immediately after being written), but when it comes to making my thoughts visual, the editing becomes even more dramatic, until often I’m down to three or four words.

Untitled Letterpress Project involves taking phrases, sentences, or combinations of words that I have had floating around for a while, but for which I could never find the appropriate medium. Indeed, it may be that letterpress is still not right for these ideas. We have a crit next week with Des Hughes, so we shall see.

I have three pieces. The first, It’s never too late, is printed in black ink, with the exception of the word never, which is embossed. The piece is a response to the old clichéd attitude of it being too late, the embossed ‘never’ implies a whisper – over the shoulder or in one’s own head – reminding us to never give up; that there is still time.

The second, The Blue Hour, is printed deep blue. Its origin is the old Norse term for dusk, and was intended to be presented alongside a stack of Cards (see previous post) which had the word Dusk printed on them, but actually, I think I prefer to leave the origin or meaning ambiguous.

The third, exquisite tenderness, is entirely embossed, and like the others, its materiality leads its reading in a certain direction.

In terms of presentation, I first strung them up with invisible thread, and had them kind of floating in front of the wall, on two tiny bulldog clips. I realised that the invisible thread became a feature in itself, and so resolved to remove it, and simply nail the small clips to the wall, and hang each piece from just one bulldog clip. This method seems to work; the clip is what it is, and no attempt is made to hide the way the pieces are hung, thereby minimising the attention drawn by the framing.

My thinking around these pieces is kind of just beginning to take shape, and I am still in the early stages of bringing my text down off the wall and into physical space, be that on pieces of MDF (see ELVIS LIVES post), or embossed into handmade paper. By all means comment and give me something else to think about.



CARDS

My latest project features hand-made letterpress pieces, each accompanied by a stack of business-card-sized works, which are free for the visitor to my show to take home with them. I could go into detail about the process, but as I’ve spent all week making these things, I don’t think I could face re-living it, fun though it was. Suffice to say that a lot of paper-chopping, letter-selecting, correcting, ink-rolling, paper-soaking, printing, adjustment-making and hand-cleaning was involved in the process. Here is a short blurb I have written for the exhibition leaflet.

Trevor H Smith

Visitors are invited to take a card from any or all stacks.

Trevor H Smith uses art to explore his interest in a range of cultural phenomena, through which he seeks to express a philosophy, thought or narrative concept. Cards is a series, available in unlimited editions, which sets out to establish that, beyond the artist’s initial intention, there is no set meaning in a work. Cards embraces the fact that the work’s true meaning is determined by its receiver, or in this instance, taker. By omitting all contact information these pieces undermine the traditional purpose of their business-card format, allowing them to exist entirely as art-items.

“In the first instance, my work is an expression of an ethos, or a question, arising from my own experience, after that, it belongs to everyone. I am drawn to the possibility that, once put out there, so to speak, these works live on, after the exhibition, in the wallets, purses and minds of the people that have taken them, where they will gather myriad new meanings, whenever they are reconsidered, passed on, or thrown away by their new owners.”

Showing my work

A Fine Art degree contains a wide range of artists; from the academic, who studies theory down to the last footnote, and whose work reflects that knowledge; to the best drawer in school, who is studying Fine Art because all they ever wanted to do was paint, regardless of theory and consequence.

The spectrum of reasons to make art is reflected in attitudes towards exhibiting, too. For some artists, sharing their work is the very reason to make it in the first place, and they jump aboard every exhibiting opportunity they see. Others work for themselves, and prefer to keep it that way – perhaps they paint because they enjoy it, and never intend to pursue a career as an exhibiting artist.

Most of us are somewhere in between those two extremes; our practice has undergone a marked change since the completion of our foundation courses, however long ago they were. Most of us have managed to pick up some theory along the way, through lectures and seminars or when we wrote that dreaded essay that now, when asked about it, we reply, ‘actually…I quite enjoyed it’. It’s year three now, and those of us that attend regularly to the studio and lectures have probably gravitated towards the middle ground – so to speak – where familiarity with one or two, or many, strands of art theory is not uncommon, and where signs of confidence in the creative process are starting to show.

On a personal note, I feel like I haven’t taken part in anywhere near enough exhibitions – it’s getting quite late in year three now and I’m averaging only a couple of shows a year. In first year there was a group show, and an end of year assessment show. Second year came and went; before I knew it we were into April and I hadn’t taken part in any show at all – not that many others had either; I guess we were still getting used to showing our work to each other, never mind the rest of the world. Okay, the rest of Bath. Okay…the uber-confident third years. I turned down several opportunities to show my work during second year, because I felt I had nothing worth showing (a common lament of the artist, as we all know, but even more so the middle-year student, I’m told). At the end of the year I got together with four other students and we put on a show – our works bore no relation to one another’s, and it was upstairs in a wine bar, but we repainted the place and cleared out the tables and chairs. In the end we put on a really nice show – it felt like a gallery up there, and lots of people came along to the private view. Some even spoke to me directly about my work (a text piece, see image), which is invaluable experience; one of the best ways to understand your own work, its effects and its flaws, is through explaining it to a stranger.

Now it’s third year, and I’ve managed to set aside my unwillingness to show my work. In a few weeks I will be part of a show put together by a handful of us that find the university studio space a bit too restricting, especially for installation work. There’s the usual debate about finding a name that represents all of us, or the idea behind the show. And on Monday we meet at the space to discuss the set-up; who’s showing what; where things can go, and so forth.

Third year, for me at least, seems to be where it all happens; there’s the end of year degree show in June; there’s Free Range in London in July; plus the Bristol Biennial – for which I am contributing an essay on narratives in digital culture – and if I do enough overtime work during the Easter break, I’ll be able to put on a solo show in one of Bath’s many empty shop-fronts.

The solo show is probably the most daunting of all, and therefore an essential part of my development as an artist.

To sum it up, from what I have gathered from visiting artists and lecturers alike, there appear to be two main rules to apply, when it comes to getting your work shown/name known. They are:

Rule one – show up.

Rule two – say yes.