My practice and the importance of trying new things
I spent the first year of my studio practice making a few different types of work: I made short films of my actions, like Shouting Hello to France; I used photography to document The Repatriation of the Stones; I even made a minor Intervention in the work of a major artist (looking back, I’m not quite so comfortable with that one as I was at the time). Each of these pieces included a textual element: Repatriation of the Stones was supplemented by a quote from Jean Baudrillard; Shouting Hello to France was accompanied by a screenplay-style script (artist approaches shoreline, shouts ‘Hello’). The very first piece I made, 144 Horse Chestnuts, was half text, half image. The most common formal element running through my early degree work was text, and by assessment time in May I had developed the confidence to produce works that consisted entirely of text; usually a single line – a sentence – taken from a conversation or overheard, such as ‘I shall continue to sail this rudderless ship’ and ‘I only fantasize about things I’ve already done’
By the end of year two my so-called practice had stagnated for a whole year and I was using nothing but text to express my thoughts, philosophies and what not. So much so that, on reflection, year two in the studio feels more like a gap year than anything remotely academic. This may be partly down to my university’s insistence on placing second-years across the city, off campus and with barely any facilities (our new Head of Art has already made great leaps in changing this for the better – not least installing a decent wifi connection and regular technical assistance).
Having staked my claim as an ‘ideas’ artist, I had the freedom to create anything I wanted, but such freedom became restricting, as I would come up with a number of ideas for work, only to talk myself out of making them, for fear of them not being worthy of Art. I had always been averse to making objects, which is why I ended up in media in the first place, but now I found myself incapable of even filming simple actions. I had thought, and subsequently written, myself into an ideological corner; from which position all I could do was create lines of text, either in the form of grand ideas, reduced to words, or quoted from conversations and songs. My work became repetitive and boring.
I still feel that text is the right direction for many of my ideas, but now understand that it need not always be a straight line of black vinyl Garamond, and so at the beginning of year three I promised myself that I would explore the presentational possibilities of text-based work. In the first three months I have taken letterpress and embossing workshops, I have ordered a large-scale piece of MDF board to be cut by the cnc router (images to follow), I have chopped up my old dartboard to make Artboard, and I am, this very day, being inducted into metalwork so that I can create a great big (top secret) word that will eventually rust, and maybe form part of my degree show piece.
Finally, after two and a half years, including that second year ‘gap’ year, I feel like I am beginning to develop some studio habits worthy of being described as a practice, and all because I got over my fear of the complication of objects, and allowed myself to try new things.
