Self-Evaluation
‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like’ is the backup of someone that doesn’t know much about art. As students, educated in the mysterious craft of objectivity, we do (or should) know much about art, so we must wave goodbye to such reactionary terms as ‘I don’t like installations’. We are taught to take a step back from our instincts in order to facilitate an unbiased criticism of the work. Then, once a year, we are expected to turn this new weapon on ourselves, and unpick our own practice, considering our own successes and shortcomings.
I finished my breakfast (egg on toast, scrambled with cream instead of milk – oh the hedonism) and while my laptop whirred into action, I brewed a coffee and started reading through my studio journal, trying to discern any sort of improvement in my methods since last year. Before long I had put that down and was lost in online social media, clearly seeking diversionary activities, but I did eventually open the document that has sat in the centre of my desktop for three weeks: SELF EVALUATION.doc
Self evaluation is not as simple as just talking about your work; I cannot say, for example, ‘I take the kind of stuff I wrote down in notepads when I worked in supermarkets and call centres, and stick it on the studio wall and call it art’ despite the amount of visiting artists that have described their practice as pretty much exactly that. Until such a time as you are the visiting artist, or at least until you are no longer an art student, you will have to answer questions about your work’s ‘conceptual and formal elements’, and ‘the development of appropriate methods and skills in the realisation of your work’.
Too often I have arrived at this stage and become dispirited, closed the document, slurped up the last of my coffee and headed for the studio, but not this time. I plunged another coffee and began.
One section asks about my ‘critical and evaluative skills’. Well, I know how to conduct myself in a crit (see earlier post, ‘crit-etiquette’), but how do I fare when tasked with locating that much vaunted objectivity when evaluating my own work? The short answer is, terribly. It is not uncommon for me to have to wait until the work is made and shown before I can understand what it really is, and how it functions as art/a thing in the world. Here’s a thought: does the fact that I have acknowledged this failing via my self-evaluation report mean I will be commended for such self-criticism of my ability to self-criticise? Does it even matter?
Another section, titled ‘Your understanding of your working context and the concerns and debates that inform it’, is probably the most important one. By ‘working context’, I guess they mean ‘which other artists work like you, and how does your work relate to theirs’ – I mentioned Keith Arnatt, a conceptual artist whose great talent was identifying the narrative or philosophical potential of an inanimate object. For the ‘debates surrounding it’, I turned again to paraphrase many a visiting artist and speaker; ‘I never read about my work, I only make it’. I didn’t actually write this, but it seems fair comment, although it doesn’t hurt to have an idea of who else is covering similar ground. Is it acceptable to resort to cliché? ‘I must make what I make, regardless of the thoughts of whoever may encounter it.’
I considered writing a ‘how to wing-it through self-evaluation’ kind of piece, which I am certain a lot of students would appreciate, but as I filled in each section I realised that I was taking self-evaluation quite seriously, and learning things about myself and my practice in the process. I know that one of the details of my first year ‘manifesto’ – not making art for art’s sake – is an ideal to which I now adhere without a thought. I realised that, despite my early-year revelation of following more projects through to completion, I have made only one of my half-dozen ideas in the first term. The other five are currently bundled under that handy catchall term ‘work in progress’, which, translated into honesty, means anything from almost ready to almost begun to almost forgotten about.
I’m off to submit it before I change my mind.
Good luck, self-evaluators!
