Beyond the Body. Thinking through Process

It’s a little over a week since I started my blog and I’ve been working towards the review at College. I’ve had my research folio printed by Blurb and the first draft arrived late last week. Some of my documentary photographs are quite dark though I now have a QP card to help avoid that in the future. I’ve made some small changes to the cover and dealt with the typo’s and think it’s a useful model for the later folio’s. I’m continuing to experiment with hanging pieces and have decided to work with a material I know, iron binding wire, so that I can explore form in space without the distraction of an unfamiliar material. I’ve prepared a space at College for the review and with a couple of days to complete my work I’m making a series of components that will be easy to carry and also allow me to work with and respond to the space on the day. Here are a few of my initial hanging experiments, the series is now made up of around 15 experimental pieces and I still feel I’ve a long way to go before any will be resolved sufficiently to emerge as ‘works’…

I’ve reached the review stage of my research and my practice continues to be about a desire to transform my work from craft to abstract art. I began with my motivation to make marks and draw and I’ve come to understand that I draw and make to think. Also that materials and process play a far more significant part in my practice than I previously thought. I’m very much still in a state of transition selecting and negotiating with unfamiliar materials and processes to help me to find new methods of working. I’ve just started to make a series of ephemeral experiments that I photograph and discard or re use in later work

I’m hopeful that research around the working methods of artists that I like will help me to develop an understanding of my own work particularly a recent development, my eagerness to suspend my experiments in space…

So I’m looking at the work of Eva Hesse, I feel a strong affinity with her ‘studio works’, Gabriel Orozco, Karla Black and Susie Mac Murray especially for their handling and sensitivity to materials and making.