I need to think about where the line is between craft and art. This has been prompted after a discussion with my tutor.
There is an enjoyment and a compulsion in the act of making things which could be described as craftmanship. Some objects are highly crafted like the work of Richard Deacon and others objects are sucessful with very little craftsmanship. Even painting has an element of craft. Somewhere in the making process the work crosses the line into becoming art.
The difficulty is being able to recognise and then understand what has been created. I think this happens a good while after the event. In order to understand the process a bit better I spent the whole day drawing man-made and natural objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum and the University Museum in Oxford. I needed to re-focus on forms that are not art objects in order to refresh. Everything I drew was functional. I then went to the Ashmolean to see objects created for a different, more artistic purpose.
Then I went back to reading The Language of Sculpture by William Tucker where he talks about Duchamp’s Bottle Rack. It is a crafted, functional object which cannot now be recognised as anything except sculpture, especially in the formal terms of structure, composition, and material. It is a question of recognising it as sculpture and not anything else. This leads me to ask whether there has to be a conscious attempt to make an object as sculpture.
My first solo exhibition at Milton Keynes just finished and now I have time to reflect on whether it was sucessful and what I got out of the whole process.
The experience of setting up was difficult. This was because I brought a lot of work in the van and wasn’t sure what I would exhibit until I got into the space. If I had already graduated and gone through the experience of the degree show I would have been in a better position to make choices. As it was I had to guess without a second opinion. I think it looked alright but slightly overcrowded.
The preview was attendend by a few people but not as many as I had hoped or had invited. I think this was due to two reasons. First because it is August and everyone is on holiday and second because Milton Keynes is a long way for most people to come. I got some good feed back, with people especially liking the different textures of the materials, those being roofing felt, steel, paper, gloss paint and ceramic tiles. I also had two offers to buy a couple of the drawings that were based on cones.
I now have to take the work forward into the final year. The process of doing the exhibition has been useful in resolving the main question of which direction to take in the next few months and I was able to have some discussion about this. It seems that the drawing element was what favoured my proposal ( I submitted two) along with the more unusual theme of materials and structures that dispel water. Drawing is very central to how I think about inventing new objects. I like drawing because the outcome is often surprising and it is these surprises that inspire three dimensional experiments.
The problem is that although I am about to go into the final year I still feel that I need to experiment. I do not yet have a vision for a final work. All I can do is keep working as I normally do and hope that some good stuff will emerge.
The next few days will be spent getting ready for my first solo exhibition at Milton Keynes. I put in two proposals which were both liked, with a slight preference for one of them. I would really like to know what swung the balance because the two proposals represent differing branches of my work.
This year I have made abstract forms and drawings relating to the body. These were inspired by the material being used, that being foam and duct tape as well as protruding wooden armatures. I have also made work relating to geometric and architectural forms using ceramic tiles and roofing felt. As it turns out, the exhibition will be based on the latter which just about helps me make the decision about where I am going this coming year. I always knew that I would have to make a decision sometime.
I’m putting in some existing work and some that I have made over the past few weeks. The proposal had to be based on a theme so I have chosen to focus on materials and shapes which relate to waterproofing. The work references industrial architecture as well as looking at cones incorporated into sculpture and into paper as drawings. I have used bolts as one of my favourite fixing methods for the largest installation which will consist of multiple roofing felt objects that look like cup cake cases.
Now I have to concentrate on wrapping everything up for its journey. The drawings will be especially difficult because they have cones sticking out of the paper.
