Buckinghamshire New University

Moving around the Dan Graham pavillion in the sunshine at Lisson Gallery was a good way to start Friday. It followed an intense week of prep and a presentation to staff and students (with questions) on studio practice and contextualisation.

Question. Reflect. Précis. Answer.

There is a hyper-real intensity about this stage of the degree. Past discoveries and experiences and future hopes are swirling around and about the current struggles. I feel I have a 1000 paintings that need to be made, perhaps that it why I am relating to drawing at the moment. It enables thoughts, records hunches, brings rhythmic order and facilitates play.

After seeing the work of Jorinde Voight Konnex and Spencer Finch and Dan Graham at Lisson, I spent time at Drawing Room with the work off Franz Erhard Walther, for him, ‘…drawing is not a static medium but rather a materially fluid generator of work processes, conceptual experiments and imaginative participation.’* The show, and that particular space, was like being in his studio, a place of ongoing investigation.

It feels important to me to not lock things down in my work or to try to ‘complete’ too much but to create openings.

Good times.

*Stephanie Straine, Franz Erhard Walther, Drawings- Line/Frame/Action/Drawn Novel. Drawing Room

http://www.lissongallery.com/#/current/

http://www.drawingroom.org.uk/exhibitions/franzerh…

Painting. I am working on one painting. Ongoing and continuing across different canvasses, through the books and on paper. It is made fast and slow, hidden and revealed, quiet and loud. Phrases that sway, sequences that echo. Most of the painting is happening away from these surfaces, the repeated humming of a tune; held and then placed, jotted and drawn.

Space. Managing the working space in the studio has really impacted on the work. Not on the content but the practicalities of making. As I wrote at the begining of the first semester we have less space. I don’t really want to write about it as negative issues are just something to work around. Positively perhaps as one uses a rule. However I work in series. I ‘feel’ the restriction. I am looking forward to working elsewhere. I expect there are other final year students with even less space. I won’t mention this again, but I actually think this issue has caused me not to be able to write the blog as it’s just been ‘there’. Done.

Countdown underway. Visit from external examiner tomorrow. Statements. Mock presentations next week. Degree show catalogue working party, formed.