Thank you for your comments Richard, David and Sam.
Yes, space = time!
It was felt last year by tutors that 60% of the studio had been underused. This year Fine Art has lost some space to the Foundation course and after completing the first year in the main campus a re-plan was needed. Historically part-timers have had equal space to the full time students, with free access at any other time, w/ends etc. There is a strong ethos of working in the studio and of ongoing studio conversation. My observation is that work made exclusively ‘at home’ always seems to struggle to make it’s way into that conversation. Which echoes David’s and Sam’s concerns about sterile space and time.
There have been mixed emotions about having to build the studio spaces. A modular design of double walled ‘permanent’ structures have been built, and this will save a lot of time for the final degree show build still leaving an open space available for inventive installations. Not wanting to sound overly romantic I do feel this ‘barn raising’ experience has been positive.
My uni focus has been to update my studio practice proposal. Discussions in a group tutorial has opened the door into fellow students proposed working methods and inquiries and has got the dialogue off to a good start.
It has been a rewardingly busy time at Angelika Studios we currently have an exhibition curated for our gallery by Gordon Dalton of Mermaid and Monster http://www.mermaidandmonster.com and I have taken on Tweeting for the studio! http://bit.ly/nhrjzQ
Heading back in to the studio this week will be different to previous years. The tutors want to refigure the studios to allow for more opportunities for students to work at different scales and to have the space to be more ambitious. The warren of individual cubicles will be opened up into spaces of different sizes and students will no longer own their space for the year but use a space appropriate to their work. Decent storage space for work and materials will be included in the plan, along with a small area to meet and engage with each other, requested by the students. This will all probably take a while to be put in place and it will be interesting to see how sharing communal space works in practice.
In the next few months I would like to revisit some of the questions I had on entering the course four years ago. I want to evaluate ‘breakthrough pieces’ and bring threads together as I approach the end of this stage, and the opening up of the next one.
The changes to the physical studio space seem somehow timely for me.
Studio Update | Angelika Studios
An exciting recent development for me is being invited to join Angelika Studios, founded by four Bucks Fine Art Graduates last year. I will be sharing an interesting space with fellow student Gill Gregory. The studios are located in an old re-purposed furniture factory in High Wycombe.
The timing feels right for us, both to be working in the space and having involvement with studio projects. Blurring the line between pre and post graduation. We have been painting out the room and feel primed for action.
Bucks Uni Degree show 2011 is down. So, now alerted to the fact that I have already had my part-timer’s head start into Level 6, I need to get to grips with the documentation side of studio practice. Not complicated, it just needs regular attention and application…I’ve bought the folders. I do want the contextualisation files to work for me, rather than for the module alone so I’m thinking of how to organize the material.
Painting and thinking.
www.angelikastudios.co.uk
Wolfson College Oxford
http://bit.ly/mF51pb
Exhibition Statement
[..} the incidental, the transitory, the peripheral – that aspect of our experience that is both there and not there, the object and not the object of our sensations, perceived but seldom attended to. These transparent phantoms disappeared into their envionments, and yet, upon occasion, almost at the corner of our eye, there they seemed to shiver – a gleam*
Painting and drawing form the main part of my practice through which I investigate the memory and experience of walking though urban space, sound, rhythm and time. The paintings record this enquiry and contain many concealed layers of interaction, decision making, surface tension and resolution.
Research of Brutalist architecture and early Italian Renaissance painting provide abstract entry spaces for me to begin this process. The paintings despite their geometric elements are not planned in advance but are made intuitively by responding, with colour and line. Surface incidents and accidents are retained as a witness to the progression, as is the history of colour slippage on the stretcher edge.
Marion Piper June 2011
*Lawrence Weschler, biography of Robert Irwin,
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, University of California Press, 2008
Bucks Uni Studio | Update
The studios have been cleared ready for the degree show build. As with the previous years this time always seems to arrive abruptly just as the work is flowing. The space I had this year was 8ft x 4ft, sometimesa challenge with the larger paintings when the ‘grab’ space had already been grabbed.
It is an odd time for the part time group I am in as we have already started our final ‘year’ and need to keep the momentum going so we don’t slip between the focus on the full time student’s timetable. We have kept the conversation about our work moving with each other as we have had no formal crits etc. and this has been very helpful. When we are back in September things will very quickly speed up and we will need to manage our time well. Although the course is longer for us we obviously have the same number of elements as the full time students. We do however get the extra benefit of having the opportunity of helping with five exhibition builds and seeing how the layout is taylored each year to the content and the students requirements !
How does it work for you? Can you request a specific space or build for your work? Is it organised by negotiation or by tutors?
Please comment….
