In some ways this blog is neither a project blog nor a degree blog. It’s a bit of both I suppose, with the main project being my own developing focus on my practice and the way in which the MA is helping me do that. A key notion of the St Martins MA is the integration of research and practice. Although it makes perfect sense it is harder than it seems to actually do: what is happening though is that the practice is becoming much more of a research-based process and the research paper, even at this stage is acting as a check on wayward experiments. A kind of “What are you doing?” question that is always at the back of my mind.
Well, term has started and I have a tutorial coming up. I’ve just sanded all the paint off a failed painting I’ve been working on for days, so getting some kind of ‘finished’ piece is feeling quite urgent now. I have at least started writing the research paper but need to do some reading so that it actually reads like one.
Went to see the Jerwood drawing show, which I really enjoyed. One to aim for ….
I’ve just paid my fees for next year. Resolutions for the upcoming year:
1) write studio time into the diary
2) write thesis writing and reading time into the diary
3) do not get swamped by other demands on my time
4) concentrate and focus
Long day yesterday in Saint-Omer. Afternoon meeting, a bit of shopping, then the opening of Resider/Reside (http://www.dadonline.eu/resider_reside.php) with work by Pierre-Yves Brest and Sharon Haward. Afterwards, there was a meal to which everyone involved contributed a dish. We rounded off the evening with musical chairs with too many chairs, followed by Grandmother’s footsteps which the French call, un, deux, trois, Soleil, and then murderer in the room (is that its name?). All good fun and it brought everyone together. As someone said, the best games are the ones you played as a child but still know how to play as an adult. No complicated rules to remember.
I enjoyed the evocation of childhood through play.
Reading Rob’s blog and all the comments and the responses to my own comments has been quite interesting. It’s sometimes the thinking about making that is the real problem for me. Not the thinking through making. I can get really stuck when I believe I have an idea for making work but don’t actually try it out or make the work. Work comes out of work, ideas come from ideas which come from reading, making, writing.
There are perhaps different ways of thinking, but there is something about thinking as a way of coming to thoughts through some kind of process, be that writing or making or walking the dog. Thoughts – or my thoughts at least – aren’t first thought and then written down or made; they become as I write or make and then I read/look at what I’ve done and ask ‘is that what I really think?”
I’ve been really busy since getting back from Exeter. DAD has three projects on the go which is great. We are having to streamline our processes! In other words run more effective meetings, introduce the idea of project teams and assign days to DAD rather than do DAD stuff on a whim so to speak.
Went to the Central St Martins MA degree show private view and got a teeny bit scared! The final degree show work looked very polished and I can only hope mine does too in a year’s time.
Through my Dada South connections, I decided to go to the Liberty festival in Trafalgar square yesterday to take a look. On Friday, together with fellow advisers, I’d been at a Dada South training and visioning day where one of our tasks had been to present our journey as artist adviser over the past two years. I did a mind map which was an attempt to, presentationally at least, link up all the different strands of my activities as an artist and I ended by showing them to be aspects of an integrated practice. A total fiction really but it felt quite good pretending.
Will be back in the studio next week and the idea is also to get back to thinking about my research paper in which I aim aim to examine how autobiography is brought to an experience of art, both as artist and as viewer.
