Good afternoon!
It’s another glorious day here in Cornwall, a continuation from a lovely bank holiday weekend. I managed to get up to the Spike Island open studio event in Bristol on Saturday, then yesterday a walk with the children at Tamar Valley Trails. Now they are back to school and it’s time for me to return to my work.
I haven’t really done much on my project report since I last posted. I think I have been in a sort limbo following the recent interim assessment. However, I received the feedback today and this has spurred me on. It was great to get such amazing comments on the progress and strengths of the work. I normally do take post assessment (whether this is summative or formative) as a breathing space before going head-on into the work again. Incubation is a really good form of learning and development. This is the main reason I chose this new MA as I wanted to not complete it in just a few months! To really get the most from the MA you have to have the time to allow the thoughts and processes develop. For me this has worked exceptionally well and I am feeling ready for the show coming in just a couple of months now.
It’s a gorgeous day in Cornwall but I am currently indoors working on the second draft on my MA project report.
The final unit for the MA is called the project and alongside the work in development for the show we are writing a 6,000-8,000 word report. Initially it felt like a huge undertaking but after doing a 3,500 word proposal for what I wanted to do then twice as much to write about what I did do is not that much. In fact I have reached 7,500 so far and haven’t quite scratched the surface yet! Lots of hard editing though and I will eventually get it right.
I am actually enjoying the process and am finding that it is delving deeper into the understanding of my work more so than I would ever have achieved otherwise. Also the the MA project is not just a case of making a body of work then just writing what you did, it is rather a research based project.
My initial aims were to create a series of object-based work through which I would explore representations of biomedical interventions and treatments of the obese body. A related aim was to investigate the vocabulary of domestic found objects used within my art practice and research how they function as mimetic, metaphoric, metonymic and anthropomorphic devices in referencing the human body. I feel I have achieved this but have done quite a bit that has expanding on this. For example in my exploration of the body I focused my attention on the internal but this led me to explore the relationship of how this impacts on the external so I have also looked at the materiality of the fat female skin.
The writing process is also helping me to refine and edit a great amount of works I have made over the previous months to create a conhesive show.
Right, back to my report writing!
Plymouth University’s fine art degree courses are based on two sites within Plymouth, the university campus and Royal William Yard. Our MA is on the main campus which makes it easier to access the rest of the university’s facilities but you should ‘google’ Royal William Yard and you’ll see what a stunning location this site is!
Anyway, within room 101, yes they had to put the art students into that room, we share a space with a few joint honours and final year BAs but the majority of the students there are first years. It has been a very noisy, active envirnoment this year and at times a little distracting when you are trying to focus on your work. They had their assessment and show last week so are off for the rest of the summer. However, now the second years move in from down the yard to put up their show, followed by the third years afterwards. Then at the beginning of July we take over the space again to put our show up. Lots of activity in the following few weeks! I have to move out of my space to make way for the upcoming shows and am moving in with fellow final year student Matt at the other end of the studios. The first year MAs have their assessments next week and finish for the year so they will vacate the studios soon. Some of the other final year MAs have their own studios at home so it shall be Matt and I busying away towards our final show amidst all the chaos of BA shows going up.
I am currently developing a website for our MA group show and taking as many tips from a-n about promoting and making the best out of our show!
A good point to start would be the interim show/assessment we had last week. It is generally the case that for our past assessments, tutorials and group critiques we set up the work in either our cleared-out studio spaces or the postgraduate room. For our final group critique and interim assessment we went off site and set up the work in an artist-led space near the university. It was a challenge to test the work in a different setting and I soon realised how much of a comfort zone my studio space had been! It’s is a lot easier to set up in place you have working within for the last two-years, it’s a space you have been constantly testing out methods of display etc. It is also like a Mechano set and with the large white boards you can create the near perfect space you require.
Off site we were in unfamiliar territory, in a space which would not necessarily accommodate everything we hoped to achieve in terms of display. For my work the approach I take to the display is a continuation of the work itself and the finer details are so important. So when it came to setting up the work it was very time consuming, hard work and a huge learning curve! I had to make several compromises in how much I put out as I am quite a prolific maker but I found that this enabled me to edit the work down. Also in the amount of space I gave each work and which works could go on the one area of wall space I had to work with.
Overall I found it a very enriching experience despite the teething problems at first. Eventually it came together rather well and has given me further thoughts on how to edit and refine my work even further.
Welcome!
I start this blog with all the best interests at heart. I hope to be able to take you along the journey as we progress to the end of our MA show in mid-July. However, in the following few weeks I suspect my workload will get mighty big! Also, I should mention I have three children from aged 4 to 15! Here goes anyway, if you don’t hear anything from me for a short while then you know the workload has increased!
From the start of the MA Contemporary Art Practice programme I was challenged and motivated to further develop as an arts practitioner and researcher. The critical dialogue through the tutorials, seminars, artists talks, group critiques, tutor feedback and range of modules, all enabled me to be more questioning, and to delve deeper into my practice and I have grown immensely as an artist since I joined the programme. I have received increasing numbers of invites to exhibit my work and I have contributed papers to two national conferences, in which I made great contacts to establish arts/science collaborations for future work. Such opportunities were made possible by the relevant research methodologies and approaches introduced on the programme and the two-year structure was essential in enabling that development and growth. I will be leaving the MA well prepared for independent research within a much more confident, critically aware and engaged studio practice.
I look forward to sharing at least my thoughts and images of the work and hopefully some of you will be able to attend the show in July at Plymouth University?
