Postgraduate?

Review I wrote for 2|1|4|1, here

The course has the appearance of having fully started – this week has brought about first tutorials and seminars.
Tutorials are a bonus of taught programmes – you get the opportunity to talk about yourself and your work without worrying if you are too boring or self indulgent (hopefully neither, but probably both). However, I’d like my tutorials to have more direction and in a note to myself I’ll plan better just what I’d like to get out of them – it’s a luxury to be able to discuss the direction of my practice with a tutor and I’d like to make the most of it.
Feeling a little under pressure of the obligations of reading/assimilating/responding to a reading list for this week’s seminar reminded me of one of the reasons I have chose to return to higher education – for the academic nature of the course which I felt was lacking in the undergraduate (or rather not integrated). Starting back and delving into academic reading is a little daunting – but the return is well worth the effort. Spending time in meaningful discussion about relevant matters is how I’d envisioned the theoretical side to a taught course and as much as that is a challenge for me, it’s one I’m welcoming no matter how difficult it may at first appear. Thanks to a peer group willing to engage and work together in a collaborative learning environment, it looks to be a platform for discourse I’ve felt lacking.
Finding and adapting ones space has been another concern of the week – space is a touchy subject for the art student, it seems we always want more and there is never quite enough. I consider that I’ve always been pretty lucky in terms of allocated space and this year is no different – but my space so far is just a space, in need of something to mark it as my own…

After taking a long time to decide whether to start post graduate studies this academic year or leave it another year, I finally applied and was accepted to the MA in Contemporary Art Practice at ECA. When is the “right” time to embark on further studies? I don’t have the answer as it can depend on a number of distinct things and situations in your own life and artistic practice. It is maybe not even the “right” time for me but I am determined to make it so. I think the hesitation came as I had only graduated one year ago and sometimes feel like the developments in my practice have not perhaps been as solid as I would have liked. But in spite of this, or perhaps as a result of this, it will give me once again a full time focus on my practice and the opportunity to engage with the aspects of the course that I think I didn’t take advantage of in my undergraduate studies and the things that consequently I’ve learned about since then.
The last year has not been as unproductive as I sometimes make it out to be but it’s difficult not to be self critical when you set yourself high expectations. Being a bit self-indulgent by allowing myself the time to complete this course will have a great long lasting effect on my practice, as I feel I have the right attitude – which goes a lot further than having the right timing or any other set of circumstances.