Recording, reflecting and extortionate train fares…

Three weeks back and how’s it going? well, I think. Already the year feels very different to the last one and I can’t tell if it’s me or them that’s different, probably both I guess.

After a rather brisk start compared to last year I’ve had two tutorials and a crit already, I feel like time and me are both moving at lightening speed. So my research is become a little more focused and finally I’m starting to feel I am getting a grasp on myself and a sense of purpose peeking over the horizon, it may only be momentarily as I have learnt to accept all feelings like this are but its there all the same.

Maybe my sense of getting on top of things has come from my day spent in isolation with just my research folio and piles of books and papers. I find them all a comfort, creating more and more paper somehow seems to help tame a neurotic element in me.

My research is starting to have a strong sense of momentum, but I’m still acutely aware of not letting my actual art making fall by the wayside. It’s a tricky balance when your doing a Masters, I find. I feel the intensity of the research enriching my ideas but at the same time swamping my head with the demands of just reading that one more thing all the time.

Saying that… I must just go and look up that article. It might just have the answer to all my worries!

Last week was a lot of art and I saw some exciting stuff. There were some interesting video pieces by Klara Liden at the Serpentine that got me thinking about performance and film again and some drawings still sticking in my mind persistently from the Jerwood. Frieze was good, this was a first for me (can’t believe I managed to avoid it for so long). I had mixed feelings about it really… so much to see in one place – I thought I might pass out from looking so much and such a horrid stuffy environment to view it in, also I’m not great in crowds but it was exciting, only rather expensive too. I came out feeling like I had had the Frieze experience for sure.

Also saw Saatchi’s New Sensations – an artist who has just graduated from Wimbledon was one of the selected. This too left me with mixed feelings, I don’t know if it was just the venue (‘The House of Nobleman’ on Cornwall Terrace over looking Regents Park complete with red carpet!) or the fact that it was by appointment and special invite only but I thought I whiffed a waft of pretentiousness lingering in the air – but oh what a house, the bathroom was the size of our whole home!

It was great to see Chris Agnew’s work in the show though and some other great pieces too, Elizabeth Jordan’s video projection had me mesmorized.

So after such a busy week of seeing it’s back to my own work, to think. Us part time year 2 held a collaborative exhibition at 242 Gallery in September which I really should of written about before. It was a great opportunity to work together and such a positive experience of collaboration. We each seemed to get something surprising and different out of it. What is really great is that I feel it has definitely given me something to take back into my own practice, plenty to mull over.

I’ll write more about it later and put some images up.

Hi, I’ve been away a while. Off in the land of not doing very much, apart from thinking about how little I’m doing and wondering why that is so. I didn’t really find the answer, so have eventually decided not to dwell on it any longer.

Today I enrolled for the second and final year of my MA and it felt really good. I have a cold and a stuffy head but I’m back on the roller coaster that is academia and so much more relaxed about the ride this time.

Afterwards I paid a visit to the Jerwood to see the drawing prize. I really enjoyed this. Such a wonderful feast of different stuff and a few people from my course and a fellow a-n blogger included in the mix, great! Some fantastic and intriguing drawings. I particularly like Andrew Lawson’s piece ‘The Story of O’ and the ceramic circle – although I now can’t remember the name of the artist.

Off to the bar tonight to shake some cocktails. Things just ticking on in their own little way.

Um, not sure where to start with this post. Today I did some work…finally. Last week I did no work what so ever. Last Monday my boyfriend took me away for what I thought was a birthday treat, only then to get down on one knee in the middle of our walk in Oxfordshire and ask me to be his wife. From that moment on it’s just been giddy, floating, gushing, permanently smiley Christina…. he doesn’t know what he has started!

Suddenly I’m thinking flowers, dresses, bridesmaids, confetti, not public space, architecture, urbanism, psychogeography.

I’ve spent most of today sitting in my studio forcing myself to concentrate on getting my mind back on things and trying more ideas out with the camera. I’ve taken a whole load of new footage but just hope I’m not complicating my ideas further. The main trouble at the moment is focusing on one particular area of investigation and not getting distracted, yet also being experimental and creating possibilities for new things to emerge.

The assessment time was a funny one, the knowledge that you are making for an assessment was quite a self conscious one I felt, yet it was good as it pushed me to do things that I had been putting off for quite a while. Lots didn’t work with the piece I put in and they became so obvious that I felt really frustrated at myself for not acknowledging them straight away whilst I was in the process of filming and editing. I am now cringing through post-assessment eyes at some of my decisions. Oh well, it seems a good way to make me more aware of these things next time.

I have attached the new edit of the video, the assessment one had me actually moving around within the space which really, really didn’t work. This version is still really not quite what I was after… mainly because I didn’t know what I was after when I did the filming – which obviously doesn’t help much, but it gives an idea of where I am at at the moment I thnk.

Assessment over and thankfully no terrible shocks, or big shake ups. It was a kind of…’things are fine… keep going… there’s so much more to do.’

After my frantic assesment prep I have since completely slacked off – in order to gather my thoughts (well that’s my excuse anyway). It would seem that there’s not a lot on for us part timers for a while and I’m really hoping I can get stuck into my work and my research, use this rare time as much as I can.