I have been in residence since 11th September and have been so busy that I haven’t been able to get this blog up and running until today. As my residency co-incides with h.Art week there is a constant stream of visitors looking at the current exhibition, who also come to visit me in my wonderful space to discuss how I am responding to this amazing agricultural landscape. Conversations have been diverse and engaging, which has been fantastic. But, getting a blog up and running to document this process is important for two reasons. Firstly, I am hoping that it can be a place for people to keep track of what I am doing as my installations are out in the landscape, and not necessarily accessible to all who come. Secondly this is my first residency, and I expect it to be a valuable experience from which I expect to learn a lot!
I came to this residency with the intention of arriving with no pre-conceived idea of how I would respond or what I would make. I decided that being in this immersive landscape would provide an ideal opportunity for me to take myself out of my comfort zone and I would make my responses in whatever way seems appropriate at that moment in time. I usually like to have an anchor point- somewhere to start from, but it is my hope that this openness will encourage my exploration of the site and also allow for me to develop a connection to the site through my interventions. I have decided that as it is only a week long residency I don’t really have enough time to really sit, contemplate and interrogate my thoughts. I am a thinker, and so to respond immediately is scary to me. Particularly as I am faced with the public pretty much continuously throughout my time here. The idea of making mistakes with an audience kept me awake for the night before I started! I suppose it feels unnatural to me to make with the audience so immediate. Usually I am in the studio, exploring and using my work as research with the notion of a ‘final piece’ far from my mind; but whilst here and working in front of the public the question on everyone’s lips is always, ‘What are you going to make / do?’ I worry that they think I am being quite vague when giving my answer- but I am trying to remove myself from the feeling that I need to fill a space. I suppose my main intention is to document my experience of the landscape throughout my week here.
