There are 42 days until the Degree Show day and much less than that to the assessment! I have a fair idea of my work for the space i am wanting to use. It will be a challenge with my disability to cope with deadlines – i remain hopeful.
Reflecting on the proposed work i will be exhibiting it seems, as Jane Watt, tutor, expressed, that it will be a thinking space rather than a work to sell / solely to show off.
But i believe that the confrontational aspect of my work is its selling point and yet most of the work will not be for sale!
Taking a look at the space that i am proposing to use has helped enormously and it has a very exciting dynamic spatial arrangement within it, which i propose to utilise.
My illness / Disability has no set state or sense of deadlines which is frustrating me. I had to leave uni earlier on because of my inability to be conscious which has meant that i am now up late!! It does frustrate me because i know that i will be up with the larks in the morning to much frustration from my husband!
The past year has been a very turbulent one and it has seen many changes, challenges and accomplishments. The work i have been doing over the past 9 years (off and on) has led me to here at the end of the first half of the Level 6 course work. This journey (wow a lot of my work in the past has been based on journeys!), leading me to the place i am at now finding my own language and the unique selling point. The aesthetics of the language of an artist is the main accomplishment of the final year student of any level of degree.
Returning to the points about the work i am creating and the journeys i have taken, the proposal including the miniatures and the video and mirror works. These aspects have changed form in state – the mini is now the small mirrors in Stories on the Stairs and the mirror text is developed and developing, the Shop idea is not what i deel appropriate for the politics of work i am doing i don’t want to focus on empty shops from someone’s bad luck and economics – it is the focus on the recovery i want – there are too many worries in the world. But wow i have really found fun in the prospect of taking a look at the holistic journey from school age (in the Reflective Practice/ Mini Retrospective) that my view of art has changed!
From feeling like a pretty picture is all that is needed and the fear, yes fear of modern / contemporary art is now gone, in place is a hunger and a drive to create work and get out there and have work exhibited in galleries.
The ultimate question asked at many galleries, museums, openings, homes is What is it meant to be? Is this art? What is it? …. i expect it to be asked at the Degree Show and it is the one question that is going to be displayed in my work on a mirror that once belonged to my Nan-In-Law Hester Whitehart. Before she passed away i got to know her so well but not well enough. She will be there in some form. And especially i hope in that mirror she often used. She would be, along with my husband wondering what it all means.
The work i am doing is work in progress as i am doing the theory aspects – dissertation and critical review next academic year. It is a good thing that i am doing it part time. There have been many challenges over the last year rather dramatic! and the feeling is that i am afraid that i won’t be able to do it.
Its been great to have been doing a number of non academic work alongside the course work. The Degree Show Invites and the Art Auction, the AA2A work. Its been the blog here that has been giving me an outlet to work things out and share how i am managing as a disabled student. I have seen many students with my disability leave early because they have been unable to continue. Well i am nearly at the degree Show!!!
