University Campus Suffolk

It’s (to me) a surprising amount of days since my last blog post. I’ve been very, very busy with art in the real world and have been ‘saving it all up’ ready to post about it.

I’ve photo-documented my journey through the month of May, and will share details of it all in the next few days.

The degree show is on 5th June, and assessments start next Monday. The end is nigh.

I am exhausted, and will be quite glad to have finished. I guess what I have learnt most during the past 3 years has been that I’m probably too ‘long in the tooth’ for all this ‘education’ malarkey. When you’ve been making art and throwing it away for 30 years, you develop a different kind of relationship with your art. Like you’re just not driven by the same motors that some others are. I suppose that I’ve always known that, and have (and will) steadfastly refuse to follow trends, methods, ‘the right way’, etc.

Art (if that’s what you have to call it) is just what I do, even if you don’t ‘get’ it, I’ll still keep doing it. As I said a while ago on this very blog – we’re all together going on very different journeys. I happen to think that if you are truly a creative person, then your journey will certainly be right for you and you shouldn’t go on someone elses. I suppose what I am saying is that, on reflection, as I suspected before I began this course – art as we know it today cannot (and shouldn’t) be taught. The only things that can be taught are the craft elements of art – techniques, materials, composition, mechanical knowledge etc.

I’m not alone in thinking that, and have noted the same being said again in the last issue of Art Monthly.

I would like to think that at some point in the future, art can separate itself from academic study, thus giving rise to unfettered creativity. I guess that art schools would be much better at that than universities – and a qualification in art perhaps ought to be more vocational. There’ll always be those that think that you need to write essays to prove that you’re an artist. I really think that’s daft. Your head is where it’s at. Where’s your head at?

Whatever transpires after uni, I remain very happy with my own art. I can also see some others around me who should be very happy with theirs too. They deserve to be.

Tomorrow (Friday) is my last day for setting-up my degree show. I am taking it all in, except for the sketchbooks & blog stuff which I need to sort out on the weekend.

My project is important to me – personal, if you like. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone down that route and instead gone for a more frivolous art – but I really needed to do this body of work. Every single part of it counts, like the pages in a book. I am often told (by lecturers) to edit my work – as if I do too much; over-complicate things; to strip it back. That isn’t what I do. I have already done that before it gets displayed and am very capable of a ‘less is more’ approach. This project just isn’t one of those times. It’s about 6 ‘souls’ and each one counts.

Apart from a last minute move of a painting whose positioning I was testing, all is as it will be.

If it isn’t much liked, then it will be entirely my fault, and that is how it should be. I can happily live with that.

I am ready to move on now. I shall drink to that next week.

I dragged the dead canvas from the water today. It’s been there for a few weeks and represents the drowning of Abraham Oscar Frostrithick.

The shelves of these dead folk are done.

We have the aforementioned shelves of Master Mariner Abraham Oscar Frostrithick – he who drank a drink and started to sink. Drowned at sea.

We also have (as previously mentioned) the shelves of Frederick Smarmsworth as he left them when he expired. He, the businessman with a ‘chip on his shoulder’ and an enjoyment of murder – murdered.

Joining them is Alice Grey, a teenager who struggled through her young childhood, the pressures within her head building. Seeking solace in her other worlds of dark fantasy fiction and alternative music, she seemed ok as she moved through her teenaged years – so everyone thought. Her dark secret was that one day it would all become too much. Today is that day. These are the shelves she left behind.

Lastly, is Herbert Smith. Herbert has lived a full life – seen a war out, completed national service, worked as an engineer, and retired with his wife to live in a nice bungalow by the sea. Sadly, his wife passed-away and he has lived alone, mainly without visitors for years, until this day, when he drifts away to whatever comes next … if anything does. These are the shelves he left behind.

I’ve been experimenting with the 6ix Souls Drowning splash video in he last week or two. I’ve shortened the original footage considerably, and will now present a short, loud splash on the water screen.

I now (thankfully) have what is known as ‘The Black Space’ to use for my degree show. It’s a totally black installation space, and is (alongside the rather obviously white ‘White Space’) the main reason why I wanted to attend University Campus Suffolk; that, and living nearby …

Showing the water screen in the Black Space gives me the opportunity to create apprehension, anxiety… dread even. Subtly, of course. My film will be made up of 4 very short bursts of bright video (drowning//fading/crashing/burning) interspersed with irregular periods of complete darkness.

I have 8 static artworks to accompany the films, which are vital to the whole. 4 paintings that represent the last few seconds of 4 people. 4 shelves/assemblages that represent their lives and aftermath of their deaths.

It has been suggested to me that I could display some of this static artwork in the Black Space itself (rather than the two not perfect wall spaces outside the entrance, where I probably will). One reason for not putting them in there would be that they might be impossible to see. Now I’m a great believer in being conceptual, and if it works I’ll certainly go for it; but only if it works …

The other reason for not putting them in there is that I had always planned the piece to include static artworks representing memorials, to view before the spectator enters the darkness to see what lies within. It’s a narrative. Strip that back and the narrative is diminished. I must be careful about that. Picasso was right about standing your ground on issues of creative decision-making.

I hope that people will see that the result works – and if they don’t … ah well … that’s what being an artist is all about. I don’t particularly like or ‘get’ a lot of art by others in the rather artificially created ‘art world’ – and I accept that people won’t always ‘get’ what I do. I’ll still do it though. They keep doing theirs after all … and rightly so. Art is for all – not just for a few who tell us what to like. Those ‘thought police’ are not for me.

If you apply it to music – it’s akin to someone not liking the same music as you. Nothing to be devastated by – you’re just different. I wouldn’t tell a musician to play their music ‘more like wot I like’ …

With just a few weeks to go ’til the joy of the Degree Show, there’s not really any point in me pretending that I’ll post frequently on here – but I certainly will post enough to show the whole process right up until the bitter end. There’d be no point in having started this blog otherwise.

In the next two weeks, I aim to complete all of the artwork required for the show. In the middle of May, we’ll be clearing the studios, painting them, and assembling our displays ready for assessment and the show itself. As much as I do enjoy working under pressure – this time, I intend to be relaxed and ahead of the game. Once the main art is completed, I’ll spend some time finding all the notes etc. that I tend to write/draw in a thousand places, and presenting it all as logically or illogically as I feel like doing.

My degree show is essentially about the death of all art/life & death as a combined, intertwined concept. Thus, the end may be just that. The end.

I’ll explain my concept (as it stands) as fully as it can be before the degree show. Otherwise, you’ll all just think I’m making random art. One thing I will never, ever do is strip back a body of work if it undermines a concept in any way. More on that (and my feelings on that) later …