University of the West of England

It’s been an extremely busy month on the production side for the objects…both cubes and ceramics. At the same time I have been working on my contextualisation for the positioning of the works.

Welcome to MOSE (the Museum of Space Exploration) – where visitors can experience archaeoramas of full consciousness immersion in a holographic experience of the highest quality…taking them to other galaxies and worlds.

In one of the smaller galleries, MOSE runs artefact exhibitions where visitors can see the actual artefacts that have returned from some of the planets visited. They can be reassured that all these artefacts have been assessed and decontaminated to SE 5360 so pose no danger whasoever.

The year is 3756 but the artefacts are alreday nearly a 1000 years old..dated at around 2854.

It made me think about the workshop I attended at the Arnolfini on ‘writing the object’.

I can use the device of a text panel (with photos of the artefacts where they were found). This means my ‘text’ input will not be on the actual artefacts but will be used to:

Locate/position/survey/validate/curate/display/manifest.

At the same time I have been discovering the difficulties of screenprinting the cubes.

The fact that I’m writing this blog should indicate I’m relatively happy with text, in fact I’ve spent most of my time at UWE trying to integrate text into my practice or actually making the text the work (as in the haikus). Last October I attended a workshop at the Arnolfini linked to the Museum Show in the gallery. I’m now thinking it was a seminal event for me as the critical exploration of the idea of ‘the object’ and ‘display’ has made me think deeply how to ‘present’ my work.

In this context the perceptual encounter with the ‘objects’ I’m currently making will be enhanced by ‘writing the object’, preparing a narrative that will position/locate/label/index/edit/survey them. And as a curatorial proposition it could be entirely fictional…

At the same time I have started work on some ceramics, the one thing I said I would never do. It’s strangely liberating and exciting to be working on something different, even though advice might be for a safer option at this stage in a degree. Will it all work? Will my pieces attain the magic of objecthood?