High Points of 2010:
Started an MA at Wimbledon
Completed my first residency
Grew in confidence in terms of my work and with running workshops and teaching
Sold some work
Saved money by not entering any competitions
Relocated to London
Low Points of 2010:
Didn’t show my work anywhere near enough
Didn’t enter any competitions
Things to look forward to in 2011:
Seeing what my work looks like at my MA show
Being less naive graduating from my MA than I was when I graduated from my BA
Exhibiting my work
Seeing where my practice takes me
Things I’m not looking forward to in 2011:
Being stressed for most of the year
The uncertainty of what will happen post-September!
Week 10
It was a very strange week at Wimbledon. All the BA students had gone home, and it was mainly just us in the building. I seemed to lose a bit of motivation this week as I think I needed a break. I ended up just finishing up a few pieces of work, but not the pieces of work that I wanted to be doing.
Wednesday was a pretty manic day, I had to make sure that I had all the books I needed for research purposes over Christmas, and to make sure I had these, I had to take a trip to Chelsea and St. Martins. Chelsea is no problem, but the St. Martins building on Southampton Row is a complete maze. Luckily, I remembered my way around this labyrinth from going to that symposium a few weeks ago. It’s actually a really interesting building, and it’s kind of a shame that they’re getting rid of it. The inside isn’t particularly nice and there is graffiti on the walls, and it is very unloved, but there is just something about it. There wasn’t anybody else wondering around these corridors as I was there, it felt quite surreal. The lifts were still broken, so I got to walk up the stairs again, only 4 flights this time though.
Week 9
I think was probably the best week so far. After a few weeks of feeling annoyed with my work and feeling that I wasn’t progressing at all and generally feeling frustrated with myself, I turned a page. After spending Monday in the woodwork workshop, I had a productive Tuesday screenprinting. I was really just printing a selection of photos of architectural models and urban spaces onto tissue paper, I was happy with how they looked just layered together even though my plan was to hack them up and collage them into some paintings.
I was given 6 large sheets of steel last week, so I’ve been playing with them too, it’s a nice industrial surface to work on, along with the cement, there is an interesting contrast of materials.
On Wednesday, I visited a space in Tooting that we are planning to use to show some work and have a play around with in January. It should be an interesting experience, there is lots to do on that front next week. There were also lots of cakes being sold this week in an effort to raise some money for our interim show in February/March. I won’t mention the 90 minute chaotic meeting that was had about it on Friday. Other things of note for this week include a showcase at the HMV Curzon (a cinema) in Wimbledon. Some students had submitted work for the playlist, so it was good for them and everyone else to see their work on a cinema screen. The main films that were shown were by Ben Rivers, I enjoyed the films, quite post-apocalyptic. Again, it got me thinking about the end of the world and my work. I also ended up watching Apocalypse Now this week. I detect a theme here!
I had my second tutorial on Thursday, I was pretty unsure what to expect and wasn’t feeling too confident about my work. I felt really good afterwards though. I’ve been trying to really force my work onwards since October (obviously one of the reasons why I wanted to do an MA), but I’d been unsatisfied with myself, but it was pointed out to me that actually, there has been lots of change in my studio space. I guess I just don’t seem to notice these things as I confront my work on a daily basis. Anyway, the tutorial went well and I got lots out of it. The main points of conversation were about my use of materials, and how scale helps me (and my choice of materials). In terms of my subject matter, am I trying to describe a space or allude to a space? I think I’m trying to allude to a space, as that seems far more interesting, but probably more difficult to achieve. We spoke briefly about painting, in terms of my research interest, and agreed that I should probably focus on imaginary spaces/enviroments and anxieties that go with the urban environment than get caught up with geometric abstraction.
Week 8
I’m feeling the strain of not having a laptop in my studio, as that was something that I’d been used to during my residency. It was useful to blog in the studio and much easier to act on things. My PC is homebound, so I’ve been jealously sneering at my Macbook owning course buddies these past few weeks. In someways I know that not having a computer in the studio is also of benefit to me, for instance, no Youtube or Facebook to distract me, time will tell as to whether or not I jump on the macbook bandwagon. I’m still holding back. My blogging would be more spontaneous and generally better than writing it from home.
This week I’ve just been playing with collage, the photocopier and scenes from Star Wars. I’ve also continued playing about large cement drawings, thinking about imposing structures and once again things falling apart.
There was a talk on Wednesday by David Thomas who has a residency in the Centre for Drawing at Wimbledon. There were loads of BA, MA and Phd students crammed into a tiny seminar room. Very cosy. It was a good talk though. He talked about the ‘art object’ being experiences, air, sensations and energy. The way that objects sit within the world, and the effect that this has on the world that surrounds the object. Colour in the work effecting the colour of the surrounding space. He also showed some of his free standing work, which is something I am considering, and talked about celebrating connections with other artists rather than feeling annoyed because our work may be similar to someone else’s.
Other than that, we got the first professional practice talk in a series, and the Postgraduate Forums began, although due to snow things were changed around a bit, but they were good to listen to as I have my forum in January.
Week 7
I spent the bulk of this week reading and making notes. I felt pretty lost for most of the week. On Staurday there was a Symposium at St. Martins. It was the first of a series of talks/discussions for the Tableau Project. This one was called Fragments, Openess and Contradiction in Painting and Photography. It was quite a long day, but worth the climb up 11 flights of stairs. One of the speakers, Cedric Loire, who gave a talk called What do images do to painting, what does painting do to images, was the most relevant to me at the moment. He spoke about two artists, Robert Suermondt and Terry Costeseque.
Suermondt’s paintings that go beyond the frame that are based upon the urban/suburban environment. His work is a constant reference to the photographic image, showing evidence of digitization. He paints in the way that an editor would edit a film. Photos are taken, images are cut from magazines, these are digitzed and attached to the canvas. Fragments of black and white photos are collages, becoming unrecognisable from the source material. He uses montage, as in cinemas, but done with paintings. More ‘editing’ takes place when the collages are used to make the paintings. There is movement between the images and the planes. The viewers gaze is being disturbed. There is perfect vision and blindness at the same time. Details are extracted from photos and the collages, and are blown up during this editing. He also makes models of spaces that contain copies of his work, and then photographs them.
Costeseque’s source material includes advertisments found in the street or from the net. Signs and textures from urban spaces, like neon signs. The speaker talked of artificiality and superficiality and about using photomanipulation to abstraction.
