Work in Progress

My head is still everywhere. I know what I am doing within my research and studio practice but still feel out of sorts with everything. This week I had the use of the Centre for Drawing again (no one else wanted it!), I was sharing it with Katie who was making a film, and I was making 3 big drawings. It was a nice few days listening to BBC 6 Music and talking about our work and how we were feeling with everything. I was still playing with the idea of perspective lines, and using pigment to create various grades of tone with it. I’m not too sure how this will develop but I’ll stick with it up until the assessment. I want to bring all of the strands of my work together.

It was ‘Animatation Week’, and the plan was to show some animation related work in the Centre for Drawing on Thursday for a crit. My idea was to make a series of drawings that could potentially be 3 frames of an animation. It was based upon a youtube video of a tower block being demolished. Inevitably, the Twin Towers were mentioned furing the crit. The feedback was generally good and this idea of creating frames may continue within my practice.

We had an MA show professional practice talk on Friday afternoon with Paul Glinkowski. It had elements of ‘how not to present yourselves’ talk with video examples and lots of research. It was interesting and also slightly scary. The research article/pdf is available on Axisweb here; http://www.axisweb.org/atATCL.aspx?AID=896 and I think it’s worth a read if you have a degree show coming up, or any artist led show for that matter. We were then shown our timetable from now until September when we (hopefully) graduate. It seems very real and it worried me a little.

I’m now playing with the space in the studio and working out different ways of hanging my work. How I want my work to be seen. I don’t want my work hanging on the wall, so they are floating in the middle of the space as the moment. I expect there will be lots of playing around with this and a few late nights over the next week. If I’m hanging the work in this way, I will have to make each drawing double sided. It’s an exciting way to work though and it is opening up some fun new ideas.

It’s been the first week back after our two week Easter break. I spent the whole two weeks in my home city, Bath. It was nice to escape London for a couple of weeks and to recharge my batteries, it was odd getting back on the tube again on Monday. I was getting pretty tired at the end of last term. I did have to spend the two weeks writing my research paper, but I was able to do most of that outdoors due to the ace weather that we had. Now that I have been back in the studio, and handed the research paper in, I feel I have a little more direction in where I am going. I always seem to get a lot out of writing these essays, and my bibliography is now rather long. We had a research statement/poster event today where each of us on the course produced our statement and displayed it, which then formed a discussion. My statement follows below along with the image I used on the poster. I need to write a new artist statement (my “current” one is from last April and so out of date now!) and this research statement can be my starting point.

Research Statement

Within my studio practice, I am exploring structures that are reminiscent of those found within the urban environment. I am interested in structures that are imposing and have a sense of eeriness about them.

Within my research, I have been exploring how people experience certain aspects of the urban environment. Anxieties such as claustrophobia and agoraphobia that both became a prominent illness during the rise of modernism were a starting point. The questions that I am now forming concern not only urban spaces, but sites which have a historical significance, and perhaps a sinister history.

Does the history of a site effect those that come into contact with it? Is nostalgia associated with ideas of utopia, or a failed attempt of building a utopia? If these spaces have such a negative effect on people, are the spaces in control? Do people belong in here? Is there a conflict between the user and the man made environment? This is reminiscent of science fiction where man’s creation turns on its creator.