Not long left!
Having moved into my new studio space, written and handed in my dissertation over the two week “break” I am now fully focused on the making of my MA show. I have 1 month and 2 days until the 30th of August deadline. I feel excited, scared, sad but fully motivated to do the best job I can. It’s already been a good first week back, even allowing for yesterdays migraine attack. It was a reflief to get my dissertation handed in, it was good writing it and I found lots more interesting stuff out, especially about ruins, grand projects going wrong and the Tower of Babel.
I’ve manged to create two large free-standing toweresque structures in my space. One is rather precariuos, the other is less successful, but has offered up some interesting possibilities. I had a tutorial this morning, and it has come at a good time. The last time this particular tutor had seen my work, I was in a state of panic and confusion. This was only 2 months ago! My work was, at that point very much related to the ready made, use of materials, and more Donald Judd than where I am going now. From my recent researcg and soul searching, there is a more romantic idea coming through my work. Metaphors, signs of failure and of things that were once great.
I am considering the presence that I want my work to have, and have to think about the scale, smell and tactileness, what do ruined walls feel like? Should there even be sound? If there is, it needs to be subtle. What do ruins sound like? The lighting is going to be the the biggest consideration and could make my work look rather theatrical, but in an art sense rather than a set-design sense. Skeletal remains of buildings and ruined cities such as Detroit and Chernobyl also came up during the tutorial. I was also introduced to Orford Ness National Nature Reserve, which used to be a weapons testing site for the MOD. I am currently planning a trip there to check out the structures which look really interesting and will aid my current practice.
Feeling precarious!
The penultimate term has ended, we have a two week ‘break’ to complete our disseretations which are due in on the 25th July. It’s then full go on our MA show work, in our exhibition spaces until our final deadline on the 30th August. The show then opens on the 2nd of September.
I have no idea how I feel. The term ended rather oddly, I mentioned it had a kind of false ending feel about about, everyone moved out of the large MA studio that we’ve shared since October and disbanded into their new spaces. I feel slightly empty right now.
I feel mega under pressure, I have made good progress on my writing and my work for the exhibition, but I am mega wary about post September time when I graduate. I like to have things planned and in motion, but thus far, there is nothing and that is worrying me. Do I stay in London? I hope so. Do I go elsewhere? Maybe, but I feel as if I should stay here and see if I can survive somehow. After my BA I was mega naive. I probably still am, I have a fair bit of experience of life outside of the institution as I practiced as an artist for 5 five years before doing the MA. So I am under no illusions, I have also learned so much this year and am better at going about things than I was before. I believe in what I am doing, and I think I need to remind myself of that sometimes. I guess I’ve come a long long way from the guy who decided never to go to university and to work full time in a supermarket back in the year 2000. I think I’m in a bit of panic at the moment. I had my 29th Birthday the other day and I started wondering where my twenties had gone.
Enough of that though. I met the external examiner the other day, and had a one to one. He was great and has a studio in Bristol. We had a really great conversation about my work and about Bristol and studios. He asked me what he would see when he externally assesses my MA show, and I said ‘constructed precariousness’. He wrote that down. I also had a really good assessment feedback form from my tutorial last week.
My tutor suggests that my recent experiments with tower structures as a way of both referencing architectural forms and displaying large paper-based drawings are quite promising. I will have to consider the relationship between sculptural form and pictorial image and, perhaps, experiment further with my selection of materials, considering how their inherent properties might shape the reading of the work. We discussed the placement of the work and the possibility of using spotlights in our tutorial, I need to consider the selection of these lights carefully and how they might be integrated into the work itself, perhaps builders lights. I have a growing interest in the Tower of Babel and the disastrous demise of grand projects such as Titanic, Hindenburg, and 9/11.
After the assessment and the Pecha Kucha presentations that a number of us did recently I have been reflecting on where my practice is and what form my MA show could take. Up until now, my interests, at least within my critical practice has concerned the urban environment, modernism, and the problems and phobias that came with it, such as agoraphobia and claustraphobia.
In a throwaway line in my last critical practice essay, I mentioned that Mans creation (the city) was turning on it’s creator as seen in many a sci fi film. This then led me off on a whole sci fi themed road for a few weeks. I made a visit to the ‘Out of This World’ exhibition at the Britilsh Library, which was ace, really interesting and very useful in terms of my practice and for writing my dissertation. I need to return and spend a bit more time there, there is lots to read, particularly about utopia and dystopia.
I am now thinking about technology and Mankinds arrogance. The Hindenberg, which exploded. The unsinkable luxury Titanic, which sank. The Challenger shuttle, which exploded. The Challenger is an interesting one, particularly after reading that the test shuttles came equiped with ejector seats, but were taken out of the final build due to the feeling that the shuttle would be so safe. I see these failed blockbusters linking the the idea of a failed utopia.
In the studio I have been playing about building a tower. It may be a drawing, it may be an object. I am considering the materials and what they can suggest. A tower made of used wood, that is rather precarious and buckled can suggest collapse perhaps, without making the structures as a collapsed structure.
In terms of spaces for our show, I have been part of the curatorial team helping to plan where everyone will be. It’s been tricky trying to put artists whos work would work together in the right places, but I’m confident that we’ll have an exciting show that flows.
It’s been a over a month since my last post. Blogging just didn’t seem right in that time and I was struggling with my ideas and how I felt about my work, and I don’t feel comfortable coming across as an unsure artist. It’s the nature of the MA though, and through converstations with some other artists and bloggers, it’s something that I guess we all think about. I feel my artwork, career and life are all in a strange transition phase at the moment.
In terms of the course, we have 9 weeks left or something like that. The last assessment posed more questions. Our dissertations are due in 1 month, and then it’s a case of moving into our exhibition spaces and making the work and setting up the show for it’s September opening.
My assessment piece of work which is in the photo, whilst unresolved and an experiment, has opened up possibilites for free standing structures. It has a decrepid appearence and my use of photocopies has a billboard-like quality. My feedback suggested that I am struggling to decide wether I’m a painter or an object maker. Perhaps I need to consider form and materiality rather than an image. The best bit about my feedback was that I have approached my work with ambition and openness all term and that I have continued to ask a range of questions about form and materiality.
