Taking Stock

I find the start of a new semester a useful time to look back at where I have progressed previously and to re-evaluate what I might like to prioritise going forwards.

Thinking back on my work over the past few months I have identified the following patterns and trends:

• A focus on making/being more spontaneous in how I create work. However I did feel perhaps my blog/journal/critical reflection suffered a little as a result?
• I started to gain more confidence in my work and considering an audience/presenting to an audience – most professional practice development didn’t seem to involve my art specifically though so this is something I could improve.
• Identified themes of: deep time, materiality and process, mass, the contained unknown, immersion in the hand-held, ambiguity between the macro and micro, the transience of humans and landscapes, and in particular identified that a move towards a more explicit comparison with the human might be beneficial
• Looking at a slightly broader range of artists, such as Katie Paterson, whose work resonated with mine through the capturing of vast ideas in small, personal, hand-held objects – ‘a conflation between human and cosmic’
• I thought more about a base/elemental materiality, especially through casting, of ‘what is and what isn’t’
• (the FA202 and FA203 documents I created for end of term submission are particularly helpful reflective pieces of summative/reflective writing)

With this in mind, this semester I would like to work particularly on the following:

• Reading more critical theory, academic texts, and philosophies to give my work a little more theoretical and conceptual integrity. It’s important I set aside time for myself to do this and allow myself to follow the research where-ever it leads rather than attempting to map out a particular route for research.
• Putting my work ‘out there’ more, exhibiting and submitting to open calls etc
• Also, hand-in-hand with this, I would like to consider further how I present my work. I received a comment in my feedback saying some of the photography of my previous work was reminiscent of an archaeological dig, an unintentional effect I would like to build upon.
• Bring the narrative of my work more towards the human (in relation to deep time?) – inter-tangling/connecting human wreckage with rocks/treating them in the same way (making casts, experimenting) – blurring the lines between the two
• Perhaps this blurring of the lines between old and new could manifest itself in this archaeological dig presentation, presenting relatively recent items as though they were ancient (as in deep time frames all human life has happened recently). This would work well with another comment I received about the work projecting forwards into the far future, considering what material impact we might leave behind us, the archaeological items perhaps being exactly what our descendants might find.
• I also like the idea of embracing the additions that might come with this format such as accompanying descriptions/texts/stories, in some ways making the familiar strange.
• This would play in well with the FA204 brief of bringing seemingly unrelated text and images together, seeing what they spark when looked at together. I’d really like to look more at using research and writing as a mode of practice in and of itself.
• The miniature project/exhibition – I might make a mini rock landscape, similar to one side of my medal
• Research a wider range of artists looking at deep time etc
• Transfer last term’s blog posts over to this site and play around with the current formatting of this site
• Read Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark for studio sessions
• Plan and carry out the Arts Festival exhibition with my exhibition group
• Maybe rewatch Nostalgia to the Light? (again something that was suggested in my feedback)
• Also suggested feedback is to try something new such as video or sound? I have made plans to start taking my fake rock pieces out and leaving them on beaches or documenting them interacting with their surroundings which is new for me, but I appreciate this isn’t quite new media-wise. I have played around with some Photoshop but perhaps I could consider video or sound work, maybe of the fake rocks e.g. rolling in the waves?
• It has also been suggested to me that I try scaling my work up, which I am open to trying but I also want to be cautious of doing this purely for the sake of it as a lot of my work is distilling big ideas into small, personal, hand-held objects

So far I have started on these goals in the following ways:

• I have pushed myself to experiment with Photoshop, a way of working I have always avoided before due to lack of technical expertise. Allowing myself the space to play around with the program has opened up a quick, experimental, versatile way of working that has been thoroughly enjoyable. I haven’t quite worked out conceptually what is going on with these pieces but it is certainly something to think about and a useful skill to have developed.
• I have also started working in a sketchbook which is unusual for me, not having used one for the entirety of my degree thus far. It’s been nice to have a place to work more quickly, iteratively and with a little less pressure, but also I am worried I may become stuck in the book, more of a decision being needed to step outside of it. I do find it helpful to produce all experimental work larger and hanging it on the wall, able to step back and reflect on/exist around for a bit
• I am in the process of creating another fake rock with the intention of taking it back to the beach to ‘replace’ it. I need to ensure I carefully consider the documentation of this work and also critically examine the piece once it is done. (There is also a potential for developing this into a piece wherein I put trackers in the rocks and attempt to relocate them after a certain time period?!)
• I have also collected some more ‘wreckage’ to add to my previous collection, but I remain undecided as to exactly what to do with it. I may start to cast some, treating it in the same way I do as with the rocks, but also I would like to experiment more widely around this.
• I have done some reading, researching and collecting sources and recommendations. In rewatching a lecture from last year I noticed an interesting link to the idea of the sublime with my own work, and possibly an idea of a nothingness in my work that could act as an inverse? (I have also been recommended some books and essays around this idea of nothingness too)
• I have been commissioned for a piece of work which I have begun working on (very similar to my previous ‘rock map’), I have been featured on Yew Magazine’s Instagram, and I have submitted work for the upcoming Streetview exhibition, Tate Collective Producers exhibition, and applied for the Tate’s Emerging Artist Platform program
• I have written up and uploaded notes from three books I recently finished reading (A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Granite Song and Walking as Knowing)
• I have established and taken part in a postal project with my studio group around the theme of ‘hope in the darkness’