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This year's progress
By: Christina Bryant
This is a record of my progress in 2008. I am looking forward to some exciting and challenging exhibitions and wanted to log the growth of my work and ideas throughout them. With lots to learn and many challenges ahead, I hope this will be an interesting record of events and emotions that will show my progression as an artist with an engaging and interesting body of work! So here we go...
Christina Bryant
I am based in Hertfordshire as a Fellow at the Digswell Arts Trust in Welwyn where I have been for nearly 3 years. I joined after graduating from the University of Hertfordshire with a degree in Fine Art. My work is mainly described as installation and drawing but I use whatever I can and feel relevant. I am interested in ideas about human experience of spaces. I explore the emotional connections to physical reality, whatever that really is. My ideas are in constant motion and the work, to me builds up one question after another, I'm not sure where it will go next.
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# 41 [22 December 2008]
My 'House' piece excelled itself last week and was awarded first prize in the Margaret Harvey Open. I was ecstatic to discover the news that I had won the solo show and felt like I was walking on air for a day or two (why does reward feel so good?)
Last Thursday I went to visit the gallery to see the exhibition and view what else had been selected. I thought it was a pretty good show of work with some very good photography pieces and quite a range of different work. Open exhibitions can often be a bit of a mish mash (I guess that’s the open nature of the submission criteria) but there was lots of interesting pieces.
While I was wandering around the woman behind the desk and the security guard started discussing the show and particularly what had won…. I cringed at the situation- me stood there anonymously not being able to help myself from listening in to their conversation. As I hung around in anticipation of what they would say next, my heart thumped as it quickly became clear that they didn’t agreed with the judge’s decision. I felt incredibly sensitive and hurt by their dismissive view of my work and felt the urge to speak up and defend it... of course I didn't, I instead smiled to them as I left, and joked about the whole absurdity of the situation to my boyfriend on the way out.
This kind of judgement is going to happen. If it hadn’t of won it wouldn’t have been discussed and it wouldn’t have been knocked. I guess everyone has their own ideas of what makes a worthy winner. It feels strange to see that my work leaves some people a little bit bemused and possibly resentful. I wonder why this is.
I'm going to allow myself some time away from the studio over Christmas. I'm looking forward to a little 'time out' time. Then I can hopefully get back into it all fresh and raring to go in the new year.
It feels like a very reflective time for me now. With this year's blog coming to an end and some exciting events already in place for next year I feel like 2008 can go down as a positive and productive year over all. It has strengthened my belief in myself and helped me make some important decisions about how I want to progress in the future. I can't wait to get my teeth stuck in to a new year!
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