In Deed
‘… the artist’s looking is more practical than reflective, as we will see. The artist looks to the world in such a way as to allow it to move her body rather than describe it. Moreover, art has an advantage over phenomenological description: it immediately puts to the test of vision itself what the artist sets down on canvas. Each painting that succeeds in making us see something directly, that is, without functioning as a symbol that we associate with with the object through a kind of mental act, will have partially unlocked the secret of vision by placing before us some of those things in virtue of which we are moved by the world to see.’*
In the proposal for MK Gallery Showcase 2012, I suggested that the opportunity to be included would provide me with a threshold experience. After a five year part time undergraduate degree course my concern on leaving was the necessity to continue to make work that surprises me, to quickly begin exploring the ideas and questions that present themselves just as the final project is hung for assessment. I want to be in that vital place where the artist knowing much, indeed knows nothing.
So, I shall hang work that is tackling some of these questions, I shall show paintings that I am questioning, and drawings that challenge me. For one week I shall walk the Centre at MK and then stand in a glass walled project space and work on uncompleted canvases.
http://www.mkgallery.org/p/marion_piper/
*Mark Wrathall
The Phenomenological Relevance of Art, 2011, Routledge, London, New York.
Marion Piper, ‘In Deed’ Work in progress August 2012
