Professional Development Bursary Blog

This has been an amazing year of exploring new areas in my practice thanks to the Artist Professional Development Bursary from a-n.

My practice usually takes a form of photographic work, moving image and installation.

The proposal for the a-n funding was to explore and develop skills related to book/publishing format.

This summer I have finished a two year residency with a site specific exhibition. The images from the glass negatives found at the residency, which in the exhibition was shown as an installation, was the starting point for this book project.

I was particularly interested in the aspect of exploring the book as an object  as well as a site and space to see how the work would develop in this format.

In order to achieve this I proposed to learn skills in Bookbinding at Bookworks, to have 6 session of mentorship with Magali Avezou/archipelago and set up a bimonthly Peer Mentoring Group running parallel to it with Edward and James Newton from Highchair Editions, Laura Braun from Paper Tiger Books and artist Lalu Delbracio.

Interesting questions and useful exchanges not only limited to the practical aspect of making a publication but also relevant to my general practice have been made in these meetings. How to approach working with archival images, relationship of the viewer and the object, abstraction of images. I have learned about the possibilities of working with images in a publishing format through feedbacks, seeing other people’s work and processes and from the exchanges we had at these sessions.

For the final mentorship session with Magali, I have been working on a edit where the images became largely fragmented and abstract based on the enlargements of the marks and traces on the negatives. The peer mentoring group was positive about the edit with mostly abstracted images. But Magali thought that it would be hard to engage and sustain the attention of the viewer who doesn’t know the project. Her suggestion was to create visual rhythm with a mix of the recognisable and abstract images and to put together two different edits and show it to people for a feedback.

Through the process of working with these images it became clear that I wanted to make the book which the viewer could experience a journey. A journey which I took since encountering this material. The research into the facts about the negatives, the surface of the object itself and into the images using different photographic processes. The glass negatives became portals to the past and present. To the history of photography itself and also an inquiry to the shift of the identity of the objects. From a functional object to a historical object, physically carrying many traces from the past including moulds and fingerprints on its surface in addition to the images taken of unknown places and people by an unknown photographer. I became a traveler diving in and out of the images in the imaginary landscapes, between the past and present, through fragments of different lands which may or not exist.

On a practical side of skill development, the 9wk bookbinding course provided me with 5 different type of binding techniques and a how to make slipcase and inspired me with the different possibilities of creating an artist book.

Coming to the end of the funding period, I am most grateful about the new networks which has been created because of this bursary. All the members of the peer mentoring group found the platform useful and now the group will continue beyond the funding period. Now I am working on the two different edits and collecting different paper samples so it will be ready for the peer mentoring in January.

Since the last blog, I have been working on the book draft taking on the feedback given at the peer mentoring and the mentoring sessions with Magali Avezou (Archipelago).

The comments and discussions we had at the peer mentoring session before summer helped me clarifying the aspects I was finding difficult in working with a found set of glass negatives which carry both the history of photography and people and places in the image. As the sense of obligation and responsibility towards this material and the unknown photographer made me feel that I needed some sort of permission to make my own interpretation to the images.

Once I had realized this it became clear that the focus should be on scratches, dust, fingerprints from the past, moulds and the unexpected effects caused by the out of date photographic paper. Based on this I started working on enlargements of different areas on the prints using the photocopier at the local library.

In the enlargements the marks carry equal importance as to the original images on the slides. The more enlarged and cropped, rephotographed and reprinted the original images became fragmented and abstract.

Having previously made some works using the photocopier, I have also rediscovered the beauty of the materiality of the intense surface the toner creates. Personally this became a journey, going in and out of through the surface of glass negatives, it turning into a channel to travel in and out of past and present and to the actual landscape and an imaginary landscape created by fragments of marks, images and the medium I am using.

The 9wk bookbinding course at Bookworks led by Ina Baumeister began at the end of September. In this small class we’ve learned five different types of binding and how to construct the box case with detailed tips and instructions as we went along. This has been such a satisfying process. It has been a wonderful way to keep a balance with the sometimes not so straight forward creative process. Being so used to self learning the skills, this occasion of been taught by an expert has been such a treat.

At the moment I am working towards the last mentoring session with Archipelago in December. I may have found a solution and a possible format for how the images should come together in the book from yet another constructive dialogue we had at this month’s peer mentoring session. It still needs a lot of work and time has been passing so fast but to have a rough dummy for the last mentorship session with archipelago and the book draft ready by the end of funding period is a good incentive.

Since the last blog entry the two mentoring sessions with Magali Avezou(archipelago), the peer mentoring group (book project group) and the site specific exhibition has happened.

The mentoring sessions with Magali which has started back in May has been very helpful in reviewing the works from the past two years produced at the residency and in structuring the residency exhibition in back in July.

In the very first session we discussed about the works I have produced so far in the residency and how might the exhibition and the publication would look like (no exhibition date was confirmed at this point..!) and in the second session, 2 weeks before the show, we’ve discussed the development of the ideas since the last meeting and how could the space and the works could make sense with each other.

The process of having the exhibition was very useful in reviewing the series of works I have been producing and consequently to start taking the actual first steps in printing the images from the glass negatives for the book project I am developing as part of the an professional development.

Going back a little bit, the peer mentoring sessions, the book project group began in May. James and Edward from Highchair Editions, Laura Braun from Paper Tigers Books and Lalu del Bracio whom her practice combines performance and book art have all kindly agreed to take part in this group.
The first meeting was an introductory meeting where we all presented the works to get to know each other’s practice.
What everybody had in common was the interest in making books which are not catalogues of a body of work but books as works in itself. Once again, I have to thank Magali very much (on top of everything else! ) in putting me in touch with James and Edward and guiding me through the process of setting up the group.