Work produced & development of individual & interdisciplinary practices. Part 2
How this has affected interdisciplinary practice.
Aim 3 of our project was to ‘Develop Individual Practice & Interdisciplinary methods’. Here, the artists involved discuss how their practice has developed through the process of TRADING STATION.
Working with professionals in a different field.
All five members of POST have broadened their practice through working alongside another professional to realise their work, whether that be Cecilia, Susan and Claire working with filmmakers or Mandy and Robyn working to produce limited editions. Working with others extended the life and impact of the artists’ work giving it a greater reach in a more sustainable way, as limited editions and video works are often more portable than sculptures, original drawings, installations or temporary interventions. As Claire Weetman notes:
“It was a great opportunity to work with a professional filmmaker in Istanbul. That experience has allowed me to see the documentation of a temporary, site-responsive, intervention in public space realised as a four channel video, which has had a far greater response from galleries and curators than if that event had not been suitably documented.”
New skills and working methods
Each of the artists has developed new skills that they can personally employ to produce work, whether that be improved page layout skills learnt through the production of the four newspapers, a step into a new field such as collage, or experimentation with hand-held domestic media technology. In making her works ‘Unpick/Graft’ Susan Meyerhoff Sharples says:
“I have made connections with businesses working within the realms of retail clothing, wedding paraphernalia and discovered a wealth of information about fabrics and methods of construction. I am learning basic skills working with the medium of video. “
Develop a practice of collaboration and exchange
Through the process of TRADING STATION each artist in POST has come to better understand how their practice fits into a collaborative exchange project. Robyn Woolston has realised that she operates efficiently when reacting and responding dynamically within social media settings, actively enjoying the ‘trading’ element of the immediacy. Cecilia Kinnear found the spending physical time with the artists in Istanbul to be beneficial to enable her to integrate with their way of working. This collaboration brought an energy that inspired her to collaborate in new ways and has led to her establishing her practice in Istanbul from June 2013. Amanda found that a collaboration with artists from outside the 8 artists in the project better fitted her practice, finding common interests with a writer from Liverpool and an artist from Istanbul.
A more ambitious practice
POST artists have aimed to be more ambitious in their practice in this project, including engaging with difficult issues within their work or in the staging of the work that they make. Robyn Woolston notes:
“The residency has encouraged me to be more ambitious in terms of the scale and scope of my output by allowing me to draw comparisons between European narratives related to ‘waste’ and ‘waste management’ systems.”
Claire Weetman has a history of staging interventions in public places, but Watermark was her biggest challenge yet. The opportunity to travel back to a city and the learning from our previous riPOSTe project led to her developing this piece of work in a more ambitious way.
Cecilia Kinnear’s involvement in POST has furthered her experience and knowledge in relation to her thinking on organisational structures/models, she notes:
“Having worked in the co-owned company John Lewis and been heavily involved in it’s democratic elected bodies, I have long been fascinated by what makes for successful ownership models and structures for organisations or businesses. Both TRADING STAION and previously riPOSTe have extended my knowledge and experience in a different way and scale to that of John Lewis. As I look to setting up a business in the future this has been vital in feeding my ambitions.
