The fact that I’m writing this blog should indicate I’m relatively happy with text, in fact I’ve spent most of my time at UWE trying to integrate text into my practice or actually making the text the work (as in the haikus). Last October I attended a workshop at the Arnolfini linked to the Museum Show in the gallery. I’m now thinking it was a seminal event for me as the critical exploration of the idea of ‘the object’ and ‘display’ has made me think deeply how to ‘present’ my work.
In this context the perceptual encounter with the ‘objects’ I’m currently making will be enhanced by ‘writing the object’, preparing a narrative that will position/locate/label/index/edit/survey them. And as a curatorial proposition it could be entirely fictional…
At the same time I have started work on some ceramics, the one thing I said I would never do. It’s strangely liberating and exciting to be working on something different, even though advice might be for a safer option at this stage in a degree. Will it all work? Will my pieces attain the magic of objecthood?
Been working on some experimental prints, perhaps more evocative and less statement led that some previous work. Using cardboard plates brings with it a ceratin aesthetic but is also cheap.
We have had further clarification on the written requirement for the MA. As we are supposed to be recording our artistic journey in a critical journal anyway, the final piece of writing is a 2,000 word ‘executive summary’ directing the assessors to our key points with signposts to pieces in the journal.
This is a relief, as the journal, while being a vital part of critical thinking about my own work, tends to be full of asides, conclusions, changes of mind, musings and brief moments of clarity. An edited version will force me into postioning the journey and the work succinctly and coherently.
This is the point where the haikus, devoid of their physical presence become conceptual. The Friends of the Botanic Garden newsletter will publish an article in their Spring issue. Readers will be asked to imagine the place where the haikus were placed, from the words. Thoughtments.
Hiding in my den
oaks loom: me, counting slowly
trying to stretch time.
I went to meet Professor Simon Hisock at the University of Bristol this week to talk about how I might develop work further, inspired by the Botanic Garden. He was very helpful: we discussed the amazing, magical science of how plants turn carbon dioxide into food, and I think this could be a route deeper into the world of botany. (I might think it’s magic, of course physicists might not).
Setting forth in the spirit of purposeful ambuguity I’m hoping that the cubes will eventually attain objecthood. They should last longer than my laser etched haikus on plywood that came out of the Botanic Garden at the end of November. After six months exposed to sun and rain they now quietly rot on my balcony. No longer existing in their site- specific places.
2012 has arrived and I have come to the end of the Botanic Garden residency and blog. So this will be my blogging opportunity from now on as I begin to think and create in the New Year.
Over the Christmas break I went to the British Museum to see Grayson Perry’s Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman exhibition. I am thinking following the idea of ‘Future Archaeology’ involving ideas around water. What struck me about some pieces was the similarity of the work I had done in my first year (2009) on artefacts found in the future from an imaginary Anna Wintour cult, and his idea of artefacts resulting from an imaginary Alan Measles cult.
I have a vision of some person in the future finding artefacts in the sand. What could these be? How could they have been placed with a thought to being found in some distant future? or perhaps just left and buried by sandstorms?
Concrete came to mind as a material that would have longlasting properties. Experiments with 5cm cubes have begun…some came out a rather interesting blue…
