Bad Marks and Good Advice

The time from the assessment to now has been a tricky one, full of feeling a little lost and worried about the work I've been making. When submitting my work I was struck by how little, really, I had done - the latex that I presented as if a final piece was work that I had made in October. I can accept that I liked the work, and so didn't change it very much, but I feel I could have been more productive and found other successful pieces in that space of time up to January. I also began doubting whether I like my work anymore, whether I've grown a little tired of it and whether I really understand what it is I am trying to say through it. I felt I followed the latex floor pieces because that is what everyone else said was the most interesting, when perhaps I had already begun losing interest in and momentum with that work

I didn't have particularly high hopes for the assessment (just as well). I still need to clarify why I received my mark and how I can improve as I consciously addressed the need for development that my feedback stated last year. On the other hand, I remember my assessment tutorial last year, where it was said that marks don't matter, that I should continue doing what I enjoy and that low marks do not necessarily mean uninteresting work. Its a tricky one to get my head around - do I want to get a first (yes), or do I want to make the most of my time and make work in a way that suits me?

The studio essay has so far proved to be a baffling task. I've never found something so difficult to write. Trying to write it has left my view of my entire practice confused and stifled as it has raised so many questions... what is my work about? Does it make sense for me to write about my work in a personal way if my studio work is impersonal? I feel I need years of practice writing, establishing a voice before I am confident enough to do the task. More optimistically (and I think I still remain optimistic that I can write something for it that I can be pleased with), I am newly determined to write more and to explore my thoughts and ideas more thoroughly through writing.

I participated in a workshop run by Marc Messenger on 'Observing the Everyday. We discussed Georges Perec's writings about how to re-view everyday environments and change them into something alien and unfamiliar. This gave me some very helpful idea for my Studio Related Essay, for which I have now written 'Brief Notes on Finding the Profound in the Everyday', inspired by Perec's 'Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging Ones Books'. Marc also suggested we find systems and sequences in ordinary places (colours, numbers..) that start to become interesting and might provoke some ideas. I chose to focus on the library as I find it a really interesting place anyway, but one full of the mundane. It struck me that when people go tot he library they only ever really concentrate on the books so I decided to consciously avoid these; instead I photographed the empty spaces at the end of the shelves, observing how they became quite confusing when removed from their context and it would be difficult to identify what they were from the photos.

I also began to look at the slips of paper inside the book covers, where the books were stamped as part of the old library system. I have been considering these 'logs' for a while now, as the logged dates are a really poetic thing to me. They invite so much thought and imagination - all we know of the person is a date that they definitely existed and the choice of book that they found interesting enough to take out and presumably study. I think I might make a work using a particularly poetic book, perhaps about time, and present the dates slip as a remnant of all these people and their shared interest. I found the workshop particularly relevant to my practice, and really useful in giving me some new ideas to work with.

The Simon Fujiwara seminar was also very thought provoking, reassuring and a very good experience (very glad I sign up to these things!) One of the main things that I took from the meeting was a better understanding of how work comes about. Fujiwara said how artists must trust 'biology' and their natural instinct to do something, or make a work; one reads and researches, and then carries new sensitivities into everyday life. This was a bit of a revelation to me, as sometimes it is tricky to show an explicit link between research and work, for fear of being too literal. This idea has really resonated with me, and I feel more content to trust my instincts and let chance and opportunities influence my work - although it is perhaps less chance and more the brain being more open to relevant things.