Reflections on My Work Since the Last Assessment

Thinking about the upcoming assessment I have been forced to reflect on what work I have to present, and what I have been doing since January. It seems I have had no clear project, instead flitting between ideas, with the exhibition in the middle to focus all my energies on.

At the time of the last assessment I was planning on taking my project forwards by looking at cleaning, and how cleaning can reveal the dirt in an environment. For this I cleaned a floorboard and made some more latex prints of the studio floor and my house's tiled vestibule. I had aimed to look at doorsteps, the doorstep half moon and the role of women as 'maintainers of cleanliness'. However, with Schism approaching I became distracted by devising a new work for the exhibition and began to pursue ideas such as filling an hourglass with dust and the elements for 'Time/Piece'. I also started working on 'Cartography of the Floor', putting the dirt from between the floorboards into petri dishes. I considered developing this and taking the scientific element to its logical conclusion by finding out everything about the dust I collected; I didn't get round to this and I'm really uncertain whether I should or whether it makes more sense to move on.

In developing my exhibition piece, new interests arose (as they always do to distract my attention) and I have had a lot of ideas about lenses and vision, making basic cameras using my old contact lenses etc. I think I will try and get a tutorial to ask whether It would be best to develop previous ideas or move on to the new ones. I am concerned that if I move on to looking at lenses, my project will be even less coherent and I will get low marks. I can see that there are several links running through all my ideas: time, the overlooked or discarded, a general sense of futility and transience, and a hint of the scientific. Perhaps acknowledging these links might be enough to tie the work together.

I have faced a lot of new things to puzzle over this term with my slightly different way of working, and at times it has been difficult to understand what I am trying to achieve. However, as I make more works using found objects I am beginning to understand what my role as the artist is - to frame the object with words or carefully chosen display methods to change them from being familiar to unfamiliar, to reveal what I have noticed about it that other people may not. Therefore if the titles are not presented with the work, as a vital part of it, then the objects are not artworks (in my opinion), they are just contemporary artefacts. Having said this, in Simon Fujiwara’s recent Hayward exhibition of significant objects and images that describe modern British culture, he chose to remove all of the text. I have not seen the work, and if I did I would know what the objects are because he told us about them in his lecture, but surely some of them would need an explanation for any meaning to be felt by the viewer. The other day I was thinking about the similarities between this work of Fujiwara’s and Cornelia Parker’s ‘The Maybe’; both present everyday objects, some belonging to or relating to celebrities, both as art exhibits, but Parker’s had accompanying text to explain them and Fujiwara’s doesn’t. Fujiwara admitted himself it was a gamble, but just felt it was the right thing to do. This is something to really consider in my work, whether giving away less invites more curiosity and room for imagination, or whether it is confusing or off-putting. This may well be an investigation to broach in my dissertation.  

A more general observation is how I am not accustomed to working in the way that I am now and have done throughout this year. I am working much more conceptually, with less focus on what materials are capable of doing, and more focus on what materials and objects are capable of meaning, what they represent and how they can be displayed to emphasise this. I have certainly felt a little lost at times because I am not physically producing as much work - I have very few maquettes to show and these have not been replaced by anything e.g. sketches, writing, There are simply many potential artworks that I think about or note in here that are never actualised. Having said this, I am really pleased with the 'final' works that I have produced for Schism and for the CU 'Perception' mini exhibition.