Research Festival
(Left) Camden Art Centre's File Notes - for each exhibition, a File Note is produced with a commissioned text which gives greater insight into the show and are collectables.
(Right) Drawing: Sculpture - an accompanying publication and essay to the exhibition which explored the relationship between the language of drawing and sculpture.
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These are formal essays discussing the works in the show and act as a legacy to the event.
My intention for the Research Festival is to present a self-published publication.
I like the idea of a publication as,
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A thinking tool
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As a collaboration - collaborating with text
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A collaboration with other voices – to create an expansive voice
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Producing material as an extension of practice – another piece of work that can transpose one material/question into another form/at
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As a way to document thoughts and visuals
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I have made self-published publications before, but always as part of a collaboration, both in terms of content but also the actual making.
I am nervous about my technical abilities in doing this myself because I am not particularly great with software or printers, and I am slow to pick up these skills. However, I think the challenge of doing this will be a great learning curve for me and will serve me well to continue making publications in the future.
Because I lack skill, I want to keep this publication straightforward and simple. It will function like a pamphlet, with a front cover, middle pages, and back cover, be limited to 6 – 14 pages, and be either A5 or A4 in size.
I want this publication to serve as a way to start to unpick a thread of my practice I haven’t approached before. In this way, it will be very experimental.
I began first by looking at publication/pamphlet examples.
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Publication BLUSH (left) front cover (right) detail of a page inside by artist Johanna Bolton
Again, this is a publication which accompanied an exhibition and was self-published by the artists in the show. Each page contained an artist's response to the theme of the show - what it feels like to inhabit a body. These pages gave you extra insight, snapshots into their thinking that was related to, but not revealed in, the works shown. I really like that this is based on images and spliced text, it is rough and ready but gives you something more, they are like inner workings of thoughts reflecting the inner workings of the body.
This is an example of a self-published publication I made in collaboration with artist Naomi Harwin. (Left) front cover (Right) example of an inside page
We approached this publication as an investigation - of each other, our works and their interactions. We presented it as a visual essay with a foreword we wrote together. The images within were of works that we did not deem final pieces - they were all somewhere in a generative in between punctuated by quotes that were pertinent to our practices.
It was about how the images and the selected text investigated each other on the page.
Another example of a self-published publication I made in collaboration with artist Joseph Doubtfire. (Left) front cover (middle) contents page (right) example of inside page)
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This publication involved lots of selected artists' voices in response to the subject of process. It was initiated by an interview, which became an exhibition and resultant publication.
The part which was especially interesting was asking questions of each artist (pictured right) we then gathered their responses and reformulated them into five short texts.
I was also inspired by the talk artist Giulia Ricci gave as part of our Drawing Reflections Seminars titled Lines of Empathy. What had initially started as an intention for an exhibition became a project initiated during the pandemic. Giulia interviewed 16 UK-based artists whose practices and works have influenced her practice, culminating in a publication.
It was a beautifully layered project that Giulia thought of as an autobiography of her practice communicated through the works of others. She decided not to include any of her own works or responses. Instead, only the front cover would have an image of her work. She described it as ‘hugging’ the works within the book, holding them together in this space while they each represented parts of her. I just thought this was such a beautiful concept and a wonderful way of navigating what you look like as an artist but only communicating this via other artists.
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The questions I found most interesting were 6 and 9 – where they reflected on the extension of the body in making and the relationship to the senses, including additional senses (vestibular and proprioceptive) and the relevance of these in the artists’ practice.
Slide from Drawing Reflections Seminar: Giulia Ricci, Lines of Empathy It shows the questions she interviewed each artist with.
It made me question what artworks would reflect me and who would sum me up? What artists could underpin and expand upon certain questions or inquiries I have? Does it have to be artists? Who else could I ask?
As outlined in my proposal for the publication, I’d like to use this as an opportunity to explore a heightened awareness of the landscape of our bodies.
I want to give particular focus to the use of text within my practice using embodied writing. This is not an area I have focused on before, so to test this out and see how words could shape a physicality relating to being in/experiencing a body. Bouncing off of phrases like ‘spill your guts’ and the physicality of such metaphors that can be used as queuing techniques when I am teaching Pilates, like ‘breathe into the back of your ribs’ – words that direct you to places in the body - and this inexpressible yet understood space between language and the body.
Because of this proposal for a Research Festival and the different formats of presenting research, this opportunity has made me think very seriously about a project for a self-published publication. I want to use this mini, experimental version as the thought bubble for something that could yet come and be the start of a potential 2-year project.