Reflective Journal/Studio Diary
This reflective journal/studio diary serves as a record of my practice on a weekly basis. It records and documents the development of my studio practice in a chronological order. I see this journal as a cornerstone in my ability to work through and properly absorb the workings of my practice. These recordings function as a necessary reflection of my trials and errors, the material exploration, the risks I take, and the processes of my developing works. It is where everything I am making, thinking, and reading is noted down in one place, almost like a working sketchbook.
10/06/2022 Begining Unit 3.
My biggest takeaway from the previous unit was that I got too close to things. Not necessarily to my detriment – I made tremendous advances in my thinking, I learnt a lot – I discovered embodiment, found words and processes to start to hang my practice on properly with confidence, and began to look at the body as landscape. However, all this research was all up in my face, and I was so involved in it that it was hard to get any distance on what I was looking at and how to deal with it.
With that knowledge in tow, I want to allow the work/making to seep into this space I have now that I have stepped back from the research. And at long last, I think I am actually ready for this.
17/06/2022 GIF Drawings
I have been working on new animated drawings, which I hope to include in the works at Wilson Road. My previous GIFs had become too simple; by the end of Unit 2, my wonder in them had lapsed, and I was no longer interested in what they were doing. I needed new GIFs.
Where I was previously concerned about mimicking breathing patterns, I am now more interested in how they can expand and contract, not just respiring but simultaneously morphing. I understand this process (of making GIFs) better now. I want the testing of my confidence to be reflected in the advancement and complexity of these works.
Taking indirectly, translating imprecisely, from all the medical images I’ve looked at over the duration of this course (and beyond), diagrams, scans, images and video footage, all the visuals I’ve sifted through to try to get to know the respiratory system better, I have internally synthesised to make these drawings.
GIF 1: I was thinking about lobes (of the lungs), the duality of the lungs, and the differences and similarities between them (e.g., the left lung being smaller to accommodate the heart).
GIF 2: I was considering the area of the thorax and the diaphragm, the ‘gaps’ and spaces you see on CT scans when in actuality, these are full, and that paradox of whole/hole.
I wanted to consciously consider the perspective from which you are viewing these things, and I like the view that assimilates something of a cross-section. The flat limitations of this view do two things,
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It speaks of surface and shape. Shapes that I am always rolling around. Cross-sections are an opportunity to look inside a structure. It is representative, more indicative than exact. It is also a terrain-like model, laid out like a map. And I want to stay close to this idea of the terrain, that landscape of the body.
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This perspective retains a familiarity, a way of reading/viewing that keeps it in recognisable contact with medical practices. I want to start to better consider possible entry points for the viewer. This cross-sectioned view allows that touch point to happen - loosely enough to open up such a discourse while not confining it solely to this subject.
The motion a GIF allows means you get to view the happening of activity, the coalescing of thing and movement. Of state change, pulsation and/or breathing, and spatially exploring indeterminate spaces. These are observations of things rather than things themselves, which asks you for a moment of your time to sit with it and watch as it shifts.
It also opens up a space closer to a more recognised sense of drawing. While making them is tedious, I love the magic that happens when they are threaded together. It pulls the line directly into focus. An active line becomes flexible and responsive. Here, it is literally on the move. The thin rod initiates its self-concern. It gets to encapsulate everything I love about the line. I love the moments where it is tentatively confident and probing. It speaks of its own potential, the space it is opening into tapering and searching. In this way the way the line comes alive.
If anything, I want the line to move more, stretch more. Because the process of drawing them out frame by frame is slow, it takes a long time to see the results. And only then, when the movement reveals it, do you fully realise what the drawing is doing. So, it’s a sort of blind way of looking. For the next one, I will try to make the line look more probing. I want to try and encapsulate that feeling.
*while looking at this imagery, I found a CT scanner footage that you could roll over to move across the area, which was very helpful in considering the transitions of the animation.
GIF 1 - I enjoy this GIF for its simplicity but with a notable step up in quality and confidence from those I made in Unit 1, it is almost elegant. I feel that its link to lungs and lobes is a notion that can be translated easily but without detriment.
GIF 2 - I have an issue with this GIF. As it became more complex there are blips where I missed details out on the frames. But what bothers me more is that I drew this GIF over two days and the feel of the drawing between the first and second day is different, it feels like a drawing of two halves. What I love most though, and think is very successful, is the instances where the line melds and shifts on its travels.
24/06/2022 New works for Wilson Rd
From the Wilson Road show proposal, it was decided that I had the go-ahead to make an ambitious large three-dimensional structure. Based on these drawings (below right) wanting to realise them in physical forms, this work was an iteration of these drawings.
In doing/making this work, I realised the following,
The skeleton
I should pay a lot more attention to the idea of the skeleton within such 3D objects for two reasons.
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A practical reflection: structural integrity is key. In upping the scale, the ‘body’ of it asks so much more of its foundations. Turning around an ambitious work in very little time leaves some of that integrity open to failure, and in hindsight, I would do this differently. ‘Emergency legs’ had to be made to support bulk weights and off-balance lines. I made it in two parts because of its size and the need for transportation, but I should have made it in three to make that job easier.
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The notion of the skeleton has the potential to hold so much weight re. the conceptual and material language of my work. There is scope to play here - what is exposed, how it is exposed, the awareness of a skeleton and what this allows for in terms of thinking about the work. (Holly Hendry, skeleton on which to hang things on LINK) internal/external
Standing
I have this relentless want to make things stand up.
Testing such a possibility (or impossibility) is a constant part of my making process. So much hinges on this ability. And I wonder why I do it, especially when it can be precariously painful.
Bringing it all together
Initially, I wasn’t making any conscious decisions on this because, based on my proposal, everything was new new new. However, while I was fumbling around as things struggled to stand, ideas of interactions popped into my mind.
The idea that the steel elements and this new work (or versions of it) could come together. That the steel would/could become an intertwined framework. Firstly, I was just wondering about using them as ‘props’, alternative ways of giving extra stability and support to a part that was struggling. But there could be so much more to this dynamic—E.g., Soft and hard frameworks, where they do the same thing completely differently. I’m interested in what could happen here.
Untitled (Legs & Loops)
2022 Monoprint on newsprint 20.9 x 33 cm
Right now, I don’t know where/if there is room for the MDF pieces amongst this. Or how the drawn GIFs could feature. Another aspect of my proposal that I haven’t been able to realise is the vinyl/wall paintings. The vinyl was not possible in such a tight turnaround. But this will come at a later stage.
What is the feel of this work?
It is hard to gauge this fully until it is in the gallery space. Making it in a shed at home is a very different context to Wilson Rd. However, just noticing from me making this work, it was something I really had to handle, move around, get about, with my whole body more than all my other works so far. I wonder how much of this handling will transfer from the making to the viewing.
The process of making the armature, joining them to outline the overall shape and then begining the first layers of modroc.
Building up the modroc layers in sections, to then stand the structure upright (attached to a standing ladder to hold in place). The joints were cast last so they would have the best possible chance of fixing in place as the modroc dried to enable them to stand up and hold that position.
Turning pink. I used dye to pigment the plaster coating that would go over the sculpture to turn the whole think pink. The images (above right and below left) show more clearly that the piece was made in two parts. This was to make transportation of such a large work (slightly!) easier.
The weather was less kind to me at this point and the work had to come inside. This was the point at which, because the new layers of plaster going on were heavy, it was changing the weight distribution and warping the shape of the works and they began to topple and were no longer able to stand upright. An emergency leg had to be made at this point to enable the highest point of the work to stay upright.
The video (above right) is of the work standing in a horse lorry - the only form of transport I could get in order to get it to London!
Image above left shows the works made it to Wilson Rd intact with a few minort repairs needed. As the plaster was still slowly drying out over the course of the week, any stress to it would make weaker points crack like stress fractures. These were bandaged up and allowed to set before coating with pink plaster again. At this point the sculpture was still in two halves, waiting to know where it would be installed so I could join it together and finish making. Video above right shows the work now in its entirety - the two halves joined, another emergency leg had to be made to enable the looping line to stand, and the last legs of turning it all pink.
(Left) joining, patching up and colouring complete, and best of all, it stands up all on its own! Installation of G11 is still underway and awaiting final positioning for my works (Right) re-painting/touching up pink shapes for inclusion in the show, a last minute decision
06/07/2022 Unit 3 Showcase Group Critique
1. How has your work arrived at this point?
This sculpture was arrived at through a drawn-out digestion of my previous works, and it does come from an iteration of a drawing that I wanted to realise in 3D. It has also been quite a big leap in the making (within a week) to up the scale and literally flesh out my lines physically, but also my lines of thought.
2. What are you aiming to do next in terms of developing this work?
There is a whole area of this particular part of the work and an element of my proposal that has gone unrealised. I wanted to have vinyl incorporated into this that could scale both the wall and the floor. I want to continue to push the works to be installations that can traverse these spaces, making them into terrains, like something you have to navigate, like a landscape, and this relationship between 2D, 3D, the body and flatness and volume and how that shifts to and from. So, the vinyl aspect of that was supposed to start to take on the wall and floor space and perhaps draw things together, which I will explore going forward.
3. What are your aims for your ongoing research development and plans for the research festival in November?
My immediate thoughts are either an essay or publication. Especially coming out of the unit 2 assessment, it has been highlighted how much writing is a prevalent part of my practice, so perhaps starting to treat it as a more important thing. Maybe a publication could be quite a nice way to go about it. Considering how you (I) disseminate research as evidencing your (my) curiosity, I think a publication lends itself to being a more curious exploration than a bog-standard essay.
A podcast could be a consideration, too – another way of disseminating words – and maybe my role as a Pilates teacher could be exploited in some way here.
To remember that the research festival is another expression of my practice.
How will it interrelate with my other forms of expression?
How do I distribute my voice and the tone this takes?
How can I give more intention to this tone to enhance how my work is experienced?
How do I demonstrate what is specific about my sensibility?
04 - 09/07/2022 Postgraduate Showcase at Wilson Road, Reflections
Work 1 – over site
As always seems to be the case, my work shrinks when it enters the gallery space. That is not to say that this new work isn’t large in scale because it is. I think it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever made. But there is still more that I need to consider regarding scale.
The room it is exhibited in has high ceilings and is spacious overall. I believe that the ceiling height played into why the work felt smaller. All that space from above is relative. The highest point of the work is not so high when the height of the room is twice that. The work shrunk under all that ceiling height, and I was disappointed by this because it made the scale – something I ambitiously pushed – feel far less impactful.
It makes me want to know what the work would have felt like had it been in a smaller space, what that would mean for its navigation, and how the viewer moves around it. I think it would likely feel closer, closer in contact and therefore quietly forced to deal with what you are faced with – this thing/line in space.
I (unwittingly) made its highest point, roughly average shoulder height. This is successful in so much as it faces up to the viewer, so you engage with it from the same size as you. However, being that it is average shoulder height means you can look straight over it and almost ignore its presence to look at works on the opposite walls. While curatorially, this might have worked out ok for other people’s sightlines, it irked me that something as large as that can be (literally) overlooked.
Consider titles: Over site. Under look
Watching people navigate it, or not, in some cases, was interesting. Especially the contrast between my two works – one, where people trip or bump it by accident, the other where they come closer on purpose to get a better look. These opposites in viewing and physical navigation are interesting. However, this ‘non-navigation’ still bothers me. It does not command the space, and this is something I have struggled with in every group show so far on this MA because other, louder subject matters dampen out my concern for space. It never reaches its capacity for spatial alignment. So, I feel like there are two options here – be more selective of my group shows (sometimes not possible) or get better at making spatial awareness a thing.
The inability to get ‘into’ this space was something I found problematic with this show. Although all the works in the room were considered to have a relation to the body, in my opinion, this might be an obvious relation on paper, but it wasn’t as strong or complimenting in practice. Maybe the tenuous links could have made this room interesting, but I found it lacking in sensitivity and nuances.
Practicality-wise, it was an incredibly busy, blocky room. Almost everything in that room was made up of rectangular blocks. Black rectangular screens blocked out wall spaces like permanent maker blotches; there were too many screens. Screens all in a room with too much light. The wall projection wasn't visible for at least half the afternoon because of the sun. And then there was my work, pale and organic. It didn’t react to/with the space. It just sat in it. It wasn’t an active participant in this room. Because of the limitations to making this piece on-site, it wasn’t site-specific. In some ways, I feel like this work could be considered one of the most inflexible pieces I have made (definitely literally, as once joined, it was fixed in place and needed x5 people to move it). This work came with its own pretences, which were not met in the space.
Texture issues – this is an aesthetic the work has taken on where the Modroc/plaster has picked up the ribbing of the under armature – to me, this texture is too visible, and this is not ok. I’d like it to be smoother. There is a fine line between corporeal turning visceral or curious. This ribbed texture is a step too far over that line.
In the format of presenting an exhibition with things being supposedly ‘finished’ enough to show, it was easy to forget that this work was brand new and unresolved. It has been great to push the work along and get it to expand in scale and volume. This work acknowledges and deals with the flatness of my other works in literally fleshing itself out to successfully occupy space and be successful in its presentation. It was commented on as being ‘playful’ with similarities to Franz West. The audience picked up on bodily relations like intestines, shapes like knees and elbows, and pink insides, an internal rollercoaster. However, it was lacking something.
This lack comes from a multitude of reasons,
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It wasn’t fully realised. There were no vinyls - missing components of the installation. It was basically unfinished. I believe that including these parts would have helped connect the sculpture to the space, and that idea of internal navigation, moving around the body, would have been more apparent.
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Its formality leaves the work feeling empty. I can’t deny the formal aspect of my work; it comes very naturally to me and was a key feature of my practice once upon a time. Here, again, maybe the vinyls – are another dimension that refuses that very satisfying (or unsatisfying), quick read.
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This issue with how this work lands. How it resonates with the viewer. What we respond to visually and how this comes across in the work without having to explain it. The things I make continue to detach from the original ideas I came to this MA with. What is my work really about? Only when speaking to viewers who know nothing about me and nothing about the works did I fully realise that I need to get much more succinct in my verbal explanations and the work’s visual explanation of itself. What does the viewer need to know, what do they need to pick up on their own, what is left for me to say in person and how do I say it. Upon a conversation with a viewer, I described this work as the feeling of the camera’s navigation of the procedure I had – that is where the original drawings came from, in trying to sit down and map out how it felt. And to the viewer, this changed how they saw the work and, as a result, how they started to interact with it. The work stops short of this interaction without me there to say something about it, and I can’t/shouldn’t have to be there for this to happen.
Of my two works included in this show, Over Site and Touchpoints, Over Site was the main one.
These two works became very separate. At the moment, I do not know how or if these works will connect.
Work 2 – touchpoints
This was a bonus piece to feature within the show. It was a matter of ‘if there is room for it, we will put it in’. And I am glad it was shown because this was the first time it was presented as I originally intended – on the wall.
To dot the walls, to float and hover or be held against its surface. I like its configuration’s ability to lead your eye about the space of the wall, like a polite version of clambering. A lightness of touch carries through that I want to be visually apparent. I believe the spacious playfulness of these works is successful as they can be spotted from outside the corridor, drawing you into the space to be led down the corridor.
Almost everything is pink – the works, the wires, and the use of pink-tac to hold the wires in place. Aside from the works themselves, the decision to have pink practical parts (wires/pink-tac) was to make the presentation of my installation work harder, their necessary functions aiding their pink counterparts. I think this has worked well. It has cleaned up the visual aesthetic of these works; they seem slick. Are they too pristine now? There is something that feels a little clinical about them. But then again, this is no bad thing when they feature the two new GIFs I have been working on, which relate to medical imagery.
The use of the pink tac grounds them, a gummy squadge. Connotations of plasticine play, maybe an impermanent learning tool, or squishing it between fingers and teasing with touch – the want to squeeze it. Or perhaps, instead, it’s something gummy. Chewy, like masticated chewing gum. Pink gives it a sense of flavour, of something sweet. Either way, touch or taste are things that relate to the body. In this way, I think the material language of pink-tac is working well here.
Practicalities meant it needed to be located close to two plug sockets. The leads are shorter than I would have liked, but it turns out that it is incredibly hard to find pink leads that are any longer! The plug sockets, fitted with their brand-new shiny PAT testing stickers, read right into the works. This is still an area of the presentation I need to address. Do I work at covering up plug sockets? Or do I consider ways to make their necessary function a part of it (e.g., pink leads, why not pink plugs?)
I find the video element to be less of a surprise with the works shown upright in this way. This has made me realise that it is the ‘stumbling across’ that I like about the GIFs. You enter into this space of activity because a little movement catches your eye that brings you physically closer. Watching, looking, and seeing - there are differences in these activities. When the videos are installed upright and nowhere else (here they are installed centrally too), it reads as looking over, like that glance you give over a painting very quickly assessing whether or not you are interested. Seeing is active, taking it in. Watching is processing what you are seeing. Maybe it’s because it’s positioned in a corridor and people are passing through, so it is a far less sensitive space. Or perhaps this upright, specifically central, viewing isn’t quite right.
Continuing the point of the GIFs, I think that as they have become more complex, they have outgrown the simplicity of the format they are being seen in. In their simplicity, the previous GIFs matched the simple shapes, the smallness and perhaps even the clunkiness felt at home there. These new GIFs, however, I think might need more room to breathe. Bigger screens, bigger shape holes? Or more consideration for their orientation and the shapes they feature in.
Over site, 2022. Installation View
TouchPoints, 2022. Installation View
12/07/2022 Conversation with Mujeeb Bhatti
I am not sure what it is, other than a feeling of something being amiss with my works at the show at Wilson Rd.
This led to a conversation with Mujeeb and some critical reflections on my part.
I think I am coming to realise that my making is not sufficiently sensitive to the response of my ideas. And if I am being really honest, they probably aren’t even connected. They might be in my head, but it’s not there in the work. As Mujeeb pointed out, we can force ourselves to find the connections because we are trained to do this (as artists). But if those connections are not actually there, I am essentially misfiring.
My uncertainties always come when participating in an exhibition because that is the point at which it is seen. That is it. That’s all the audience has got to go on, whether it’s resolved or not, at that moment, it has stopped, and you get to see it in the light of day. And I am not happy with it.
Mujeeb encouraged me to question my making – the need to make and use your hands – to question the making itself, and to recognise that it can be a blind spot. Are there other ways to approach my making, other ways of realising it? – to find what is missing in my making.
I will admit that I have been questioning whether or not I should be making at all because of this feeling of missing the mark, but it wasn’t in this context. When you are intimately and emotionally led by making (which I am), and when it comes from a place of struggle in yourself regarding health and the body (which it does), then I have to agree, it becomes a blind spot. What is missed in the making is the sense of that feeling; it’s all a bit empty. I feel like I have missed a beat in my rigour of assessing the qualities of my work and have not recognised the dangers of making and the emotional aspect it becomes riddled with.
I need to know what exactly I am addressing in my work, what the concept is - that is ‘first base’. And I need to get that presence to arise in the quality of the work. I need to see that expression first and then say, ok, how can I qualify that in my making? I can’t always let the making take over – I must reflect critically on what is being produced, not be blindly led by it. Because this is how I have ended up somewhere completely unrelated. In never addressing the outcome of the making, in not seeing what the audience sees, I am missing the point of my work. Even if the audience isn’t interested in looking, they need to be able to affirm some of those situations I have put into it.
Mujeeb framed it as ‘a familiarity in making’ – we have certain beliefs about the frame from which our creativity will appear, something that we feel is our way of making art. And we never question it. We never question that maybe it isn’t quite good enough. We are never critical of this.
His suggestion was to maybe give up the making and explore the concept, to stop making and do it in another way. Can I say it without making? Is the workshop the wrong place to be going? Can I try to make something with the same level of rigour as I have with my ‘familiar making’?
My initial reaction (besides some level of baulking at the idea) was a fleeting thought towards writing, especially as it has been highlighted as a potential strength. And maybe it is an error on my part, a lack of maturity or a misguided perception, but after giving myself more time to consider it, I don’t feel ready or want to give up making.
I can acknowledge the attachment to being able to do something well, believing that you are skilled at it or a talent you were born with. I can wholly accept that within this grounded expectation, we miss the point; it blinds us, literally puts blinkers on us. However, these are processes I feel attuned to, not ones that I am particularly good at, but something of me is in there. Would you go and do things that didn’t align with you? Would you really?
The example Mujeeb gave about manufacturing a phone was what drove it home – if a phone wasn’t good enough, if it didn’t work, we would stop making it and change it. But in art, we know it’s not good enough, and we carry on anyway. I know there is something not working in my work. I want enough honesty and integrity to acknowledge this as kindly as possible and to let those parts that aren’t working go.
I do think that, because of the position I came to this MA from, I am guilty of falling into a routine of familiar making (I started making again where I left off), and I’ve been crafting away and become blind to what is actually going on in the work – you get interested in what the materials do, not what it is supposed to do. And in doing so, you let go of that first base. What I am trying to say has to be present. I need to set a bar of rigour in maintaining that first base. If I don’t, I will always be misfiring.
What about performance?
The number of times I have been asked that question alone should have made me try out performance already. But my level of not wanting to do this is akin to preferring not to practice at all.
I want to fully acknowledge that I know that it is the things that we say no to that are often the ones we should try to understand why. I know it is being suggested because there could be something in it for me. I know this.
While I want to pluck up the courage to act on this suggestion of performance privately, with me as the only audience, just to have a go, but honestly, I don’t even know if I know how. It feels like being made to dance when you absolutely detest dancing.
I don’t want to keep following systems of art practice I am familiar with without ever questioning why the outcome is still the same. But until I know what I want, I am not sure what my work is doing. I need to reposition myself, the association, and the conversation. It needs to affect (you) how it affects me, and then I need to know how to present that.
His other recommendation was to go to more exhibitions, not just every exhibition but shows that interest my interests, particularly pick what I think I am about. Which I know I need to do more of. I need to use that criticality of looking to measure what I am about against that. The people who use the same materials, subject, and content as me – where does it work, does it work at all?
I am taking all these comments on board but need time to mull them over.
12/07/2022 Operating – parts & pieces
To transport over site home, I had to take it apart, and it really did feel like an operation. What I was left with were sections, extrapolated limbs with holes in them like clean amputations. These voids revealed that the insides were hollow, they gave you entry points to look into or for things to maybe come out of. As separate pieces, their stances became more bizarre, but at the same time, it enhanced human elements of standing, walking, or leaning, and recognizing body parts such as hips and knees and legs.
In cutting them up, something has both loosened and sharpened in my work that I don’t think has happened before, they are odd, curious, wandering appendages. They feel closer to the body than my work has been capable of before, and that makes me really excited.
I am reminded of the sentence in Openings by Quinn Latimer, ‘haunted by but hunting the human body’ referring to Olga Balema’s works
I am not really sure what is happening with them, but I’d like to explore this unexpected revelation.
parts & pieces - they have to lean against the walls because they have no self-support, some also work better as individuals than others (not the one on the far left)
parts & pieces (detail) - you could see directly into them through the holes. In doing so, this revealed their inner workings, the severed threads of modroc and wire armature are not what I want the viewer to see, but to have this internal view highlighted and accessible is very interesting to me.
23/07/2022 Discovering other artists and opportunites: Wysing Open Studios
It was great to meet the studio artists at Wysing Art Centre and discuss their studio practice.
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Re. professional progression, I hope I will be able to be a studio holder and present my practice in this way.
I had a particular interest in the practice of artist Robert Foster-Jones.
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I was interested in his concern for revealing hidden forms of knowledge. His works are contemplative like they know something or are trying to speak to you. They were also very playful – the notion of play, he told me, has been introduced by his young daughter and how she interacts with his art and the world.
A particular set of works really spoke to me was Foster-Jones’ ceramics and a table of new works he was currently working on (pictured left).
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Robert Foster-Jones' ceramic works at Wysing Open Studios (my own photo)
They look of/for the body.
Things for hands, things you can hold.
Like parts of bodies or parts of the landscape – bones or stones
Their worked texture spoke of traces of human contact, and I just loved the shapes and forms. It was one of those moments when you wished that work was of your own making.
In asking him about his ceramics, he told me about a residency he took part in at the Scottish Sculpture Workshops (SSW). He honed his ceramic skills and learnt about these techniques here.
Clay has been calling me for a long time in my practice, but I feel inhibited using this material. I want to be taught how to use it. I want to glean an understanding from someone because, on my own, I am daunted. And the battle of trying to get access to the ceramic facilities at Camberwell is one I have given up on.
Off the back of my conversation with Robert, I applied for the SSW residency.
(Edited 01/09/2022) Unfortunately, my application was unsuccessful this time around.
01/09/2022 Works to do with the body- Whitechapel Open
William Cobbing
Anatomy Lesson, 2019
Video
William Cobbing's works in the Whitechapel Open (my own photos)
William Cobbing’s works are carnal and primal. I am interested in how his works function on dualistic levels in many ways.
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They both fascinate me and repulse me. He speaks of ‘body boundaries’, and I see this in two ways,
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He literally extends the body, blurring the boundaries of where one starts and the other stops.
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Body boundaries could be considered as pushing the limits of what the body can do in that situation.
They do more than one thing - both as performance and as objects – almost like mimicking the literal state change of clay. This then extends into the mixing of historic craft, decorative notions, the body of clay, and human bodies.
Sense of inside and outside – interior and exterior, what goes in, what spews out
The absurdity of it sitting alongside the seriousness of it. Cobbing speaks of this sense of humour being gleaned out in a physical way. To draw a parallel to this, artist Holly Hendry talks about this serious slapstick nature too,
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I struggle with his works, not because I don’t like them, but because of how they make me feel within my own body – Cobbing likens this to a sense of ASMR. I find its oozy, sucky ickiness difficult.
It’s on your head; it’s all over your face. It enters a personal space I don’t want it in, even though I am not the one doing it. It’s what it leads me to imagine - trying to imagine how you breathe, trying to imagine the weight of it, trying to imagine how you feel inside that thing. It is something about relating to that body part – your head, the holes (eyes/mouth) – these things are precious.
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Paying attention to the orifices, holes, where they lead to, the feel they give off, in relation to my own works.
Eva Fabregas' works in the Whitechapel Open (my own video footage)
Eva Fàbregas' work fascinated me because of my instant and desperate need to touch it. I couldn’t help myself. It was soft and squishy, the kind of squish you want to really squeeze. Under my fingertip, I knew that the material was elastic, malleable and could be moulded. The artist says that touch and sensation are critical in her work - it embodied the somatic and the tactile with huge success.
Her works concern themselves with a playoff between simple life forms, organic forms, and sexual forms. She works to blur the boundaries between them, heightening them with a sense of desire and attraction which is difficult to ignore. It borders on erotic, which is not my gig, but the materiality and questionable forms work so well in getting you to question the body and how it is shaped.
I could see under the bulbous skin of these forms that it was stuffed with bubble wrap. This meant it could be moulded into other shapes too. It wasn’t fixed. The colours were important too, pastel soft and skin-like, which added to their visual desire.
I enjoyed the playfulness of these works and continue to consider how I could implement a softer side to my work akin to this - what materials, what shapes or forms?
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Reference: Whitechapel Gallery, 2022, The London Open 2022, Whitechapel Gallery, London
14/09/2022 Making again
There has been a big break in my thinking and making over the summer due to having caught covid and being really sick.
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In picking up where I left off and following on from making these parts and pieces (pictured in entry 12/07/2022 Operating – parts & pieces ), I don’t really view them as works in their own right. I want to rework and refine them to make them into bodies of their own.
Something it has highlighted is a loosening of the work. Knowing, seeing, that there is an inside and an outside to these works has activated something in them.
I also want these works to stand up on their own.
Extending from the practical reflections in making over site and thinking about a skeleton, this idea of a framework, an essential structure, I have been thinking of using steel as a skeleton to frame new works upon.
Top left & bottom right: pages from my sketchbook, sketching out how this could work, what it could look like, the stances it could take.
Top right & bottom left: images of Olivia Bax and Olga Balema's works utilising steel as a visible framework to a body of colour/material
16/09/2022 Tutorial with James Ireland
In my first tutorial back after the summer break, this conversation focused on over site from the show at Wilson Road and how I intend to push this work forward.
Looking back at this work and my concerns, James’ advice to this was to remember that this kind of show does not allow for that kind of ‘ideal’ overview of the work, which is helpful towards being less critical of this work and a reminder for group shows going forward.
My other take-always from this conversation are:
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Get tactical spatially
Remember that my work is sculptural and takes on space, so I need to get tactical with this. Own the space more.
This kind of work will always stand as floor-based work. I need to know that there will always be a painting or a film going on around it that (in the context of a group show) is unlikely to be mine. I need to take this fact on. My work also can frame things. It frames, captures, or cuts out parts – be more tactful in this ability.
What is my work like in a crowded room vs an ideal or empty room? Check if it can work in both contexts.
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Lean into the tussles I have
Formalism – there are undoubtedly formal elements to my work; what does it mean to be formal in 2022?
Figurative aspect because I am talking about the body, to think of these works as figures in some format.
Relationship with sculpture – what I am doing is making a skeleton, building a frame, a skin – these are all sculptural processes and analogies which echo the body
Scale - The work has ‘broader shoulders’ now, and I like that. I need to keep leaning into its ability to size up and spread, do not retreat to the wall. Make them come out into the space and stand up. I know that working large scale comes with a particular set of problems (logistically). Can I find a way to work with this and push it?
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Watch out for making aesthetic decisions when I should be making practical ones.
Re. Learning from making oversite and better understanding the need for structural integrity, there are several ways I can attack these structural issues.
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My attention now turns to being near this course's end and making decisions about what I want to select to push and resolve, particularly for the Copeland/Dilston Show. In deciding to rework the fleshed-out linear forms, there are several things to consider,
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Will the steel armature make it lose some of its playfulness? Will a prosaic making process filter through to the overall feel of the work?
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Could some be more solid while others are more abject, barely holding it together?
Other observations:
I repeatedly use the action of cutting and joining in my works, to the point where I actively divulge this process and its decision-making even if I don’t need to. So, what is it about this action that is stuck in my head? Do I make these actions part of the work?
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The way they are joined, bolted together?
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Open sections, is it held open/cut open, delicate or rough?
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How do I want these entry points to appear?
The body is what ultimately hovers over this. It is at the heart of what I am wrestling, and as I settle into this territory, I am reminded that many things go on with the body - it can be strong, weak, ill, sexy, male, or female. There is much scope to approach that, play around with – a lifetime’s worth.
One thing that James said that I loved and struck a chord in making things make sense was ‘what is possible in Michaela world?’ – there is a precise language and set of tactics that make sense within my works; what else can be a part of this repertoire and deal with this same thing? I will ask that question more often – what is possible in Michaela world? He also said, ‘it is going to come out as some funny linear sculpture because that is what you do,’ and it was then that I realised that was absolutely true.
22/09/2022 Tutorial with Mujeeb Bhatti
There is a shift of awareness towards the focus of outcomes. Of this course, of marks and certification and the upcoming exhibition.
My take-aways from this tutorial are,
To be aware of my practice’s qualities, the good and the bad, and the strengths of my work. I need to use this time now to affirm those strengths. Exercise those muscles. With some level of confidence in this, it will define my way forwards in refining and expanding these qualities to be the central focus of my work.
Mujeeb highlighted that I might be too familiar with all the bits I am using - the subject matter, materials, content, colours, form, shape, and scale – is that enough?
What is it about the works I intend to make that are different from what I have already achieved?
Has it progressed and shifted enough? I want to go for it with these new works. I honestly believe it will be a progression and a shift of all things previous evolving into their new state. A resolution of this work is progress where there wasn’t a resolution before. Will it be enough? I am not sure; nothing I have made has been enough yet! Is it ever enough?
It was suggested that I make 3d sketches of my intentions as a way of working quickly to assemble a rough version of it, something small scale, so you can handle it, as a way of sketching it up to see before going ahead and making it in full to know if it is enough, get some feedback on it and to feel confident in it.
I believe this comes down to an individual approach. When it comes to lines and expanding the space of the line, welding is my version of sketching rough versions to see if they are enough. It is my drawing in space, it is fast and instinctive, and they don’t follow many pre-meditated plans. If I make it and I am not happy with it, it doesn’t get to go any further than that. As Olivia Bax says, they are ‘a grid to go off’.
There is still the scope for performance in my work. Mujeeb has always voiced that there is more meat in it for me and my work. Since he pushed the idea back on 12/07/2022.
I don’t want to deal with that much lack of confidence at this stage in the course in pushing myself towards performance. I feel I have enough maturity and understanding of my creative limits that this is not something to switch my focus on right now. Not when it’s something I struggle with, with such deep-seated aversion, and needs much more coaxing than the simple act of doing it. It is enough for me at this point to know it is an uncomfortable territory that I am starting to lean into. (There are many things I need to lean into…)
I know I need to find that energy or sense of quality related to the same thing in the sculptures I am making. And maybe performing something, treating it like a sketch, could help illuminate the expression I need. However, I want to see what the outcome of this current work I am making is before I begin to consider what could be next.
16/09/2022 - 30/09/2022 Current making
Making over site I used a plastic-coated wire mesh to give the tubular shape throughout, but this was quite flexible and could give until the plaster went off. Because it was gridded, in some areas, this pattern came through the modroc. I want to avoid this texture coming through. It was also wound up multiple times to give it more structure so it wouldn’t collapse, meaning it wasn’t fully hollow on the inside.
Instead, I wanted to try out using metal discs attached at intervals to give the tubular shape – this also means it could be hollow inside.
They look like vertebrae which, in effect, they are.
Image left & middle: the discs are made of annealed steel which is flexible enough to bend into tight circles.
Image right & below: I began attaching the discs fixed to one side to join them, but I realised that when that area is covered over, and the steel line continues out of the plaster body, it will be offset to one side. I would rather it drop down centrally.
Above images: I re-made the discs with spokes so that I could weld the centre of the spoke to the steel line and that way, the discs can sit centrally on the sculpture.
Focusing on cleaner lines: Trying to make the forms out of one singular line as much as possible, rather than chopped up parts that get welded together. I hope this gives it a more fluid feeling, the continuous flow of the line
Details that hold bodily suggestions: legs, hind legs, knees and elbows, feet
In order to stop myself from making blindly and keeping a focus or a feel, I riff off of sketches (pictured above left) which are then simplified into singular line drawings, (above right), which then become notes to refer to while welding. I think this has been translating well. Modifications come in the making in order to make the works stand up on their own legs because this is never translated fully in 2d drawings (they always exist with elements of impossibility!). Structurally, I am worried that when it comes to adding the layers of modroc, this will shift the centre of balance and what that will mean for these works that have to stand up. So I have been making them with more consideration for this by giving them tripod legs (more robust stability). Having them stand upright is essential.
Visualising where the 'body' of the work will be and how this will look: Where I have been struggling is with the fixed rigidity of attaching the discs – which is ironic when the skeleton’s point is to provide that fixed structure. It’s more to do with being unable to un-do things; these are more or less permanent attachments.
Everything has been quite intuitive until this point. Now, attaching these parts determines what is solid and what is not; this becomes a fixed decision I cannot alter, and I struggle with that intuition being taken away. It’s hard to visualise exactly and to know what the actual process of filling in these areas will add or alter.
Collection of skeleton lines in the studio
03/10/2022 Conversation with Sarah Woodfine
I am concerned about how much performance is being highlighted as something to push when performance is not something I want to do and what a deviation this is from the work I intend to make.
Sarah suggested that because my work is attempting to understand the body, maybe it is making us think about performance because they are performing objects – that they are the performers. It is a performative inference. I feel like this is true.
Going forwards, I want to complete these steel skeletons as intended. I hope they will be more haptic and open than my previous works.
Sarah’s concern for my works is that there is little room for fluidity or a chance element in my current making. The drawings I have done in previous units speak of instability and fragility and are more fluid. She encouraged me to think of soft sculpture and use materials that are softer but with weight, like Doretha Tanning.
11/10/2022 Drawing Reflection Seminar: Giulia Ricci
Artist Giulia Ricci spoke about her current project, Lines of Empathy.
Firstly, her project was a beautiful thing that has become so layered - the idea of making an autobiography of her practice through the works of others, I thought, was wonderful. My key points of interest that made me think about my practice (and the upcoming Research Festival) were,
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Formulating/asking questions – the questions themselves and what they open up space for,
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E.g., the idea of asking embodied questions, ones that don’t ask for ‘sight/looking’, is fascinating.
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The specificity of questions and responses (in this case, they were about very specific works and how they shape the conversation.)
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How the artist making the publication is reflected on/featured within the publication. The decision was not to include her own works or her own response to the questions. Instead, the front cover was of one of her works, and the paper it is printed on is matched as closely as possible to the original paper it is drawn onto (aesthetics, tactility carried over into material language) as Giulia described ‘hugging’ the works within the book, holding them together in this space. She has written the introduction; the rest of the book is given over to the selected works.
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How can this influence my publication?
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Questions asked, responses given – to whom?
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Relating to any specific artworks or artists?
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What would I pick if I selected artworks to represent me as an autobiography?
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Time scale, this was a long process with no definitive deadline.
While there wasn’t a great deal of visual connection between my work and Giulia’s, there were a lot of shared thoughts, and she brought to my attention some areas I was unaware of and am so excited to know more about,
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Embodied cognition - ‘shaped by the entire body.’ If we don’t have our bodies, we can’t perceive
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The physicality of words, in place of physicality itself (in ref. to covid times)
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Seeing vestibular and proprioceptive senses as additional senses to the normal 5 (sight/smell/taste/touch/sound)
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Mirror neurons – understanding others, their intentions and actions, that these neurons are connected to our movement systems
These are all things that occur IN OUR BODIES.
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Tutorial with Giulia Ricci
From our conversation, these were the insights I resonated with and are thoughts to continue to mull over,
The inside has more potential than the outside
The idea of resonance – what it makes you feel
My works seek to connect or communicate in some way
They are playful – play has something to do with inspiration – inspiration is to inhale (!)
Pipes, straws, tubes, wind instruments, things you could breathe through, look through, periscopes, microscopes
20/10/2022 Research Presentation with Catrin Webster
This was an opportunity to share my online platform and gain critical feedback.
Catrin made some valuable comments that I had not considered before,
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Visibility is dominant in my work – what I reveal and what I conceal – what would happen if I took sight away and removed that sight-based view?
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Light is a materiality of my work
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As is colour, it is a point of entry or denial
10/10/2022 - 28/11/2022 Making from home, preparing for Copeland
The works I show at Copeland will be an installation made up of five sculptures, titled a-bodying
I took the title from the text thought in the act: passages in the ecology of experience, by E. Manning & B. Massumi I was reading at the time of making. The paragraph read,
‘Entering the dance of attention, your perceiving converged with your moving activity, and your activity was your thinking. You entered a mode of environmental awareness in which to perceive is to enact thought, and thought is directly relational…with no immediate need for language, satisfying itself at a level with the body’s movements: expression a-bodying.’
(Manning, E. & Massumi, B. 2014. pg. 10)
I thought this passage summed up exactly what the work was – a thinking through the body.
without studio access, I continued to work from home (Left) running wire along the discs in order to flesh out the area that would become the body of the work as I realised there was too much spacing between each disc to be able to cover it with hessian (middle image) to create the body (Right) the mod-roc-ed structure
mod roc details - making a solid area of modroc and giving it the three-dimensionality I was after, was more difficult than I imagined. I wanted to create the feel of the surface of the body, taking words that I had written towards the OCAD U presentation and trying to imbue some of that into these areas.
The outside of the body gives us lots of clues as to what’s going on, on the inside.
This surface anatomy, like a topography of touchpoints, indicates points of reference like signposts.
The protrusion of our collar bones, blades of shoulders, outcrops of vertebrae, indents of ribs and caps of knees. Things that stick out. All visibly shift under the surface of the skin, notations of the skeleton that frames us.
(notes from my presentation know it like the back of my hand: inside out, the body as landscape.)
In some instances, this did not work out (pictured left) I initially filled in the hollow space at the base of this work, turning it into a solid, but I really did not like it aesthetically. It was so flat and very odd as a feature. I felt it weakened the piece overall. The solid areas stopped the feeling of movement - they are a mass, and you can't travel through a mass. So I removed the solid area and re-worked it into linear tube ends to reveal the steel skeleton again and kept the feeling of flow (pictured right)​
One thing that was definitely an over sight on my part was how much longer the modroc and plaster would take to dry due to the damp, colder weather
Because the plaster was still a little too soft from not drying out enough, some of the works were damaged in transit to the gallery (left) and had to be patched up.
Also, due to the plaster/pigment still drying out over the course of the exhibition, the pinks changed colour each day. In places, it can become a vivid red-pink, like a rash. I don’t like this aesthetic, it can look really diseased. But I do not know what it is I do in the process that makes that happen with the dye - I haven’t sussed that out yet in the process of making. I think it is good to have the differing complexions, but too red is too far!
It was during this making, when I was filling in solid areas, that I finally realised I wanted and needed a softer material to work with. It was what everybody was saying, but now I realised it for myself. I needed something with fluidity and an element of chance, still with a weight to it, but something softer.
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I know my tutors saw this and tried to encourage me long before now (sorry it took so long!) But it is one thing knowing, but a whole other thing feeling this in the making of the work. And I finally feel it. Something literally clicked in my body. It was a limitation of the materials I was using. I couldn’t express what I wanted in my hands and felt, like a pang of hunger, the need to reach and make with something softer.
I think this tells me that this series of work is complete.
04 – 06/11/2022 Postgraduate Show at Copeland Gallery, Reflections
The works were like a mass of bodies, a congregation of legs and pinks.
Gathered in the corner amongst themselves, there was a sense of proximity, almost touching each other. They could be amassing, loitering. Clustered and conversing. A sense of entwinement or entanglement, where you struggled to separate one from the other.
A-bodying, 2022, installation. Copeland Gallery
For me, this struggle persisted. I struggled with the fact that you (the viewer) couldn’t get around it. It was very cornered. Being cornered like that made it feel very inaccessible, untouchable, closed off, barring. I watched on as viewers would teeter, peering into the installation from the outside.
You (the viewer) could not scale them or get a sense of their scale. You could not be amongst them. You were unable to relate to them in a body-to-body sense, which feels a bit ironic when it’s about bodies.
This format of professional exhibition practice (in handing works over to a curator to make the decisions) made me realise, with more clarity, the specifics of how I want my work to be interacted with. I wanted to see moments of relation in the bodies of viewers relative to this body of work. Legs with legs. Heights matching heights. To stand up to it or alongside it. I’d have liked to of seen them deal with the space. Moving about in it, feeling like they could amble around. And in dealing with spatiality, to consider the work’s ability to frame spaces, what it frames and how.
Image of how viewers interacted with the works shown at Copeland, viewing at a distance, peering into
Image of how (in an ideal world) I'd like viewers to be able to interact with my works. To be able to move amongst them and be physically in relation to them
In making my work public, it wasn’t just making it public to an audience viewing it; it was also making it public to the practices of exhibiting. In hindsight, I realise the proposal is an opportunity not just to propose the work for the show but to relay the feel of the work. I think I missed the translation of how it could be presented (e.g., it is not a painting that hangs on the wall, it is an installation, and it does more). Therefore, I missed the translation of its activation.
It is this activation that is an issue for me. Its placement feels paused in a corner.
I struggle to know what to say about the work because of its inactivity. The work hasn’t actually moved position from when it arrived in the space. When it came off the van, it was stashed in that corner, so it was out of the main thoroughfare because it was a trip hazard while other works were continuing to be delivered. Its placement is the one I plonked it down in. It is small and compacted, aiming to take up as little space as possible to avoid being in the way. Its way of being here is no different from how it feels in the shed/studio at home. To me, it still feels paused in that install moment, the show had begun around it, but I am still waiting for something to happen. So, it is tough for me to see this as activated work.
I’d like to know how they feel to take up space. To be in the middle of a room, to get in the way and see these awkward things be a bit of a hindrance, something you are forced to navigate. I’d like for them to be bolder. I feel like I made them with that capacity. I also made a conscious effort to think of these works in 360, so they could be navigated from all viewpoints. But here, your view is very restricted.
So, there were intentions for these works that were not realised in this show, but I do not see it as a negative. There is always a compromise between desire and expectations and the reality of what manifests in a group show. If anything, it has spurred me on, knowing there is more potential to be had out of this body of work.
I am forever surprised at how little my works have to do for others to consider them activated.
Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to discuss it, but I’d like to spend more time with the curator’s opinions of what makes the work ‘do’ something for them. What is their viewpoint? I want to better understand how these decisions are made relative to my own. That said, handing your works over to a curator like this, removing all curatorial decision-making, and seeing what happens was a liberating experience and a process I really enjoyed.
To speak of the show as a whole, I enjoyed discovering the curation of this exhibition. I saw the show as a kind of thinking exercise in how my works coalesced in the space and in the relationships and conversations it struck up with other pieces.
The room I was exhibiting in had a persistent visual and formal strength. This wasn’t just down to the artwork. It was also because of the space itself. With its heritage rooted in Peckham’s industrial past, this once warehouse gallery space is a compromised white cube. Its concrete floor is lumpy, and its front lobby wall is exposed and unfinished, mottled in colours from concrete grey to brick orange with a smattering of cracks and holes.
Installation views of the first room at Copeland Gallery
The features of this room reflexively interact with all the works within it. It allows you to observe the sensitivities that fluctuate in the spaces between the pieces. This room had a haptic consciousness and a
heightened sense of touch and tactility. They are all seemingly quiet works on their own, but together in a room, they speak volumes about lived experiences and the mechanics of touch.
To me, it spoke of indeterminate edges of things – of definitions, maybe questioning what it is you are looking at – and material tensions, most notably to do with surfaces. It allowed you to read the feelings of things. So even though each work spoke about different subject matters, together and between them, they drew out generous understandings and interactions by virtue of the fact each had, or was made from, a physical lived experience fundamentally related to being in and of the world.
I enjoyed how this haptic sensitivity pulled this dynamic across the room, even into its viewing. It became about bodies; even your ability to move about was directed by works that encouraged you to move around the space in a certain way. This was the first time exhibiting on this MA where I felt my works had been seen with this material and haptic relationship in mind, and I am so pleased it has been viewed publicly in this context. ​
Due to its positioning, my work was separate from the others, so it drew its parallels from across the room. The wall my works featured against also struck up a different kind of relationship or context – this wall was host to a vast collection of control panels and electrical sources. This compromise became the way viewers questioned what they saw. As was pointed out to me repeatedly, ‘I love your work, but it’s such a shame about…’ as the audience gestured to all the gubbins that littered the wall I was showing against. While this wasn’t ideal and a clean wall is almost always preferred aesthetically, these are mundane features you can’t ever escape. There is also an interesting correspondence between the building itself taking on some of those bodily conditions that the sculptural forms themselves are proposing. These architectonics are things I could consider leaning into.
The unedited view of the electrics and control panels with my works.
Comments from viewers
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Isolated dissected parts. A sense of being either strung up for examination, on a slide or a microscope or a sense of butchery like being cut from the bone and prepared
I love this insight and think it chimes true to how these works have become what they are – I did literally cut them up from a whole into dissected parts. I think the ability to see this means that action has been carried forward and a quiet or perhaps tender trauma has been retained. I also like its inference as a way of looking, that it’s up for scrutiny.
That sense of examination harks at science or medical procedures and at its crudest with butchery, to do with flesh, the stuff of the body.
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The notion of navigating or journeying, travelling along with dead-ends, loops and detours that become part of the journey.
It has allowed for a sense of movement while being a static work! I am pleased with this comment because it suggests a terrain or landscape, which returns to the idea of the body as a landscape. I like the notion of loops and detours and finding your way back.
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Realising that there were individual parts but difficult to know how to interact with them
I think this is down to the placement/curation of the works, being in a corner, and how they were grouped. There were five individual works, but they were not considered as individuals here.
I think this comment reveals that the audience wanted to interact with them, which makes me happy that the desire for interaction was there. However, it could not be acted upon and raises a very valid point about how you saw these works – physically, you could only look on, which is how you interact with a painting, but these are not paintings.
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noted the human scale
The works were successful at meeting the viewer on that human scale and engagement
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Bodily references, like arteries or blood vessels and from this, thinking of it as a network or body as a vessel and a means of travelling through space
A nod towards the body, a correlation with being something living. I feel like this comment links directly to my overall MA enquiry noted in my proposal to explore the shapes, forms, and passages relating to the internal landscape of the human body.
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a suggestion of being creature-like, one person said they were triffid-like, and another said they reminded them of flamingos
These made me chuckle, and while at first I was sort of horrified by those comments, actually, it suggests my works have an anthropomorphic ability which is something I set out wanting – that they look like they are doing something, being – I think this shows that they have taken on a self-awareness, an autonomous personality with a creature or human-like disposition.
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I am very happy with the point I have arrived at with these works. I feel I have pushed, evolved, and completed this body of work. I don’t think I have ever arrived at this feeling of completion in any of my works, ever. What is unresolved, however, is the holes and cavities. While they are intriguing, they are early in their statehood and evolution. They are curious but basic. They are not well established physically, and they are not well understood by me. I want them to be spaces the viewer wants to have a rootle in. I see this aspect as an invitation for something more. I am aware that the inside has more potential than the outside, but I haven’t understood the depth of this yet. When I carry this notion forward, it will not be with these materials.
21/11/2022 Last MA Entry
Finishing up this MA has me looking back at my very first studio journal entry. Now that it has come full circle, I wanted to reflect on what my practice has become and where it is going.
While I do think I could have achieved more during this unit - I spent a great deal of this term sick and lost out on chunks of time and making – I am pleased with the point I have reached. I am very happy to have resolved what became my main body of work. I feel like that body of work has been in my system for a long time, working its way through, and with it now resolved, I will be able to move forward. That makes it sound as though it was a blockage in a negative way, which I don’t think is the case. It was a ‘push that pulled’ (Manning, E. & Massumi, B. 2014: pg. 24)
Between that pushing and pulling, new threads have been teased out. And I am reminded that this enquiry is one to last a lifetime, not just the snapshot of this very small window of time. An MA is not a forever space. The learning that I have accumulated during this course will continue to move through me, and I am excited to see how it will show up in my work going forwards.
So, what will that look like? With embodiment as a key methodology of my practice,
I know it will involve softer stuff.
I know it will involve clay.
I know it will acknowledge writing as part of my practice.
I know it will start to use the physicality of language as a context beginning with orientational metaphors.
I know it will continue to explore the terrain of the body as landscape.
I know it will start to question the senses in more depth, involving more than just sight.
I am going to finish this course by writing myself a new proposal for what comes next.