MA Week 19 - Reflection on the week

A slightly better week, although still feeling very much under the weather.

 

Work in Progress presentation

Friday’s session in college was a series of work in progress presentations. I found the whole day dragged and it over-ran to the point where I was practically asleep (not least due to recovering from this bug), which wasn’t very polite to fellow students. We seem to have had a spate of crits, work in progress, etc, and sometimes you just have to do the work. Anyway… I talked about the application of the “heritage” critical perspective, the laser cut images of my face, the solar printing, drypoint etching, the generative wandering and the acrylic pieces on paper. I got mixed feedback. One fellow student felt I needed more structure in my work, like restricting it to one theme e.g. the gasometers of Leeds, or one type of practice, e.g. printmaking. Another fellow student felt the breadth of techniques added interest to the themes. I guess there is always a tension between “freedom” and “system”. It’s true I’ve sometimes felt a bit off down a blind alley this term but I have repeatedly tried to take stock and pull myself back to a narrative that I can explain. Perhaps I need to think about that and learn to explain it better!  

I talked a bit about decay arising from the charred MDF laser cut and another fellow student suggested this could be a theme moving into the “decay of my heritage”. I guess that theme is already there, but not overtly, so that is to think about for the next module. When I talked about the generative wandering I mentioned the people doing their thing in the present as I looked for the past (jogging, baby-walking, Diamond White drinking) and that was reflected back to me in the idea of temporality – another them to explore! From the tutor and fellow students I got some names to look into: Karel Martins (designer), Daniel Eatock (creates responses to something particular), Leeds Surrealist Group, Psychogeography hub on Tate website, Paul Ricoeur, Zygmunt Baumann. So a few to read up on over Easter.

Reading

Speaking of reading: I had a skim over the first couple of chapters of “The Craftsman” by Richard Sennett (2009), which had been recommended by my tutor. It didn’t grab me – clearly not every book will do that. I felt his premise of Pandora’s casket (sic) being equivalent to a culture of man-made things risking continual self-harm (p2) needed more exploration and explanation to convince me. But perhaps that’s because I’m an old programmer, not a Greek scholar. In fact Sennett talks about programmers and business process improvement in chapter 1. I’ve lived through what I need to know about both programming and process improvement. So I’ve paused reading that book. 

Much more relevant to what I’m currently doing, but less snappily titled, is “Exploring Learning, Identity & Power through Life History & Narrative Research”. Again, I’ve only had time to skim the first one and a half chapters, but lots of interesting ideas. Within the first few pages we have the idea of “life histories” – one’s life story in the context of the social and historical conditions prevailing (p2), problems around construction of identities which matter because identities shape people’s practices (p3), and the idea of the tension between the politics of the state and the possibility for social change through the small everyday acts of individuals (p5). In Chapter 2, the ethics of narrative enquiry are explored, including the fact that the researcher will always have a stake in the formation of the written identities of the participants because she or he too is a human being. I have only got to about page 16 and I think there is plenty in here for me to explore and reflect upon. The idea of “life history” is appealing as I think it relates to my idea of “lived experience”; the individual’s experience at that particular point in the space-time continuum. Also, even using myself and my own life history as a source, I am reconstructing my own identity and experience – more clearly? Less clearly? Tilting it to whatever I want to say now? I am hoping I can get time to have a closer read of this book as it seems to complement some of the ideas in Harrison’s book in terms of my own critical perspectives. I think this will also have to be over Easter, the way things are going.

Making

In and amongst all the reading and presenting, I have managed to etch a new plate based on my generative wandering to Armley. I have only done two test prints so I will need to work on it further next week. However, it is taking shape and looking promising.

 

First proof

After the work in progress presentations, I nipped onto the laser cutter and engraved the image of my face into two pieces of corrugated cardboard. I wanted to work on these with mixed media, again based on my Armley wandering. I’ve done a couple of coats of acrylic with a 1-inch house brush. I’m just working freely and intuively with these. They are test/experimental pieces but on a bigger scale than I’d normally do such work – they are about 52 x 39cm each. The colours are based on the colours I saw during the wandering, with the blue layer also possibly representing the sky.

Armley 1 : Corrugated Cardboard Work in Progress

 

MA Week 18 - Artist Research :”Cloth & Memory” exhibition

Based on : Millar, L. (ed), (2013). Cloth & Memory {2}[exhibition catalogue}. Saltaire, Salts Estates Ltd.

I have finally made some time to look at this exhibition catalogue which my tutor kindly lent me. It accompanied a 2013 exhibition in the empty spinning room of Salts Mill, Saltaire, with all the connotations of past and present, memory and experience, that such an exhibition might bring. I’m pleased that I waited until after reading some of Harrison’s book on heritage as a critical perspective, as this catalogue seems to make sense in that context. I’ve just chosen a few artists whose words and work spoke to me, and I comment on these below. 

Lesley Millar (introduction, pp15-18)

Millar argues that history is a linear construct with day following day. However, memory is much more malleable. She contrasts “learned memories”, e.g. multiplication tables, with memories of experience that come to mind unbidden, re-constructed, dissolving into other memories. The self of the present puts its own view on each memory; the memory becomes layered and ambiguous. We destruct and destroy, as well as re-construct and re-purpose, our memories. She goes on to discuss the idea of our memories being quite literally wrapped in cloth due to our relationship with textiles as clothing and quotes Reiko Sudo ; “ ‘I am interested in the life of fibres and textiles, how they are reborn and recycled”. As with cloth, so with memory”. 

Caroline Bartlett (p30)

“Stilled”

Bartlett had produced embroidery hoops into which are stretched pieces of woollen cloth, and a small porcelain roundel is placed into each one. A web of stitching spreads from the roundel, forming a drawing. The fabric is allowed to soak up spillages, absorbing memory and experience. This is a response to the presence of the bygone era and the absence of the bygone industry. The embroidery suggests hints and cracks, and the ugliness of the stains contrasts with the beauty of the stitching.  

Maxine Bristow (p39)

“Mutable Frame of Reference”

Bristow had installed some steel frames draped with various cloths. This was a play on the structure of our memories vs their fragility and frequent re-working. The use of cloth,as a familiar material, allows the viewer a way into relating to the work. The steel and cloth together form hard and soft edges, inviting the viewer to think about their own relationship with cloth and also with nostalgia, memory and heritage. The following quote is quite long but really seemed to sum up some of my recent understanding of identity and heritage:

“On the one hand memory and heritage (as a materialisation of collective memory) provide a sense of continuity and stability. As a way in which we make sense of ourselves in the present through reference to the past, they are important in the construction and representation of identity providing a sense of individual and social coherence in an ever-changing world. However… both heritage and memory make selective use of the past for contemporary purposes”.

Caren Garfen (p50)

“Reel Lives, 1891”.

Garfen undertook a detailed analysis of the 1891 Saltaire census. She then produced cotton reels with hand stitched roundels as “memory plaques”, each giving details of a married woman’s name and details. She also hand-embroidered two apron strings, one with occupations open to women and one with occupations open to and men; unequal opportunities giving unequal length apron strings.  

Philippa Lawrence (p74).

“The Fabric of making”

Lawrence researched the language used at mill, in both technical and everyday terms, and produced a list which she called a poem (e.g. “cording”, “winding”, “laughing”). She then had this woven into selvedge edge of a bale of cloth, thereby depicting the making of fabric and the fabric of living. Usually the selvedge is disposed of, and she draws a parallel between this and the forgotten lives of the millworkers.

Karina Thompson(p102)

“1 Hour’s production = 1 ½ miles = 15 lengths”

Thompson ran up and down the massive empty spinning room and collected imprints of her running shoes. At the same time, she wore monitors and collected images of her ECG and ultrasound triangles of her heart. She then created these three sets of images into a 100m long embroidery.  

Discussion 

I am not a textile artist by any stretch of the imagination, but within these works and words there are some ideas and perspectives that are interesting or familiar (or both) to me. 

Bartlett’s embroidered mark-making, black and red stitches into the white cloth, is of interest thanks to my own interest in the marked line, particularly the black line. I would never render it in thread, but that is the beauty of art; the same idea can be depicted in so many different ways. Her stained cloth brings to life the idea of industry, of the grime and dirt of that time, and offers a hint to stop us looking back with a completely nostalgic perspective as per Millar’s introductory comments. 

Bristow’s words of tension around memory and heritage as important, beautiful and stabilising, yet at the same time deceptive and selective, are deeply meaningful to me. Our life is a linear passage of time, as Millar says, yet our experience is not; our memories dip in and out of our past, always with the view of the present. There is a continuity because we are alive one day to the next, but stability is something different. What made sense of our past on this day 10 years ago is quite different to what makes sense of our past today, because there is both another 10 years of lived experience to unpick and add to the past and another 10 years of lived experience through which to view it today. 

Garfen and Lawrence have both used qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at subject matter, i.e. words. I keep trying to resist the appearance of text in my own work, but these pieces are inviting me to think again. They are both very neat pieces of work in every sense of the word. 

Thompson’s work is very much based on her own experience of the space, in contrast to the other four artists mentioned here. It also uses modern technology to produce subject matter, which has been sewn by a programmed sewing machine into the cloth. Her approach is very much about herself and about the now; the only nod to Salts Mill seems to be the use of textiles to produce an outcome. There is no nostalgia or memory, apart from a snapshot of the day she did the run. I found it quite divorced from the feel of the exhibition as I’d picked it up from the other artists’ entries. 

The artists’ approaches were something of interest generally. I thought that Garfen and Lawrence had worked very meticulously and that their outcomes were quite literal in their interpretation. Bristow and Bartlett seemed to have taken a more “open” approach, with the viewer required to do more work to understand their installations. The different approaches provide some food for thought for my own approaches to future briefs and also how to respond to a space; archive analysis (Garfen and Lawrence), psychological approach (Bairstow), current perspective (Thompson), heritage perspective (Bartlett). I suppose the overall message is to stand back from the situation in hand and try to see what it tells you before diving in with any particular approach.

 

 

MA Week 18 - Reflection on the past 10 days

A mixed bag of fortunes recently.

 

Week commencing 9^th February was really productive, with the breakthrough reading about heritage as a critical perspective and with the generative wandering. I then went on to finish off the acrylic piece I’d been doing the week before (see this Week 16 post), and also started another acrylic piece on paper which was a visual response to the generative wandering. 

 

Armley, WIP, February 2012

 

I had also managed to get some advice from IT about how to prepare images for the laser cutter (as mentioned in this post under “Laser cutting”) and I had made a different template of my face. I tested this and decided to simplify it even further. The IT guys and the laser technician both thought that I was probably aiming at something too ornate with all the detail in the hair and eyes. 

Then week commencing 15^th February was a disaster. I had Monday afternoon off and used it to prepare the simplified image mentioned above. Then I came home to do some blogging and found my poor partner down with flu. So arty time lost on Monday and Tuesday as I packed him off to get some rest and tried to look after him. On Tuesday I then cut the simplified image from 9mm MDF and it burnt. This wasn’t entirely unexpected but it was still a blow as I’d hoped to build up a stack of these cut images as part of an ongoing idea of being able to “look down” into the image and see what’s inside. I’ll ask further advice, but I think I might be at the point where I have to pause the laser investigations. I’m not getting the results I’d hoped and there are deadlines looming! I have learnt lots about laser cutting notwithstanding.  

Charred remains of grand designs

 

Then even bigger disaster as I went down with the flu myself on Wednesday. So I’ve done next to nothing for a week - I didn't even get to college on Friday. Even my finely honed project management skills (!) can’t pull a week back over three weeks. So I will need a bit of prioritisation and juggling as I move towards the deadline. It’s such a shame after such a breakthrough the previous week, but that’s art, that’s life.

MA Week 17 - Generative wandering : in search of the North

Generative Wandering as a research method– in search of the North 

I’ve been working with some existing images of trees for a while, just because they are nice images, but really they are not saying what’s inside, which is more gritty and less pretty than trees (though I do love trees. I think they are wildly underrated). Challenged by my tutor, I said I would go out and take some photos to generate some more visual source material, so she told me I should submit them if I did. Bluff called, I decided I would walk to Armley, a district of the city that borders the city centre, where I knew I would find railways to photograph if nothing else. 

 

Armley from Woodhouse

I walked from college in Woodhouse to Armley and it was 1 ½ hours mightily well spent. What started off as a targeted wandering to find images that match my childhood view of Northernness became slightly personal and introspective. I stopped for a moment as I passed the street where I was born. I feel nothing for the street yet I am repeatedly drawn to this part of Leeds.  

Trouble at t' Mill

 

Cobbled streets, graffiti, all kinds of architecture; Victorian villas, Georgian façade, high rise flats and a nice bit of brutalism, all with the backdrop of the skyscrapers of the city centre. A massively unexpected find was the canal towpath and a re-purposed mill, right next to the Inner Ring Road flyover. To be honest I was circumspect about being on the towpath as, yes, there were joggers and workers, but also a couple of people near whom I didn’t want to loiter. I clutched my bag tightly. Shame. But a mill? What could be more Northern?? 

Electrifying

Moving on I climbed up next to the railway. There was a bridge with fairly open sides so I couldn’t cross it (I have some kind of open bridge phobia – if I can see the road below I panic). That was a pity. However I could walk up Armley Road and photograph the railway in the cutting, near the Adult Store (yes!).  

Daughters of Albion

 

There is a light industrial estate there, Albion Park. The Albion itself is now an office for a security firm but its red glazed tiles and ornate picture of a warrior give away its origins. My Dad’s workmates used to make the first purchases from their wage packets in there on a Friday. The Engineering Shop where he worked is long gone, although I don’t know when it was pulled down – he was finished in the early 80s after 30-odd years with the same firm. A poignant moment, to walk where he had, in a place that was his but not mine.  

There were some factories, though, nice and Northern, one still in use and another looking rather derelict. Walking back down Armley Road (clutching bag again as I spied a couple of Diamond White drinkers), I took a bridge-free detour to cross the inner ring road.  This yielded some more gritty buildings to photograph and also the opportunity to get right next to the railway and a good view of a signal gantry with lovely geometric shapes. Then my final destination (and I braved my bridge phobia – just!). The gasometer next to the gyratory. It’s painted pale blue and the rust is just the right shade of complimentary orange to offset it perfectly. 

Paradise by the Gasboard Light

So… did I find my view of Northerness? Yes, there were glimpses. I suppose any part of the country has gasometers (Leeds evidently has five) and electrified railways and adult stores. But the mill is definitely Northern, and the factories gave me a feeling of industry and purpose and dirt and making. I found more memories, too, not that I was looking for them.  

Overall, though, the whole experience of wandering in a part of Leeds that I’ve not explored before (although I’ve driven on those roads many times) was exhilarating in a way I didn’t expect. It was a kind of industry of my own, this search for industry. I “made” some photographs and generated lots of further ideas for making from the visual material, and also from the experience (the lived experience, I guess) of being in those places. There really was a feeling of research about it, somehow; researching visually by looking, and researching by choosing where to walk and thereby forming links between those places. Researching by half-thought out imagined narratives for the builders and decorators in their name-bearing white vans on the gyratory on their way home/to the pub/ to the take-away on a Friday afternoon. Researching by letting myself try to understand this place, what goes on there, what used to go on there. I was weary but buzzing by the time I eventually got home.

 

MA Week 17 - metaphorically speaking

My work is memory. It is my heritage, and yours. It is the story of our industry that once stood proud and gave rise to the North. It is the story of the decline of our industry under the hated Margaret Thatcher. It describes what I feel about my life. It describes what you feel about your life. It wanders through walls. It wanders through words. I wonder why it wanders in the way it does. 

My practice hides. It threatens to spill out what you are keeping in. It lets out the secrets from the hospital wards. It holds a mirror to reality. It says things you don’t like. It says the things I didn’t like. But most of all it hides. If you look deep enough you can catch a glimpse. 

My practice is black. Oh, and sometimes it’s red. It is deep lines, black lines, scratched lines. Ink. Pencil. Charcoal. Acrylic. Sweat. Blood. Tears. Exasperation. All in every piece, for you to pay a cursory glance, if I’m lucky, then swing on. 

My practice is not happy. Neither is it unhappy. It’s how it is. It’s real life.

MA Week 16 - reflection on the week

A bit of progress over the past 10 days or so. 

I put out in the rain a couple of the gasometer linocuts that I did. I ended up leaving them out for longer than expected and the result was a mix of colours in each one. The three-colour one gave some really vibrant colours, particularly a raised patch of bright rust-orange and some lovely mossy green. However, the colours faded as they dried and the pigment went very chalky in texture and started falling off the paper, presumably because the binder had washed away. But this did gave me the idea of decomposing your composition, and of the decay in industry (society?) in general. They have continued to decay, particularly the three colour one, which is interesting; I have no plans to stop them decaying, just like I couldn’t stop our industry decaying. 

 

Layering in progress

 

I also started piece on paper where I am experimenting with building up layers of different thicknesses using acrylic paint and collaged-in pieces of my printmaking. It is a developmental piece but it is generating ideas. It is also a chance to get to know the Liquitex acrylic paints a bit more. They give much more opaque coverage than the System 3 paints I’d used before so I am having to think more about how the colours appear when layered. I enjoyed doing the work and will finish it next weekend. 

I read some of a book called “Heritage : Critical Approaches” and this finally gave me (one of?) my critical perspectives. This was a good feeling and the academic validation of my approach has given me renewed confidence in my creative outputs. My definition of practice – my message – is becoming clearer through the theory of the “heritage” critical lens. It is emerging from my own lived experience but all of it also forms some part of the lived experience of another person or group of people.  More about this is in this post.

I took all this and more into my tutorial to try to work it through and to understand how I’m progressing. The message reflected back was to use this progress to allow me to select (and to justify the selection of) what tells my story. What images, visuals? What scale? Detail or overview? What kind of marks? What density. So I need to focus a bit more on exactly what I want to produce before Easter and I’ve re-planned for the rest of the term to try to give a time framework and allow prioritisation. 

What media will I use to tell my story? Within my initial proposal, and again emphasised within the work I did in Professional Context 1, I stated I would like to learn more about printmaking. I’ve experimented with this and am particularly interested in the marks I can make using etching. As part of my objectives for this module, I identified laser cutting as another technique of interest and have effectively used this to “draw” lines by cutting them. This idea of the “line” occurs frequently in my work and I need to think about how to develop etching and laser cutting techniques further to depict this. Acrylic is a medium I like and with which I am relatively comfortable from my previous course. By the submission deadline I would hope to have used the laser and etching in some way (separately or combined) to produce something coherent related to the heritage and identity themes.

 

 

MA Week 16 - Heritage as a critical perspective (2)

Discussion:  relevance of heritage as a critical approach to my practice, and further points arising

If Harrison is correct, heritage is not only concerned with railway engines and buildings and statues of Queen Victoria. It is concerned with our relationships with “things”, and more importantly, our attitude to those “things” – the ones we love and keep, and the ones we reject. It’s also concerned with our relationship with other people. He doesn’t overtly say this, but we may or may not know those other people; we have a heritage that is uniquely our own, in my opinion, but it is contingent upon and intersecting with the heritage of may others. 

Therefore it follows to me that the desire to produce images of industrial “things” – the gasometer, handtools, railway engines and so on that appear in my work – is a product of my familiarity with, and affection for these things. These familiarities and affections fuel my identity and my identity (values, background, attitude) fuels them. The desire to produce and manipulate images of myself is another way of looking at my identity, but also its make-up – i.e. my heritage. This is supported by Harrison’s assertion that heritage is involved in the production of identity. These two hitherto disparate parts of my practice (heritage and identity) have become two sides of the same coin via Harrison’s words.   

When discussing modernity, Harrison suggests it “can be understood as not simply a set of ideas and philosophies, but also a quality of lived experience” (his emphasis, p 24). This is the only time in my reading so far that I have come across this. There seems to be a missing point here. If part of heritage is predicated on the relationship between places, people and objects (p14), then isn’t “unofficial heritage” – if not the official variant- by definition being laid down by our everyday lived experience? We are constantly forming and re-forming our familiarities and affections with “things” so I believe that we are, to some extent at least, the authors of our own heritage, and that of contingent people and groups of people. This would also support Harrison’s notion of the role of heritage in the production of local, regional and national identity. I believe that my practice comes from my lived experience (therefore, heritage and identity) and that I am communicating this visually rather than by written means.  

If modernity is concerned with a desire to get away from the past, there must be an equal and opposite reaction (to paraphrase Newton) to yearn for the past. As you (well, I) get older, I find the pace of change slightly more difficult to deal with. There is also the effect of the throwaway society and of globalisation. Why is nothing made in England any more? Answer: because it can be imported more cheaply from countries where there is still industry. And so I develop nostalgia for the past. But if we create heritage by viewing the past from the present, then by definition I think there is re-purposing at work. Perhaps not necessarily deliberate, but exaggerations and rose tinted specs do creep in. We long for the simplicity and comfort of childhood and perhaps of the values of society at that time – at least those that we consider to be more noble than the equivalent values of today’s society. 

Another question that came to mind whilst reading Harrison is this : if we are makers/artists, aren’t we interested in what’s gone before? How do we build on it (literally/metaphorically)? We research for practice (we look at what others have done) and by practice (we trial our own versions of their techniques). Things (tools, brushes, techniques) from yesteryear that we still have and use in our practices; are they really part of our heritage or really part of our present and future? There is an indivisibility of the human and the non-human, whether that is the natural environment or the created object. 

Harrison also touches on de-industrialisation, which is a recurring theme in my work. I have a personal belief that it is part of the human condition to make things to use. Therefore, if we are makers/artists, we have an inextricable link with industry, as industry is “making” on a grander scale. So de-industrialisation breaks or weakens this link, leaving a “loss”. This is where my memories kick in, such as the smell of the hops roasting at Tetley’s when it was a brewery and I was a schoolgirl. But they are now only memories, re-purposed for my practice, just as Tetley’s has been re-purposed as an Arts Centre. I express my memories in the hope of striking a chord with others of a similar heritage. 

If, as Harrison suggests, heritage is concerned with place, and human interaction with place, then perhaps this also explains some of my desire to record my wanderings on the town moor. I was born near there and work near there and study near there. I have quite a lot of photos of wanderings on there. Granted, some of this is because I bought a new camera and it’s a convenient place to experiment. But I began wandering to here in my previous life, when I worked in a stressful job in the city centre. I wanted to escape the city and found the exercise and the green lung of the moor a retreat in my lunchtime. In essence I was shifting back to my roots, but whether this can truly count as heritage under Harrison’s description is a moot point. It is possibly an exploration of my personal history, but it could be argued that it is exploring my heritage and thereby that of other contingent groups. 

Extending this argument, those photos form part of my archive, if indeed I have an archive. I have deliberately got rid of a lot of my physical archive in an attempt to declutter. But I carry an archive, an intangible archive, with me in the form of my memories, as we all do. This forms a part of what I am attempting to express visually. If archives are part of our heritage, then I think I am vindicated in using heritage theory to support my practice. 

My final thought for the moment is this: exploring one’s lived experience is not always an exploration of heritage. It can take a psychological viewpoint of dealing with your past, rationalising, making sense of it. A piece I did after serious illness is a literal archive, as there are documents collaged in. It’s a layered piece, trying to show the complexity of illness.

But perhaps these that are often present in my practice have multiple meanings. The outer layers may mask what’s underneath, not only in the sense of the passage of time, but in the sense of hidden emotions and feelings that are not on view to the wider world.

 

Developing the layering in the work I’m currently doing, which breaks down the surface as well as building it up, perhaps starts to reveal some of what’s inside, which is probably personal history rather than heritage. But if, as I have argued, lived experience contributes to heritage in the broadest sense, then they may ultimately show layers of heritage.

MA Week 16 - Heritage as a critical perspective (1)

I have been wrestling for a while now with this idea of my critical perspective, and to try to make some sense I got a couple of likely-sounding books from the library, then left them in my bag while I got on with exciting stuff like printing and painting. I’ve had a recall for one and so last night I sat down to skim read it with a view to copying the most important bits. In the end I read the first two chapters, not in their entirety, but closely enough to make me realise this is an important book for me. 

The book is “Heritage : Critical Approaches” by Rodney Harrison and it has given words to some of the things I’ve been doing creatively. To find this academic validation of what I’m doing has been a joy, a relief and a boost to my creative confidence.  Below is a synopsis of what I consider to be the most pertinent points of what I’ve read, and a discussion including how I think it speaks to my practice follows here. Whilst I hope to read more of the book over the coming weeks, I think Harrison’s introduction to his approach in the first two chapters gives me a grounding that that stands for itself. 

Synopsis of pertinent points from "Heritage : Critical Approaches",

Chapters 1 & 2

Heritage, argues Harrison, has proliferated as a result of “the process of globalisation, deindustrialisation and the rise of the experience economy”, but it remains a “broad and slippery” term that can cover buildings, monuments, memorials, songs, festivals, languages and so on (pp4,5). He sees it not as object-based, but rather as “dialogical” – heritage emerges from the relationship between people, objects, places and practice. It therefore involved in the production of local, regional and national identity (p8). Harrison’s view does not distinguish between “natural” and “cultural” heritage, but he does distinguish between “official” heritage – e.g. the archaeological significance of Stonehenge – and “unofficial” heritage – e.g. the use of Stonehenge for festivals by neo-pagans (p15). The “unofficial” is really used to describe people’s attachment to a place, for whatever reason that might arise. Heritage refers to set of attitudes and relationships with the past – relationships that need to be formed and maintained (p14). However, it is not primarily about the past – it is created in the present by sifting the past and using it as a perspective to view the present and to inform the future (p4).

So why the surge of interest in heritage?  Culture and traditions only seem to become “heritage” when they are at risk. Heritage has not traditionally concerned itself with the “everyday” unless it is at risk of loss, when it becomes more remarkable. (p 18). Harrison suggests the surge is down to modernity, which he defines as a kind of social order that looks to the future and is concerned with novelty, progress, and speed, and which takes a linear view of time (so we are always moving away from the past). The speed of change means there is always a threat to the present. If Harrison’s idea of “risk” is correct (and it seems reasonable to me), then the past is always at risk and starts to become heritage; the speed of progress leads to obsolescence and nostalgia (p23-25). So heritage concerns itself with a loss of or threat to objects, places and practices that hold a collective value.  Further, modernity is inherently disordered due to the rate of change and so heritage seeks to impose a structure or classification on items, such as is done in museums. We structure and restructure the past. 

Harrison also introduces various further ideas. The two most relevant to me are:

“Agency”, where he believes that “collectives” of humans and non-humans interact to make heritage. Humans use non-humans to do their will; humans invent objects to do their will (Agency is evidently not seen as an act of individual will). Different agencies can mix, merge and interact in many different ways (p 33/36) 

Similarly, “Symmetrical archaeology” is concerned with the entanglement of humans and things. It suggests the past is actively created by archaeologists. Harrison expands this to include all other disciplines involved in heritage studies, to purport that heritage is a product of not only the human imagination, but the entanglement of humans and objects, pasts and presents.(p 37/38).

MA Week 16 - Crits

The taught session this week took the form of two crits. You had to take in some work, so I took the decomposed gasometer pictures (explained in this post) and some of the laser cuts of my face. I was nervous about sharing the work as I felt it was still at a very early stage. Each of us displayed our work as you might see it in a gallery.

 

Ready for critiquing!

 

 

Silent crit

We worked in a group of 4. Three participants observed and commented on the work of the other participant, who had to remain silent for about 10 minutes and then was able to respond and discuss for 5 minutes. I had expected it would be very difficult to keep quiet, but it was totally absorbing listening to the others’ comments.  I really enjoyed this exercise and I got lots out of it (and I hope the others in my group did, too).

Comments received:

Images form a series of 4, linked

(Three colour laser cut)

eyes lose detail as overlaid

Carry on with more of the same cut images

Make a circle with more of the same cut images

Carry out a journey in colour by using more of the same cut images in a rainbow of colours

(laser cut with gasometer image)

Selection of words on image appears deliberate

Depicts hidden or contained memory which now exists only inside your head

Self is natural ; gasometer is man-made

Image is very delicate. Try more layers to get depth.

Link between me and gasometer

(Decomposed gasometers)

Japanese sunburst above my image

Curiosity re how the images were produced

Relief; positive and negative

 

Fellow MA students, Sally and Ali, seeing the lighter side!

Socratic crit

 

Again we worked in a group of 4. In this style of crit, the artist can introduce their work and the group can discuss freely. I found this less useful because I was priming the other participants with my viewpoint, rather than letting them form their own opinions. 

Comments received

Try a monoprint of my face to lose some of the crispness and control

The laser cut lines look like wires or a circuit board

Use parts of face rather than whole face - make it more universal.

 

Reflection

Although my classmates are aware of my subject matter, so are hardly neutral judges, I was pleased with the way they picked up on what I was trying to depict, particularly in the silent crit.  It was interesting that there was a thought that the words on the gasometer image were deliberately chosen, as this wasn’t the case. But as they were from my own notebook, they were bound to relate to my interests, so they were not random either.  

The idea of carrying on with different colours for my laser cut image is an interesting one. It could produce an interesting extended effect. However, given the problems I’ve had with sticking down these cutouts, I would have to do this from card. One to consider, definitely.

Monoprinting is another technique to consider. I was actually watching a group doing it in the print room the other day and I liked the “sooty” effect they got around their lines. I’ll try this if I can make time. 

The most striking comment was about the gasometer laser cut depicting hidden or contained memory which now exists only inside my head. This really ties in with my current thinking about repurposing and re-imagining our memories, but it articulated it in very different words. It also resonates with the work I’ve done on the many views of ourselves that we present to the world.

 

 

MA Week 15 - Public art and solar plates

This week I went to a Public Art Workshop. I’ve also printed the solar plates I did last week.

 

Solar sheep

 

The sheep one didn’t work out as I’d over-developed it, but the tree one worked OK. It took a bit of time to get the right amount of ink and the right pressure on the press, but overall I was quite pleased. I printed them both in green then did the tree one in black, which I think worked better.

Solar Trees

These prints ended up in an impromptu crit in class on Friday while we were looking at the posters, as I had left them overnight to dry and went up to the Print Room for them first thing Friday. I was put on the spot! I’d already looked at them myself and though, “what next”, but decided I didn’t need to answer that question immediately. Perhaps overprinting, trying a chine collé, drawing into them… other suggestions from classmates were exposing another plate with some tissue or thin fabric to give texture/interest and putting a tiny image of myself into them. I also need to consider subject matter, although I do like this image of trees. Trees seem to be appearing in my work… oh well, I think I can get away with experimenting for another week or so before I have to try to come up with some coherent excuses for what I’m doing.

MA Week 15 - the tension between the written and the visual

Reflection on taught session, Friday 29th January 2016

Use of language in art 

The afternoon session was intended to be about an article called “Critical language and visual art : post-structural analysis”, discussing the language used to describe art. But I hadn’t read it and the reason I hadn’t read it was because I knew it would take me a long time to read and digest it (I wasn't alone). I find academic papers in the arts and social sciences difficult to follow. I know I’ll only get better at dealing with them by reading them, but at this point I didn’t have the time to deal with this one, or better said I wanted to prioritise creative work at that point. 

A discussion regarding the use of language around art took place in any case and it raised some interesting points. One view was that the language used needs to be shared and egalitarian; whether spoken or written, it has to be understood by both sides. However this was not necessarily the case in practice, with art critics using their own jargon. There was also a view that art in the middle ages was controlled by social and religious paradigms which meant that there was a set, controlled, view of it and meaning of it. We are now allowed to question things more, so this no longer exists. Other views were that language is powerful and on the other hand, that visceral or spiritual experience does not need to be, and indeed cannot be, communicated by words. A further point was that we are moving to communication by emojis and immediate communication by Vines, so our written communication is slowly being eroded. 

I find a tension in this. I have always written lots. I am a copious maker of notes and I think in words and I write lists and plans. But this course is about creative practice, and a big chance for me to move to a more visual way of communicating, and to improve that same visual communication. It’s a Master’s degree, so there is going to be a need for academic reading and writing, of course. But often I feel the perceived need for communicating in words overshadows the driver, the need, the urge to create artwork. One of my fellow students, who has spent a lot of their professional life dealing with language, also feels the same. The tension spills over into my time management. I’m behind on my blog but I have to sacrifice it for the sake of my creative work (or else I won’t have anything to write about!). How to resolve: keep the blog writing to one evening a week, unless there is something particular to really get into.

MA Week 15 - Academic Posters

Reflection on taught session, Friday 29th January 2016

Academic Posters 

The first part of the day was taken up by looking into academic posters. Annabeth introduced these as a good way to summarise your work in an A2 format. They are often used by new researchers who are starting to develop academic outputs. We organise a poster conference for Arts and Humanities PhD students at the University of Leeds and it’s a good opportunity for them to present their work in a familiar, and hopefully less stressful environment, so I’m already on board with the idea of it being a good way of disseminating your research. 

Some tips from Annabeth: 

• 500 words maximum
• Could demonstrate synthesis of research and visual results
• Could make use of infographics
• Could take the approach Introduction, background, methodology, results, next steps
• Make sure you have a hierarchy of information
• Don’t forget a bibliography
• Identify conferences which will accept posters. 

Answers on a postcard...

 

We then had a little time to view posters from the college staff and the think about a poster of our own – mine is above. It reflects this ever-refining quest to fully understand my research question. Annabeth also mentioned a poster as part of the outcome for the current module, if desired.

Not much more to say on this, other than it is there as a tool to use if the need arises.