MA Week 43 - Printing, partying, networking and writing

Reflection on the week - 18th October 2016

 

Printing

I finally got into the Print Room on Thursday 13^th October and finished the pylon drypoint. It lacks symmetry, or better said mirror imagery, but I don’t think that is too much of a problem because it is hand cut. I did have some trouble printing it, though. I couldn’t get a good black line out of it. I think the grooves I’ve etched may not be deep enough. It will hardly take any wiping at all. I need to talk to Mike or Mick about it but I didn’t get that far.  

I did do a bit of experimentation with paper for the first time. Mick had kindly given me some offcuts of Canaletto paper which is about 300gsm, so really it’s like thin card. I soaked it for about 20 minutes but I think perhaps I should have soaked it longer. It did seem to take the print a bit better than the cartridge paper, though. Certainly more experimentation to do but that would be no hardship!

 

View inside pylon - 1

I also printed it onto a couple of monoprints, one of which had tissue paper on. As I suspected, some of the tissue soaked off when I gave the paper a quick soak. I think I could probably glue it back on so I will have to see to that in due course. I also printed onto a two-tone scratched monoprint and I liked this one. I haven’t had time to reflect fully on these and where next but I don’t see that as a problem; the dissertation has to take priority this term and the printing will kick back in as the priority from January. Any printing I can do this term is a bonus.

View inside Pylon - 2 - drypoint over monoprint

 

Leeds Print Workshop opening

 

On Friday I went to the opening party of the Leeds Print Workshop and it was grand. It was kind of like hanging out in a printerly environment with beer. What more could a body want?

I also had lots of good conversations, including with my classmates Carol and Sue. Then I met two of the first year MA students, Will and Russell. Russell’s work seems to have some overlaps with mine so we have agreed we will get together to discuss in more detail and see if there are any avenues for collaboration. It was interesting trying to answer Will and Russell’s questions about the course; they are very similar to the ones I was grappling this time last year and they reflected back to me that fact that I have learnt something.I caught up with College printroom staff past and present which was good, especially to see Lyndon, and was also delighted to see my friend Filippa up and about after a bit of a low time.

Alongside the Print Workshop opening was an exhibition called “Out of Bounds”, which carried on from residencies that various East Street Arts artists and associates had undertaken in the Summer of 2015. I visited East Street Arts’ Patrick Studios to see some of the outcomes of the residencies in September 2015, and was particularly inspired by the urban mark-making of the ceramicist Rebecca Appleby. Rebecca was exhibiting two pieces from her Urban Palimpsest series and I had the good fortune to be able to chat with her again. She has had a fantastic year, including winning “Best Newcomer” at the prestigious Ceramic Art London. She gave me a bit more of an insight into how she is drawn to the urban as her source material, and also advised me to keep working and striving so that I could be ready for things to start happening when the time is right. It was a real boost to be able to talk to her a year on.

Thinking ahead

 

Another thing I’ve been doing over the past few weeks is working with my classmates Sue, Carol and Paula, to try to find a venue for our end-of-year show this time next year. To be honest I have done the least work of the four of us. However, it has opened up a conversation with East Street Arts about using temporary space. I would love to exhibit in the space that Out of Bounds is currently occupying. Carol told me the same thing as Rebecca – get making!

Thinking

I’ve had plenty of thinking to do as I press on with my dissertation. I’ve written a couple of short critical analyses. One concerns Tina Richardson’s chapter A Wander through the scene of British Urban Walking in the book she edited, Walking Inside Out : Contemporary British Psychogeography.  Her chapter throws up some interesting links with nostalgia and therefore heritage.

I’ve also written something about Constructing ‘The North’ : space and a sense of place, a book chapter by Stuart Rawnsley. in Northern Identities : historical interpretations of ‘The North’ and ‘Northernness’. Rawnsley offers a potted history of the construction of Northernness. His approach is quite aggressive in terms of exposing agencies that he considers to control constructions of “the North”. I agree with some of it, but I found it went much further than my own viewpoint.

Finally I have been browsing Discourse and Identity by Bethan Benwell and Elizabeth Stokoe. This has given me a really useful overview of factors at play in the construction of identity. These authors argue that identity is fluid and will change depending on the individual’s situation. The negative point for me with this book was that it seems to stray into the idea of the individual being part of a kind of mass of people who can’t think for themselves – I’ve found this in a number of what I would call “Social Sciences” texts. However it did throw up links to identity being linked to relationships and with place. So a kind of web of heritage – identity – walking is beginning to emerge.

A quick psychogeography and culture lesson

I was really pleased to be able to meet up with Dr Zoë Tew-Thompson of Leeds Beckett University on Tuesday. Zoë is taking part in the “Being Human” event that I mentioned last week. She is a lecturer in Media, Communication and Cultures and has a particular interest in place and space. Her research has included telling the “small stories” behind the “big shiny” official stories (my words) – much like I am trying to do. Also similar to me, she had to pull theories from many different disciplines to be able to understand her research and it was great to know that I’m not going mad trying to find the academic underpinnings of my visual work. She gave me a few more psychogeography references to follow up and we talked in some depth about the importance of viewing the city in a different way to that which the city planners have defined. The shapes, smells, colours are all there to be observed if you simply open yourself to them. Zoë is interested in the idea of disrupting the “official history” to tell the narratives of the individual stories underneath, because really these are not only the story of one person – they are the stories of many contingent people.  In this she articulated at least some facet of why I’m doing what I’m doing. It was quite exhilarating to be able to talk to someone who knew what I was on about and could offer insights that unlocked some of the academic blockages I’ve been wrestling with. As a result of our meeting, though not of any particular thing that Zoë mentioned or suggested, I’ve realised I can improve the structure of my dissertation so that it will flow significantly better.