MA Week 20 - "It had gone beyond what I could explain"

Reflection on taught session, Friday 4th March 2016

Creative Practitioner Presentation - Sheila Gaffney

 

 

Unfortunately I was only able to attend the first half of Sheila's talk, which was a shame, as I think it was one of the more interesting ones. Sheila is head of Fine Art and is a sculptor. She described sculpture as a "cultural practice for thinking about the world", although why that would just apply to sculpture and not to other visual arts, I don't know.

One of Sheila's first works involved turning a room into an immersive space and using the furniture as part of the work; take the space to the work, and the work to the space. This involved painting bodies onto the tables and adding waxed strings over them, along with leaves, cast first in wax and then in bronze. I liked the layering and the complexity of this. It reminded me somehow, vaguely, of Helen Chadwick. But I liked Sheila's quote even more; "I could not explain the work. It had gone beyond what I could explain". The subsequent session, that afternoon, was on academic writing alongside this one, and reflecting on the two sessions together, I think her statement is ironic. I can't disagree with it and I felt really pleased to hear someone actually prioritising the visual statement over the need for a written statement.

Sheila had made a lot of work in wax, not least for practical reasons; she could cast wax herself without needing specialist help. She was clear that you should work in a way that works for you. However, wax also represents vulnerability for her, and she made a community based piece of many hands that was a commission for the University of Bradford. For this piece, she generated  radio and newspaper coverage to reach out to the public to ask them to lend a hand in all ways; to have their hands cast, to cast the wax hands, to follow the process. Although she said she was inspired by Ann Hamilton, her talk showed her to be very much ploughing her own furrow. She spoke about practice for your own purpose and also about the female voice being left out of the history of sculpture, and of her desire to produce oddly female gendered pieces to start to repair this.

Throughout her talk I had a feeling of her single-mindedness but mixed with deep thinking. I liked the idea of daring to have your practice on your own terms and on working with materials you can manage, without having to answer to other people's opinions. It was empowering to hear thoughts like that being articulated by a senior member of Staff at an at school.