MA Week 71 - Troubling Time

Reflection on the past week, 5^th June 2017

 

Preparation

Wednesday was spent finalising the paper for the "Troubling Time" conference on Thursday, 1^st June. I reused some of the slides from the "Grim up North" paper last September, and took my dissertation as my academic source material. The ideas was to do a talk of about 5 minutes then ask the participants to produce a visual work, based on the organisers' encouragement of contributions which “engage practically with their duration, with the aim of fostering methodological diversity”. In the end the talk lasted 7 minutes, and I felt that 10 minutes would be a reasonable amount of time to be able to produce the artwork and that this would work within my 20-minute slot.

 

The day itself

The conference itself was a fantastic day and I am writing a very deep reflection on it to hand in as part of my final submission. The speakers included PGR students and lecturers, many of whom are practising artists. They introduced me to concepts of temporality that I hadn't realised existed. In particular, there was discussion of capitalist notions of time; the regimented working day, driven by society. Contrasted with this were notions of doing less to achieve more, awareness of differing temporal rhythms, and the joy of the dérive. The reflection I’m producing will form a rich source of research material for me to develop once the MA is finished.

 

My Panel

My own panel, “Walking and Space”, was shared with two particularly excellent speakers, Bob Dickinson and Jo Lee. Bob is a PGR at Manchester Metropolitan University as well as being an established art writer and former BBC radio journalist. Jo is a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at Sheffield Hallam University. Bob's talk, “ART BUNKERS”, started by describing artworks being displayed in an underground bunker in Konjic (in Bosnia-Herzegovina) and ranged through many concepts of “bunkers”, including the way that artists bunker themselves in studios in old mills and the like in the more run-down parts of town. These then become gentrified and the artists have to move out. This made me think, somehow, of me bunkering myself away in the print room, forgetting to drink water or eat my lunch, completely focused on the artistic task in hand.

 Jo's talk, “Essaying time: photography, artistic knowledge and meaning in movement”, covered concepts of how artists work - very slow periods followed by bursts of intense activity - plus the idea of going backwards to move forwards, constantly repurposing and seeing anew. She showed a mesmerising slide show of triptychs of her photographs of the now-defunct Spode porcelain works. So many surfaces, marks that were just crying out to be made, a palimpsest of life. Interesting concepts around surfaces, what’s underneath, does it need to be revealed.

Jo had helped calm my pre-talk nerves and in the end things went well. After explaining my practice and my methods of layering and the way I use colours, I invited the participants to produce a piece of visual work that said something about that day. I'd taken along a selection of pens and pencils, some blank paper, an old road atlas - a nod to psychogeography - and pairs of scissors. I'd done a couple of quick sketches in the train in the way over and used this as an example - but none were needed. I'd been prepared for people to ask for further clarification, to do nothing, or even to argue - but none of this happened. Everyone got on with the task in calm, studious silence.

The responses were incredibly varied and complex and in all honesty I am still processing this in my little brain. The responses included a participant from Argentina who used portions of the sea from the road map to depict her first crossing of the Atlantic; a stitching together of various pieces of the road atlas index with a challenge to estimate how long it would take to travel from each place to the next; a clock with no hands; a compartmentalised version of the journey that I'd undertaken that morning, from Leeds to Manchester. I stuck them all in a sheet of A1 paper I'd brought along, rather hurriedly, so aesthetically it wasn't overly pleasing, but time was pressing on.

 

The artwork on display at the conference

The session overran wildly (well, about 5 minutes) but nobody seemed too worried about this. As I mentioned in my week 70 blogpost, I'd made some postcard sized business cards which I offered to participants by way of thank you. These went down really well and were very much taken in the spirit in which they were offered. 

 After the session quite a few participants came up to chat to me. Some were studying, or had studied at Leeds and had enjoyed the images of the city that I'd used. My Argentinian friend commented that she'd never seen this done in a conference before and was really pleased to be able to contribute to the collaboration.

 My initial reaction was to take the collaborative artwork and submit it as part of my MA submission, but I quickly realised I couldn't do this, as it didn't belong to me. It belonged to everyone who had contributed and to that point in space and in time. So with the help of a couple of the others I pinned it up on the wall.

 

Networking

One of the really enjoyable things about the day was the number of international participants. Over lunch I chatted with an Albanian and two German participants, one of whom is a professor in Tokyo.  There were also participants from Universities in Greece, Canada, Hungary and Poland. This international flavour made for very broad view and was quite a contrast with the "Grim up North" paper, which was more localised by the nature of its subject matter. This in turn made me realise how flexible and malleable my practice is, and how the visual arts cover such a wide range of source materials in every piece they produce. This breadth of practice is such a key strength of the visual arts.

 

With Bob at the drinks reception

The day ended with a drinks reception. It was a lovely Summer afternoon and we drank prosecco in a nearby bar. I chatted at some length with Bob, who was a very interesting and equally knowledgeable conversationalist. It rounded off one of the most interesting days I've had during the MA.

 

The next day

The conference itself was actually two days, but I'd only booked for one. I wished I'd booked both. However, it would have been too much of a rush to get back to Manchester for 9am the next morning, plus I needed to get back into the print room to prepare for the art market as I mentioned in last week’s blogpost. I'd connected with a few of my fellow participants on Twitter and one of the first tweets of the day was an image of our collaborative work welcoming the participants to day 2. The excellent conference organisers, Mao Hui Deng and Sophie Stringfellow, also tweeted a picture of themselves in front of the work as a wrap-up to the conference at its close that evening. It seemed the work had become a kind of talisman for the conference, some kind of visual representation of the narrative of the two days. I felt humbled and gratified.

I was very tired that next day but I was aware that the previous day's discussions had left me with a different view of time. So rather than rushing, I decided to relax and enjoy the printing. This was one of those serendipitous moments when theory and practice combine in increased creativity. I'd inked this plate umpteen times before, but the inking suddenly went quite futurist and dynamic, with no input from me at all. I'm not sure how this happened but it was intuitively connected with the previous day's activity.

 

The conference will stay with me for a long time. A real highpoint of the MA.

 

 

MA Week 65 - Mini-dérive with Michelle

Reflection on the past week, 17^th April 2017

 

Dériving in Burley

My arty friend Michelle and I had been pondering a possible collaboration and we decided to go for a wander, a mini-dérive as it turned out. We set off from the University when I broke up for Easter on Maundy Thursday, and wandered. So even though we had a definite starting point, we weren’t sure where we’d end up. 

Grate stuff

I mentioned to Michelle, Tina Richardson’s advice to “see the familiar anew” and even though we started out on the University campus, that’s what I did. Walking with someone else, who perceived the surroundings differently to me, meant that I saw things that she picked out that I would have overlooked. A good example was the many different grates and manhole covers on campus, all with their own design. I even found a grimy corner of campus that I’d never seen before, and a bit of Woodhouse Moor I’d never walked on.  

A quiet corner of campus

 

Leaving Woodhouse Moor, we drifted down towards Cardigan Road. We chatted as we drifted, commenting on the surroundings, where might we go next, what did this used to be. I also felt much less obvious and self-conscious than when wandering alone. I enjoyed being in this old part of the city, now mainly a student area, but with lots of lovely Northernness still to enjoy. My favourite part came last; the abandoned Burley Library, painted a lovely blue that was peeling back to reveal red. So many layers and shapes.

 

Burley Library, detail

Developing some ideas

Initial ideas I jotted into my phone after the walk:

• Something with the shapes and that blue from Burley Library
• Drypoint of the wander - do a sketch first of interesting shapes, views, vignettes & combine
• Shapes from grates as a "peephole" into something else? Layer up? Acetates?

The following day, I did a sketchbook page with sketches of the most interesting shapes and scenes. I’d taken over 100 photographs (!), providing a lot of interesting source material, and the issue now is how to combine these. Then I started combining these into abstract shapes. There was a tree shape that I thought would give a centrepiece for a possible abstract. I decided it would be interesting to put this as a negative space but as I drew it it using a graphite stick and putty rubber I could see that it was turning into the map from the Mabgate abstract paintings I did for the MMU conference. Pressing on, I added a coal chute and some bricks but I wasn’t sure what to do next, so left this to try something else. The coal chute is calling to me, though. 

Ideally I would have liked to be able to photocopy the sketchbook pages onto acetate, cut them up and play around with them. It being the Easter weekend, College is closed so I decided to simply draw layers of shapes on top of one another. Again,  I expected that the tree would form a kind of natural dividing line within the page I was working up, but I’m beginning to get the sense that the tree is not really what I'm looking for. What seems to work are the geometric shapes. These are mainly circles and this presents a problem. It's difficult to etch a circle. I don’t have any dividers and a quick experiment with using a compass with an etching needle in the place of the pencil didn’t work. At the moment I don't have a solution to this but I will see if I can acquire or borrow some dividers.

 

Other sketches

I did think I’d do some painting today, but I wasn’t in a painting mood so I’ve been fighting my laptop and am now on my third blogpost of the day. I’ve also been working on a sketch of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’m trying to improve my drawing and my understanding of perspective, through action research i.e. drawing practice. I’m quite pleased with today’s effort (St Paul's 2) although it’s not perfect. I want to turn this into a mini etch at some point.











St Paul's 1

St Paul's 2











 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MA Week 9 - Professional Context Presentation

Presentation 2: Professional Context

I gave my second presentation on 27^th November, this time looking at “professional context".
 

I decided to start out by talking about the creative industries, cultural capital and some facts and figures, all of which I pulled from my week 7 blog post . I talked about the USA and Italy as international players, then brought it down to the UK, then to Leeds. As it’s unlikely I will be applying for funding abroad any time soon, the USA and Italy topics were quite conceptual for me, rather than contextual. However, we had been briefed to look globally and this seemed to me to be the best way to do this. The most interesting thing was the discovery of the small grants offered by Leeds Inspired.

 

I then talked about where I fit in. As I mentioned in the week 7 blogpost, I need to undertake two main steps: get networking, and thereby identify opportunities; and get creative! I identified 5 networking opportunities as examples for the purpose of the presentation:

• Twitter – where I’ve already “met” some artists, including the Leeds-based ceramic artist Rebecca Appleby

• FCK LDN website – they blog on all things cultural outside of London and I have just sent them a re-written version of my Linder blog entry
• Curator Space – they have had some interesting call outs but for a lot of them I just haven’t got the body of work
• Creative Networks events at Leeds College of Art – a really good way to meet people, everyone is mingling and happy!
• University of Leeds Heritage “Show + Tell” – again a great way to mingle and meet. I have also contacted the organiser to ask about the call out for papers for the Spring 2016 date. I really would like to do a paper (if you can call 3 minutes a paper!) at this. I have a couple of ideas: bricks (as per my current investigation) and wanderings (as per a paper my tutor heard at a conference – where you walk, then stop and observe)

I also showed a picture of me exhibiting at my Access course final show. I think the things I have done hitherto are quite “white cube gallery”, but if I can get going with doing some of my printing ideas – if – I think they could go in a more industrial setting. I stressed I need to get creative. And I gave an open invitation to collaborate!

 I finished by talking about my current investigation into bricks, a nascent collaboration between myself and the writer Christina Croft – a conversation with Christina led me to think about bricks and this led to something definite for my MA proposal –and about Linder’s collaborations for the British Art Show 8, with Kenneth Tindall, Max Sterling and Dovecot studios (see previous reference).

I thought the structure of the presentation worked well, and it came in at just under 10 minutes, the allotted time. I did seem to get through it a bit quicker than when practising at home, though. Perhaps I spoke quicker than I expected due to a bit of stage fright. I would have liked to have said more about my own context but I really feel I am at the very start of this journey, and I didn’t want to put things forward then end up not doing them. In contrast, other people on the course seemed to have lots of professional practice already under their belts. But I am where I am. For me, it would be really interesting to do the same exercise again in a year’s time.

There was some interesting group feedback. The gist of it was to get to know what’s going on locally and get involved. For example, pop-up events, online communities, studio space. So the Heritage Show + Tell would be one example, but what others could I get involved in? You also need to think about separating out your subject and your approach. I took this to mean that you need to think about positioning what you are doing as well as doing it. Another point was a “knowledge audit” – know what you know, and own it. For me, an example was suddenly finding I could undertake a creative collaboration with a longstanding friend.

I feel that, by identifying my 5 networking examples, I am starting to think about this, and act upon it, more importantly. If I can start to produce some creative work, that will be another part of the proverbial jigsaw. These are all factors that will need to be incorporated into a plan for the next term of the course.