MA Week 40 - Practice 1 : summary of the module

Practice 1: Progress and Reflection

This was a very practical module which had the potential to drift as it was double the length of the previous module in terms of time. It was typified by times of little activity due to personal issues (with the health of both myself and my partner’s elderly mother, both taking a lot of time and energy) and times of intense and enjoyable activity.

It was hard to restart in April but taking a number of photographs of pylons provided some good source material and I was back on track after some drawn monoprints of these. I’d made a conscious decision to try drawn monoprinting as I thought it would loosen up my cramped practice. I was right, and also the pylons have been constants in my source material since then.

As always, pivotal moments come when you least expect them. In early May I did a piece of free writing, about writing, over a monoprint of a pylon. It seemed to settle that the writing and visual were in fact two sides of the same coin. After that I felt like I’d wrestled the writing into its place, and this was confirmed by the points made and discussed at the “Tall Tales and Crooked Yarns” research forum on 15^th June, when artists discussed the use of the visual (as opposed to written) narrative. Also in early May, in a lecture by Adam Stone, he commented to the effect that you are only one actor in the creative process. This statement has kept coming back to me, and was particularly noticeable when I was monoprinting, which I’ll talk about later in this summary.

Etching a drypoint of the pylon around the same time was another key point in this module. This plate built upon the experience of the two plates I’d produced previously within the MA, and I really liked the blackness of the marks I’d made. To no small extent, I think I am learning to draw via drypoint.

For the end of year show, I decided to fall back on that with which I am more familiar, acrylic painting, and produced four abstracts. It was a risk averse strategy as I didn’t know what I could manage in terms of printing. I asked my classmates for a crit which eventually took place via Whatsapp, on the train to the drawing symposium in Salford in May, and in the symposium itself. This plus further prototyping and going back to my trusty “Encyclopedia of Acrylic Painting” meant I was well able to produce the pieces. I used two definite, limited palettes, one based on my usual Socialist black/red and the other a combination of blue/yellow/silver based on pylons under a stormy sky. This set my palette for the rest of the term, which was concerned with printing.

The opening night of the End of Year show was fantastic. Although I was very aware that my work was a definite work in progress, it was such a buzz and so much fun. This was followed by my submission of the postcards to the 1000 secret postcards exhibition in Frome, Somerset. I followed this on Twitter and it was also uplifting, positive and resulted in a few new Twitter connections in the South West. These two events represented steps forward with my professional development.

After the show, I undertook some further planning and an analysis of the time still available to me, and realised I couldn’t do both the acrylic painting and the printing that I would have liked to. I therefore took a conscious decision to concentrate on printing. I started to monoprint using the geometric shapes of the pylons and this is where Adam’s statement about being merely one actor became very apparent. I was led by the loose, visually driven process that is monoprinting. This was exciting and opened up a realisation that creativity can come when you loosen the control, as well as when you exert as much control as possible.

I used the black/red and blue/yellow/silver palettes for the printing work. This followed on from a nascent methodology from the last module, of using a palette which derives from what you’ve seen, and I like this idea. It also tied in with another couple of pivotal moments. Reading Annemarie Murland’s paper, Migration and Sense of Place: re-contextualising felt experience through creative practice, made me realise that you can allow a place to channel itself through your creative practice by your choice (or its choice??) of the colours and marks. I also had a really interesting conversation with my colleague, Dr Liz Watkins, whose research interests include colour. Liz was doing some work on some old photographic images and looking for signs of the embodied experience in which those photographs had been taken. In a Eureka moment, I realised that this is what I’d tried to do with the pylon abstracts. I felt the beginning of a kind of visual language or visual encoding – not necessarily the only visual language in which I might articulate myself – but something which had been brewing since the start of the calendar year in terms of my colour and mark use. This was a very gratifying and exciting moment!

I undertook another urban wandering, to Holbeck, to generate some new source material. Along with monoprinting, I made a new drypoint based on some of the shapes from this wandering and I combined this and the pylon drypoint with some of the monoprinting. I also used some cardboard shapes from the buildings I’d photographed on the wandering as resists and let the whole lot come together. I learnt so much during this time simply from practising the printing. I had the confidence to think what I was going to do rather than just jumping in. The results were much better. One thing I need to learn more about is the paper. One of next year’s objectives will be to learn about paper! Can’t wait! I have become addicted to printing, particularly intaglio.

I have also managed to get an abstract accepted for a symposium called “Grim up North?” on September 16^th this year. I’m really pleased about this as the theme of the conference is right up my street, to use the vernacular, and it is something I’d wanted to do since the outset of the MA but didn’t think I’d be able to. I intend to talk about trying to develop a visual language which describes the embodied experience of being a Northerner, building on the points I made earlier in this summary.

In my MA proposal, my definitive statement of my research topic was ‘to understand in more depth how I can use creative practice to depict experience that is part and parcel of the condition of “being human”’. There were many times along the way this year that I felt I was hopping around, not able to settle on any one thing, miles away from my topic. But really I’ve just been on a few exploratory pathways and I’ve now returned to it in terms of developing a visual language which attempts to describe lived experience (embodied/felt experience).

If I look back through my creative journal for this module, the source and subject material is entirely the urban landscape, and particularly the industrial, landscape (with the exception of a Yorkshire Rose from the Holbeck wandering). I’d not even noticed this - there is actually an unexpected strength of theme. Something noticeable by its absence in this module is my own image, which has hitherto been present in my practice since the Access course days. Whether I have moved on permanently from this, only time will tell, but I think the development of my use of colour and mark is possibly taking over from the need to put myself literally in the picture.

What next?

A week off after hand in to go to York Races! Then back to it. The first task will be to research and produce the paper that I will give at the Symposium on 16^th September. This is equally exciting and terrifying. I hope that that research will form the basis for the research for my dissertation. I haven’t yet finalised a title for the latter but I expect it will encompass some or all of the themes of Northernness, mark making, developing a visual language and urban wandering.

I expect that the dissertation will take up most of the time next term, but if at all possible I want to keep going into the Print Room to try to keep developing my technique. In particular, I want to learn more about etching into a ground on metal and to think about how this could work into the Practice 2 module next year.

MA Week 35 - Etching and a different kind of abstract (2)

Reflection on the past two weeks – 11^th July 2016:

Etching and a different kind of abstract (2) 

The other thing I’ve been working on this past fortnight is my first ever conference abstract. I’d heard about a symposium called “Grim up North” via social media. Its topic is Northern heritage and identity, which I have of course been researching. It’s aimed at MA and PhD students and postdocs, so it was a foregone conclusion that I should have a go at submitting an abstract. 

Preparing the abstract was quite challenging but interesting. I followed my usual approach of reading the question (i.e. the call for papers (CFP)) and working up a response. I had enough confidence in my writing ability to know that if I kept drafting, something would eventually appear. It took a lot of grouping my thoughts, though, and to get out those 250 words I had two or three lots of initial scribbles plus six or seven drafts.

 

How to write an abstract - the long way

One of the initial hurdles was trying to focus in on what I wanted to say. It took a while for me to realise that I didn’t need to submit an account of everything I’ve been doing, but rather focus on just those bits that overlapped with the CFP. To help strengthen my submission, I read back over this blog, in particular the posts on heritage as a critical perspective from Harrison’s book . I’ve also got some part-formed notes about identity from Bathmaker’s book, Exploring Learning, Identity & Power through Life History & Narrative Research, that helped.  

I’ve also recently read a really relevant paper by Annemarie Murland, Migration and Sense of Place: re-contextualising felt experience through creative practice. (Edit: now discussed in this Week 36 post).The gist of this paper is about translating the embodied experience of a place into visual form. Murland talks about the feeling translating itself into the marks she is making. This was something I think I would have eventually arrived at, with my deep, black, scratchy marks, but Murland articulated this hitherto half-formed thought.  This unlocked the final piece of the jigsaw, namely the fact that you can depict a lived (felt/embodied) experience in a non-figurative way and the marks can say more than a figurative depiction could do. 

The next bit of editing was the style. I’d written in the first person, but thought that wasn’t right. I read Murland’s abstract of her own paper plus the abstracts of a couple of others I had previously printed off, and suddenly the style came to me, and this strengthened the text a good deal. 

Finally I sought the opinion of three people whose views I respect; my colleague Jenny, who teaches skills including academic writing to PhD students and postdocs; my colleague Liz, who is also a lecturer in Fine Art; and my long-suffering tutor, Sharon. Each of them gave me some useful insights. Jenny pointed out that I had a disconnect in one paragraph – easy to do when you’ve done so much editing. Liz gave me some deeper insights into my comments about use of colour and also some useful references about that topic. Sharon pointed out some repetitions and advised me to read the abstract out loud to myself. I edited it then read it in my head, and thought it sounded OK. When I did finally read it out loud, I was amazed to find repetitions I’d missed. I’d never heard of this technique before and it is so simple and useful. 

The abstract is reproduced below, and was submitted yesterday. I don’t know if it will be accepted or not. Whatever the outcome, I think it has been a really useful exercise for me. It’s helped me to hone in a little further on what I’m doing and how, and I’ve learnt some good lessons about abstract writing along the way.

 

Using wandering and visual response to investigate Northernness: How did I get here?

“The North” exists not only as a physical entity, but also as a lived experience for the Northerner. How can this embodied experience be investigated and depicted using visual methods? 

Within the various stages of deindustrialisation - the decay and rebuilding of urban Yorkshire - lie the roots of the heritage and identity of many Northerners, myself included. The search for our roots can be depicted visually; the transformation of the urban landscape forms a rich source of visual material. Heritage and life history perspectives can be used to articulate stories of the places, people and objects of the North. By combining these theoretical perspectives with urban wandering, it becomes possible to visually describe the embodied experience of living here.  

This combined approach opens up an immersive, visual research method which gives rise to visual responses. Looking, observing and connecting with the built environment and its peoples, past and present, brings a sense of place, of being and of belonging. As today becomes tomorrow’s heritage, so this visual research adds to the pool of collective memories.  

The creative outcomes generate a personal visual language of Northernness, deepening understanding of identity, self and heritage. The urban landscape reveals new shapes and colours, repurposed through the choice of marks and materials. Abstract, non-figurative artworks invite the viewer to share the embodied experience without the pre-conception that might be suggested by a figurative image. Colours come into play: black and white suggests the grim industrial past. Vibrant colours depict the embodied experience of the present and hope for the future.