Alex Murdoch, Artist

Category: Unit 1

  • Where am I now?

    Really interesting lecture from the Art in Context series run by Dean Kenning.  About diagrams as a methodology.  Diagrams being ‘synoptic’ – you see everything at once.  How we think in terms of a diagram creating order but there is not necessarily an order. 

    A timeline is the most basic diagram.  It spatialises time.

    Diagrams like timelines use metaphors to do with directions of travel – we say ‘go forward’ ‘go back’ – arrows towards some kind of end point.

    This joined up with Jonathan’s lecture for me about the reflective process as a cyclical plan – reflect, plan, achieve, observe > new question now, reflect, plan, achieve, observe etc.  Rinse and repeat.  And how that is problematic with art because ‘continual progress’ and a ‘final end point’ is deceiving.  It looks more like messy, tangential, zig-zagging.  Rito’s ‘radical incompleteness’.

    Dean Kenning showed us some examples of timelines that demonstrate that they are always …that word ‘partial’ again…always selecting, never neutral.

    Joseph Priestley’s New Chart of History – (1769?) – a view of the history of the world from the point of view of the Empire.  Alfred Barr’s graphic of the relationships that make up – in his view – the story of Modern Art.  As the founder of MOMA NY he should know – but like all custodians of artwork he is partial, selective.  

    (Note to self here – to check out ‘System’s Theory’. And the Zeno Paradox – where you are only ever halfway to a point, always halfway to another point etc to infinity.)

    So anyway.  No arrow.  Just the rewriting of a story in particular and personal terms.

    What to take from this?

    The above messy timeline of my own.  I notice I didn’t place my now in art history terms, just in terms of my journey and what got me here now.   All the influences that make up me.  Looking at it again I see that I have blown some things up and minimised other events and I guess this would look completely different say 5 or 10 years ago. I feel excited about what things will become important and prominent in the next 5 or 10 years time. I have no idea.

  • How to begin

    Beginning of my MA Fine Art : Digital at Central Saint Martins. First session.

    Kindness, compassion as ‘psychological safety’ – exploring the idea that these might be the foundations of an art practice as opposed to the idea of progression only coming through the pushy dynamic of ‘challenge’ in a more hard, aggressive way.  I’m really excited by this.  I’ll sign up right away please for psychological safety.  I come from a freelance theatre background, and whilst lip service might be played to ‘safety’ by salaried policy-makers, for the most part one is dealing with rejection and criticism on an almost daily basis – it’s part of the deal.  You have literally signed up as an actor to put your self out there and have your self pulled apart, judged and given the ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  Maybe the visual art world is no different but I’m excited by Jonathan’s choice to put upfront values of compassion and kindness.

    I’m also an improvisor, where saying ‘yes’ opens the portal to creativity.  I have two copies of Keith Johnstone’s 1981 book ‘Impro’.  Underlined in each is the line – 

    ‘There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’.  Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain’.

    Through my improvisation practice I’ve experienced, hundreds of times, the adventure.  Also the ‘no’ sayers, and the safety dulling and literally blocking the work.  Saying ‘yes’ – to everything – became a foundational idea.  But it is not 1981 and this beautiful, complicated quote contains a lot to be unpacked now – questions about consent, ideas of safety having a value. 

    What does now feel like for me?  The geopolitical world feels like a bin fire.  Closer to home my theatre making practice feels vulnerable-making – and sometimes not in a good way.

    I don’t have any answers here.  This is just the beginning.  This is just asking some questions.  Getting down some notes.

    I don’t know yet what I’m going to put out in the world.  What I’m going to bring with me on the journey.  I do know that I’m going to take (from my theatre practice, from improv) the notion of play.

    Just playing.

    Seriously.  Just playing seriously and just playing for plays sake.

    In the session Olga said a lovely thing about the loss of innocence and play which I roughly remember as ‘when we are adults something is always for something’.

    Art-making is possibly the most vulnerable-making thing.   A community of practice with guiding principles of kindness and compassion held lightly around the edges seems like a fine idea – not to close off challenge but to enable it.  

    As Jonathan said instead of a scarcity mindset we’ll be ‘mindful, hungry, generous…the more we put in, the more there IS’

    (image : photograph taken from the library of Central Saint Martin’s students dancing in the Street, 06/10/2025)