Alex Murdoch, Artist

Study Statement


Here and gone: experiencing the paradox of permanence in the transient

Subject

I’m interested in how my ceramic practice intersects with my improvisatory performance practice, and in this research will be looking at how and if I can use the medium of ceramics (in the sense that fired clay is fixed in time) to have a conversation with impermanence.  A crucial part of this for me is exploring the agency the audience have in encountering – and completing – my work

Main concerns

Two areas of my interest seem to have essential qualities in conflict. Transience is moving, through time, moving on from, beginnings and endings, here and gone.  Permanence is stillness – rocks, monuments, weightiness, significance.

Theatre and improvisation know about the value of transience to audience.  And specifically the shared experience of the moment.  In the fleeting encounter the audience values something that feels unrepeatable, unique.

Museums, archives, monuments, the canon of gold framed paintings, arguably most visual art that is received into the art establishment – are connected to fixing in time, history, longevity, statements.  (There is hierarchy at work here – power – who choses what is permanent?).

When people experience art – there is a transient nature to the encounter – which becomes validated by memory, the quality of how it made you feel at the time.   If affective this memory is solidified and permanent although the moment has been and gone.

Vision of my practice

My fine art practice is intertwined with my physical performance background – but instead of creating performance art I feel more excited by the challenge of exploring the physical dynamics of things rather than live bodies in space.  I’m bringing to my sculptural work my knowledge of spatial dynamics, presence, play, liveness and audience. 

Ceramics is connected to the elemental – earth and fire.  Surviving Mesopotamian pots trace man’s first technological advancement – but also evidence artistic expression.  They tell stories.

Time is how stories are told – beginning, middle and end.  If I’m not literally telling a story – then perhaps I am putting focus on a form (or relationships between forms) and asking the audience to complete the story.  

Ways in which I work in my practice on my preoccupations and concerns

My current ceramic practice involves primarily a sense of play – I make clay objects quite quickly – embracing the recyclable nature of clay.  I also sketch, collage and scribble notes and words to myself.  I believe in collaboration – even when making work alone – I try to talk to other ceramicists and makers about how their work comes about.

All of this is in tension with the technical demands of ceramics – drying, firing, glazing – and designing objects that will hold their form as intended and not crack.  

I also paint and draw.  I also write.  Sometimes I write about politics and the systems that make me angry.  I am finding the reflective blog transformative in terms of untangling ideas – but also keeping a healthy separation from analysis via my keyboard and play in the studio.

Because I’m an improvisor I am used to letting go of ideas that aren’t serving me.  I fully intend this to be a living piece of research, that will evolve and change. 

Aim

To break open my practice by exploring how the qualities of transience intersect with the those of permanence in my evolving practice

…and in this to embed agency for the audience in how they encounter my work.

Objectives

  • Explore materially the qualities of transience (e.g. ephemeral, nebulous, lightness) and the qualities of permanence (e.g. solidity, heaviness, stillness) in playful experimentation within my ceramic practice and image making.  
  • Seek ways to disrupt my practice by embracing chance, spontaneity and risk – and test how improvisatory thinking can practically apply to sculptural or ceramic practice.
  • Situate my practice by exploring ceramic and other art work dealing with temporality (e.g. time-based practices) and permanence (e.g. monuments) – alongside the development of those ideas and concepts beyond the sphere of art discourse.  

– Engage in dialogue with practitioners whose work addresses my line of enquiry

  • Draw from my performance experience, in particular improvisation, to see how the quality of transience can create agency for the audience, in a way that is meaningful to them, to me and to my work.
  • Seek opportunities to test my work in public and in dialogue with audience.
  • Record, track and critically reflect on my journey via my blog, so that I can deepen my practice, find new questions to ask that resonate personally – and to develop my own authentic voice.

Context

In terms of the context of my research I have identified several ceramic artist that may be closest to my themes in that there is a performative or movement-based theme within their practice. Phoebe Cummings is associated with large scale site based pieces in raw clay that disintegrate – the same clay is reused in new sites.  Claire Twomey’s also works with unfired clay and integration is part of her work.  Neil Brownsword works has worked with a performative element and alchemy and renewal are themes. Keith Harrington, Gillian Lowndes, Davina-Ann Robinson, William Cobbing, Shawanda Corbett and Nicole Seisler are also ceramicists whose work is connected to my broader themes.  I already have relationships with and am planning to conduct primary research with Jo Pearl (whose claymation work animates wet clay – and interestingly who also has previously explored figurative work) also clay-based performative artists Shane Keeling and Vidya Thirunarayan.  Also I want to talk further with Yuki Nakamura who’s ‘Fragile Like Life’ football installation inspired me – and with Gaby Mlynarczyk – a ceramicist (who also teaches at County Hall Pottery where I teach taster classes) who’s approach is improvisatory. I’m also meeting Julia Ellen Lancaster who’s sustainable approach to ceramics involves only using the leftovers from other ceramicists glaze buckets and clay scraps – with entirely improvised results.

It would be remiss to discuss ceramic practice without also exploring Wabi Sabi – the Japenese philosophy of approaching impermanence with ceramics and accepting mistakes as an organic process.  Also the agency of materials is explored in Vibrant Matter : A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennet – which I feel will be a significant part of my project. 

For broader explorations of Fine Art practices that explore time, ephemerality, and happenings Joeseph Beuys and Clause Oldenburg are examples.  Work that involves the ageing of materials – Naum Gabo, Eva Hesse and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  Phylidda Barlow’s huge installations are described by the artist as arguing with the space – and also clearly explores the monumental.  Ask are Gormley’s site based sculptures.  Rachel Whiteread obviously explores absence as a kind of temporality in usage of negative space.  As I’m not exploring performance art per se I will touch briefly on the work of artists such as Yoko Ono or Marina Abramovitch – in that there is huge agency with the audience.   Matta-Clark’s Walls Paper also involves disintegration and tangible audience dynamics.  Historically art began to explore time – in that time involves movement from point A to point B – with the Futurists movement, also Evan Walters explored ‘double vision’ and William Coldstream our perception of visual space in a single image.  

In terms of thinking across disciplines I am going to attempt understand Heidegger in terms of temporality, being and existence – although comprehension eludes me at present!  Deleuze is interesting in term of process and change, Bergson and Ricoeur also look at the experience of time.  I want to look at Foucault in terms of institutional memory and Pierre Nora re memory and permanence.  

My performance background refers to Keith Johnston’s and Viola Spolin’s work on improvisation and Jacques Lecoq’s and Philippe Gaulier’s investigation into presence, bodies in space and the elusive ‘moment’.  In terms of still figures in space I may also contact and talk to (if relevant) Sarah Wright’s and her Curious School of Puppetry and Mark Down of Blind Summit.  It might also be interesting to talk to stage designers that work with scale and playful space – such as Julian Crouch and John Bausor.  

Methodology

This project is practice-led and making in clay is my primary way of thinking and questioning. I am approaching this as an evolving enquiry in which understanding emerges through a cycle of doing, reflecting, and adjusting. The methodology needs to hold that sense of movement while remaining focused on my central concerns.

My testing ground will primarily be the studio. I will work through cycles of making, pausing, and reflecting, exploring qualities that relate to my themes such as instability, weight, balance, fragility and stillness. The technical processes — drying, firing, glazing — are part of the investigation, particularly in how clay shifts from malleable and temporary to fixed and enduring. Some works may be resolved; others will remain experiments that inform the next stage of enquiry.

Alongside this, I will draw from my background in improvisation. I am interested in how responsiveness, risk and presence might be translated into object-based work. Rather than producing performance, I want to examine how improvisatory thinking shapes my decisions in the studio — for example, working quickly, responding to material resistance, or allowing unexpected outcomes to redirect the work. This strand is exploratory and will shift, but it provides a framework for thinking about “liveness” within the fixed form.

Contextual research will run in parallel to my practice. I will engage with practitioners within and outside of the ceramics world who are concerned with temporality, memory, monumentality, liveness in performance and as well as clay-based approaches to audience. Reading will inform the studio, and studio discoveries may in turn redirect further reading. In addition, I intend to conduct a small number of informal interviews with practitioners whose work engages with my concerns. These conversations will help situate my practice within a broader field and challenge my assumptions.

In order to research how the audience might have agency in my work, I will seek opportunities to share work in progress through critiques with MA peers and with the ceramic community at my studio, shows or small installations, and will reflect on how viewers move around, react and respond to the work.

Throughout the project, I will use the reflective blog to document experiments, technical discoveries, conceptual shifts and emerging questions. I intend to work in short phases of approximately three to four weeks, setting small and specific enquiries and reviewing progress at the end of each phase. This structure allows the research to evolve and grow as discoveries emerge.

5. Outcome

As this is a live exploration that aims to continually challenge and re-question it’s direction it is difficult to define an outcome.  It is safe to say that I will produce hopefully a piece or body of work that begins to define my practice.   The aim of the proposal thus far is to involve the audience somehow in ways that gives them agency in the work – and to explore, utilise or directly employ transience in conversation with permanence as a theme.  

I also want to explore the possibilities of how my blog continually will inform my practice and how I use it to engage not only with my personal development as an artist but with my conversation with the art – and the real – world. 

6. Work Plan

WORK PLAN (60 Weeks)

This project will move through three 20-week units.
The blog will run throughout as a record of material tests, shifts in thinking, technical discoveries and emerging questions.

I will continue working in short phases of around 3–4 weeks. At the end of each phase I will pause, reflect, and adjust direction if needed.

UNIT 1

Research, Development and Practice (Weeks 1–20)

Weeks 1–10

Opening things up.

  • Establish reflective blog and working routine
  • Explore sculptural language beyond performance practice
  • Clay tests (bisque and glaze in gas and electric kilns)
  • Maintain sketchbook alongside studio work
  • Life drawing and academic support workshops
  • Begin contextual research and bibliography
  • Develop firing rhythm within studio timetable

This phase has been about widening the field and allowing material play without fixing outcomes too quickly.

Weeks 11–16

Sharpening focus.

  • Refine Study Statement ISA deadline (Week 16)
  • Clarify aims and objectives
  • Focus material tests around weight, balance, fragility, stillness
  • Track tension between improvisation and technical control

Week 17

Curate blog (ISA deadline).

  • Select documentation
  • Identify where questions feel most alive

Weeks 18–20

Interim Show + Low Residency

  • Plan and install Interim Show
  • Observe how audience encounter the work
  • Reflect on how presence and memory operate in the space
  • Low Residency (Weeks 19–20): workshops, gallery visits, shared learning

Unit 1 aim’s to end with clearer questions and a stronger working structure.

UNIT 2

Knowledge and Communication (Weeks 21–40)

Weeks 21–30

First half of Unit 2

  • Systematic reading around temporality, monumentality, liveness and audience
  • Informal conversations with selected practitioners
  • Continue studio experimentation with clearer conceptual focus
  • Begin structuring research paper
  • Draft 1,500–2,000 words
  • Ongoing reflective blog linking reading and making

By Week 30 I aim to have a strong structure and a partial draft.

Summer Period (Between Weeks 30 and 31)

There is a long summer stretch between the two halves of Unit 2.

During this period:

  • Making will continue steadily in the studio
  • Reading will deepen where necessary
  • Writing will move toward a full draft
  • Blog reflections will continue, but not rigidly scheduled

The aim over the summer is continuity rather than intensity.
I intend to complete a full draft of the research paper at least four weeks before submission, allowing time for feedback and redrafting.

This period will allow space for ideas to settle, shift or clarify without losing momentum.

Weeks 31–40

Second half of Unit 2

  • Complete full 3,000–4,000 word draft early in this phase
  • Seek feedback and redraft
  • Strengthen connection between writing and studio decisions
  • Submit research paper and critical reflection
  • Curate documentation of practice

Unit 2 should end with a clearer understanding of how transience and permanence are operating in the work.

UNIT 3

Reflection and Presentation (Weeks 41–60)
Making with commitment

Weeks 41–44

Defining the body of work.

  • Identify core forms and relationships
  • Begin producing final pieces
  • Test how audience agency might be embedded through scale, placement or interaction

Weeks 45–48

Production phase.

  • Continue making final works
  • Refine series rather than isolated objects
  • Begin planning exhibition layout

Weeks 49–50

Low Residency

This week is primarily for workshops, gallery visits and shared inspiration.

Ceramic Production Deadlines

Because of kiln scheduling and the risk of breakage:

  • All final pieces must be completed and ready for bisque firing by April.
  • Glaze firings to take place in early May.
  • Mid–late May reserved for contingency firings.

I will produce more work than required to allow for failure or technical loss.

Anything not bisqued by April cannot be guaranteed for the final showcase.

Weeks 51–56

Final making and finishing.

  • Complete glaze firings
  • Photograph and document work
  • Finalise installation plan
  • Reflect on how audience physically encounter the work

Weeks 57–60

Show and reflection.

  • Install and present final body of work
  • Evaluate how effectively audience agency operates
  • Write final reflective synthesis
  • Outline direction beyond the MA

Ongoing Structure Throughout All Units

  • Work in 3–4 week cycles
  • Maintain blog as living record
  • Allow ideas to evolve and let go of what no longer serves
  • Build buffer before key deadlines (writing and firing)

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