Alex Murdoch, Artist

Tag: compassion

  • Je ne regrette rien 

    Remembering Philippe Gauler 1943-2026

    Yesterday I went to Paris to attend the extraordinary funeral of the teacher who changed the course of my life Philippe Gaulier.  In the sometimes murky world of artist training Gaulier is perhaps the most widely and wildly misunderstood pedagogue of all.  Perhaps we all assembled from around the world yesterday – how many? maybe 600 of us – because we wanted to hold onto that magical thread of his teaching specifically by being together…because we were there…because we know it.  Perhaps we all feel tired by having to listen – every time his name comes up – to the broken record of criticism spewing from the mouths of people who never even went to his school regarding his somewhat unorthodox teaching style. As Simon McBurney put it he was –

    ‘provocative, demanding, deliberately inappropriate and utterly hilarious’ 

    The elusive cornerstone of his school was to find that ‘complicité’ on which McBurney, Arden and Magni founded the namesake company – the inferred danger and delight in being connected (with each other, with the audience) when we play.  Do we have pleasure to be on the stage?  If not why bore us? ’Adios, sit down immediately, my little friend’.  Gaulier actors read audience in a way that no other actors do and that is what I am proud to know. It will be in my bones.  It was in the bones of us, connected together when we – a giant congregation – burst into ‘Non, Je ne regrette rien’ along with Piaf as we saw the old fella off on his way.  And we might be messy and we may not do things ‘correctly’ but we will do it with heart and a kind of passion that is very rarely really seen on stage.  Spontaneous, huge applause, whooping, cheering, Bravo, Bravo went off as he was carried up the long theatrical staircase to disappear into the glittery backdrop of blue-sky mosaics of La Coupole in Pere Lechaise cemetery.    

    I began at Gaulier’s school aged 25, just two months after losing my mother.  Philippe taught me to feel again and how to be free.

    Why am I writing about this here?  Because what I am looking for is not and should not be definitive or even precisely known.  This is the same for fine art, for performance, for poetry, for playwriting, for art installation, for ceramics, for concept art, for music – definitely not for music – for opera, for dance, for education…for making anything at all really, I think.  

  • Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules

    Been turning over in my mind the 10 rules from Corita Kent’s Immaculate College of Art that we looked at in the last session.  It occurs to me that Kent’s rules are so fresh precisely because she wasn’t (for a long time) accepted or part of the art establishment, that her outsider status gave her permission.  That somehow not being accepted can actually be a freeing thing.   Being outside of something being a ‘point of departure’ – to return to Alex Schady’s quote (see earlier blog) that comforted me when I was worrying about being from a different art discipline.  I recently watched ‘Maudie’ – a biopic of outsider artist Maud Lewis played beautifully by Sally Hawkins.  Maud Lewis just painted images everywhere she could find, over the furniture and the walls of her tiny Nova Scotian hut.  In terms of the collective judgement of the art establishment Lewis had a lot in common with Kent – no recognition until much later in life – and a delegation to the ranks of ‘outsider’ status.  Problematic word – ‘Outsider Artist’.  What defines the Inside, if you put aside more cynical ideas such as class, money, contacts and a nice stable upbringing that means you can work the room at a Private View…?  Something defined must have rules or there is no definition.  But artists break rules – don’t they?  Shouldn’t they?

    What’s refreshing about Lewis and Kent is they keep making.  Rather like wise Yoda’s – they either do or do not, there is no try.  Keep putting things down on paper, or any surface.  Make.  Don’t think.  Try trusting.  Rule no. 1 is that you try trusting for a while.

    Yesterday I forgave the sorrowful kind of realistic figures I was making (which I am resisting because of what…taste, trends, some sense of what’s ok to do – and that literally nobody has told me not to do).  I just committed to them and I believed that if I endow them with seriousness and validity – then maybe they would have this.  

    Actors do this also.  When they don’t commit – or they half commit – everything falls apart. So again, the other discipline contributes to my work.

    Rule No 8* (which should be tattooed on my forehead) – 

    “Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time.  They’re different processes.”

  • Univited Guests

    This week was treated to a visit from imposter syndrome.  All of his friends came too – perfectionism, procrastination, paralysis – the whole gang.

    I have lurched between the identities of six different kinds of artists.  Been haunted by distorted imaginary voices of perfectly supportive ceramicist friends, who think I’ve made bad choices and generally am making a fool of myself.  

    The nature of these thoughts are worth writing down because they are so ridiculous in black and white.  We are not our thoughts.  An idea that seems impossible to grapple with, I believe rooted in mindfulness and therapeutic practices – though at odds with Freud. 

    What am I doing making art?  And in the middle of the night – ‘What IS art? See, you can’t even answer that’.  Well I’m doing a Fine Art Masters, so let’s just see.   I find in these moments of self doubt I scroll on instagram more – it’s a great idea.  My feed shows pristine lifestyle ceramicists throwing pots next to white sofas, desperate influencers showing 3 steps for making abstract art that sells…and even the legit art scene posts seem all about what’s fashionable and what’s correct and accepted right now.  

    And part of the problem also is that everything is acceptable.  I sit down at my life-drawing class (organised by the students union, and excellent) next to a gloomy woman who says that no-one seems to care what art is anymore.  

    Under a cloud I head to the studio at County Hall Pottery, where I work as a technician in exchange for studio space. 

    At the studio Charley Blackburn, the new ceramicist-in-residence, is preparing for an update with the managers.  Her sketchbooks and glaze tests are set out for the meeting and it’s breathtaking work, but also chatting to her, I notice there are more questions than answers.  There’s certainly no end goal.  I show her a box of bisque shapes I’ve been playing with.  And a stop-frame animation I made to document the process.  I might make more stop-frames.  Charley gives me some feedback about what would making a film of them moving add to the work, which she feels already has movement and energy.  I have no idea how she has seen that. 

    While her meeting goes on I listen in to a fantastic conversation from my lovely brilliant colleagues about Charleys work – and I go into hyper focus.  Or flow. Just playing with the shapes.

    One of the challenges of ceramics is the technicality of putting something together, which really requires prototyping, sketching out, planning.  Factoring in the 7-10 different stages of drying time.  But how do I improvise if I have to plan first?  Where is the creativity that comes from spontaneity.  Each ceramicist approaches this chicken and egg in a different way.

    But most importantly something is unblocked by showing up at the studio and my wonderful community and friends at County Hall.  By Charley’s serious generosity and belief.  

    I felt so galvanised by that.  I also want to mention Daniella who has (along with Olga and Hicham) pretty much remotely organised a group show for us in the Good Rice Gallery with a couple of days notice.  She is one of the extraordinary people that just believes, is unfailingly optimistic and generous.   Instead of overthinking this, I go with the flow.

    I think my my thought this week is about community.  If I can’t be kind to myself then to take myself to the people who lift me up.  The studio becomes then not an aspirational space I can’t afford, but an environment I create by people I choose to connect with.

  • You did it wrong.

    I love everything about this picture that I found on stupid social media.  Is the kid wrong?  I think the answer ‘I am dog’ is somehow more right than ‘I am Fifteen’.  Pedagogically the test has created so many crappy misleading clues for the kid – grammatically (’Guess who I am’), visually (a talking dog is actually a number, stoopid) before we even get started on the dated assumption that all kids learn through words alone and that some will be neurodivergent thinkers etc.  But most importantly the teacher is really firm in their opinion that this kid’s answer is a big red-cross WRONG.

    We talked in the last session about failure.  I’ve come to expect my assumptions to be up-ended in this class which is why I’m loving it.  Jonathan presented the idea – ‘do we really learn from failure?’ – and that what happens in the case of being told we’ve failed is more like fight (‘stupid test) or flight (I’m never going there again).  The educational system is designed to have us want to get things ‘right’.

    I notice to myself that all my life I’ve been trying to do things right, to not be as weird as I imagine people think I am, to achieve in other’s people’s eyes.  In the case of my career – to be picked.

    I have more to say on this.  I have a fleeting idea of making a piece of work about it called ‘Well done Alex’ based on an patronising interaction with a ‘more successful’ peer of mine.  I’ll come back to this…

    But actually there are lessons from my theatre training on the subject of working with failure.  We discussed Keith Johnstone (quoted in my first post), improvisation’s UK forefather and saying yes to the unknown.  One of the tenets of improv is to fail gracefully – mistakes are actually a gift.  (My company used to improvise whole stories in one night and on one occasion I had forgotten the name of my character’s husband – a perennial improv problem.  I dropped John in for good measure, accidentally naming Brian’s character’s husband.  Bri said ‘do you mean my John?’ – and thus we had a story of a revealed love affair.).  As Jonathan pointed out – we over-accept the offer from failure and run with it.

    In clowning training the moment of the failure or ‘flop’ is the moment where we discover real fragility and truthfulness.  More another time.

    Jonathan tried an experiment where we reframe failure by distancing ourselves in writing about it in the third person.  I won’t write it all out here but to sum up. In reframing her failure to manage her time in the ceramic studio, Alex discovers that she could be kinder to herself about her excitement to try too many new things, and actually that time is in fact a huge part of the narrative of clay as a medium.  As is slowness, stillness and most definitely unpredictable results and letting go.

    Quoting Jonathan (or somebody else) – 

    the information in failure is a public good, when it is shared society benefits

    Provocation this week – do something in your art practice that might not work.

    Take a risk.  Record it.

    Disrupt something, break it open.

  • 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)