Curate Your Blog
It was really eye-opening to read through my blog again. I especially notice how hard I am being on myself and what is exciting is a growing understanding that this is process, that linking my background to my current art practice is not at odds with but intrinsically linked to my research. Reflecting on the journey it’s clear there was a real shift during my first tutorial with Jonathan. I felt in this moment that I was now understanding the synoptic nature of practice-based research. I was beginning to think about specifically how I want my practice to be personally in terms of values (LO1), why clay is the medium for my developing practice (LO3) and not jumping through the steps of my process (LO2)
LO1 Formulate, describe and implement a challenging and self-directed programme of study, relating to your Study Statement. (AC Enquiry)
You can find my Study Statement here – including the plan of study – exploring transience and permenance and how the audience encounter that paradox.
In the earlier posts I locate myself as a multidisciplinary artist in Where am I now?. In How to Begin I explore values that I want to take with me on my study programme. Themes begin to arrive about the nature of what I want to explore, around working with chance and embracing mistakes in You did it Wrong. And much later on this develops into the beginnings of my idea for my research itself in Really in the Sauerkraut (also LO3 see below) as well as in Gifts from the Kiln Gods (LO3 see below)
I’m inviting challenge into my practice based research in Partial and Errant – thinking about raising questions and the role of art in the world.
I began in earnest to embrace challenge when I explored Risk and Taste with my preconceptions and explored figurative making. The intention of trying something new and embracing difficulty is something that I want to keep – and is embedded into the paradoxes outlined in my Study Statement
Following a brilliantly meandering second tutorial with Jonathan I began to commit to specific ideas I wanted to research. This appeared in a Nebulous stream of conciousness post –
LO2 Implement appropriate working methods for building an independent and effective self-organisation that enables the critical engagement with practice- based research. (AC Process)
I think about the nature of practice based research in my early post Partial and Errant, and begin to think about how I organise my process and not jump through the steps in Thinking and Feeling. The business of dealing with my assumptions and working through them in practice is talked about in Risk and Taste (link above)
A recurring theme is imposter syndrome, questioning whether my materials are appropriate to the ideas I’ve been drawn to. A discovered way of organising my practice, in terms of managing those demons, is to embrace community. Although I am no longer working in collaborative theatre making, my relationship with the artists in my studio, and the visitors and artists who walk into the Gallery where I work shows me that community is a lifeline. My studio becomes my people.
Managing the parameters of irregular studio firings, and the technical challenges of clay as a practice has been so far the most difficult part of my journey on the MA. Finding the right methods of self-organising is hard and I talk about ADHD and how I want to manage it. Situating my work critically is important for this. As a multidisciplinary artist and I talk about wanting to make space for developing that perspective and critical ballast in my practice-based research here –
Looking around me at other artists, including so-called outsider artists and their sense of commitment to their practice, along with referencing ideas of commitment in acting is explored reading Corita Kent’s Immaculate Heart College of Art Rules. I decide here that it’s appropriate (and actually crucial for ADHD) for me to compartmentalise and separate analysis and making.
Following a happy / unhappy kiln result I feel I shift gear in terms of understanding how I want to go forward in my future practice. Connecting how things have been articulated by others (again, my community feeding me) and knowing by digging deeper and more critically means that I can feed my ideas authentically and even embrace paradox.
LO3 Communicate a critical understanding of your developing practice (AC Knowledge AC Communication)
During my visit to NY in the autumn I began to more seriously include my performance background in my thinking How did I get here.
I begin to look around me at the artworld and what I want to take with me, thinking about the role of the artist now in terms of shaping meaning. I link back to my storytelling theatre background and how it now shapes what I want to do now in terms of audience.
A talk at the Ceramics Research Centre by two extraordinary ceramicists and a chance conversation with a performer / ceramicist has a huge impact on my journey in terms of embracing accidents and how I want to approach audience in my developing practice.
The CRC talk and the work of different artists around me is part of my brilliantly tangental second tutorial with Jonathan. I was really excited at this point, and coming out the fog of stuck-ness, because I felt critical practice, making, thinking, my performance background – especially the idea of how risk and fragility are going to still be as central to my art practice as it always has been in theatre – this was a really exciting lightbulb moment on my journey.
A few weeks ago I lost my beloved theatre teacher Philippe Gaulier who has come up in various blogs here. Philippe had a profound effect on the ideas I was first forming as a practitioner in my twenties and I realise that they will always be with me, so despite this unfortunate timing in terms of my MA, I go to his funeral in Paris. The learning I come away with actually takes me back to that early post about Carolina Rito’s ideas of being partial and errant. Messy and not definitive. So this feels like a first part of my story with my MA. Accepting this concept is everything for who I want to be, and am, in my developing practice.
Feedback request
I talk a lot about how I want things to be. What challenges do you have for me about freeing up transition between ideas / concepts and then the actual making process?
What would you like to see more of and less of, what do you feel could be the most exciting thing that is growing?
Alex Murdoch, Artist 