seminar 4 (incomplete)

Seminar 2 – 22nd October.
The beach visit
Despite the uncomfortable surroundings this seminar was actually highly enjoyable, as well as serving as a refresher to topics I have covered in the past and provoking further thought. The importance of understanding the context in which your work is presented was impressed upon me from the beginning of the seminar, and makes particular sense to the direction of my current practice – curating a space full of objects in order to make a statement rather than make one single object is a viable methodology yes, but any possible message or inference that is meant to be drawn from the work can be ruined by the simplest of things in your exhibition space. As we progressed in the discussion of our immediate surroundings we touched upon the metaphors and connotations surrounding the beach itself, and how historically the ‘beach’ has always been a retreat for the British citizen. Interestingly the impact we have on our surroundings – in this case how we expect the home comforts to be readily available to us wherever we go, ironically, even when we travel to a place where we think we are isolated from the everyday, echoed previous research into how we as human beings interact with and perceive nature and the natural. As modern day people we have such high demands on our environment, it is no longer enough for us to simply travel to a remote location and enjoy its isolation and inherent quality, no, instead we require or expect there to be some form of prescribed interactive mechanism – a vetted way for us to ‘better’ experience the environment. When people are shown two pictures – one of ploughed fields and the other of an untended piece of ground, overgrown with weeds etc. and asked for their opinion on which is more ‘natural’ people will often describe the ploughed fields as more natural than the overgrown mess. This is perhaps because people want to experience nature but want it to be ‘spoon fed’ to them in a way that allows them to feel comfortable. The threatening personas of the truly wild landscapes, which exist within our environment, are simply too challenging for us it would seem, are not considered conducive to relaxation or enjoyment. The friction of a persons desire for both the natural and the domestic is constant in the way that nature is quintessentially non-domestic or untameable leading me to question whether the impact upon the local ecosystem is justifiable.

seminar 3

Seminar 1 – 15th October.
Tom O’Sullivan and Joanne Tatham
The fact that Tom and Joanne were pitching to us what in four days they would be formally presenting to the Olympic committee meant that I was immediately aware of the work they were describing was extremely contemporary. Several things came up in the seminar which were of particular importance to myself, not least of which was the idea of allowing people to take what they want from any given work. Tom described they’re efforts as “challenging the dominant form of relational art practice” whereby the intention is to create pieces of work which have the same goals as works by artists practicing these so called “dominant forms” but which lack the contrived methods of delivery or machinations which are so commonly associated with the genre, or indeed, art as a whole. Their use of recurring motif’s to prompt the viewer holds its own significance for me in a world where we are - as artists/designers - under constant pressure to produce separate saleable works.
Their ambitious project “The Experience being an experience like an experience you just had.” was a further extension of their current ‘creative grammar’ which directly involved their audience through participation, and aimed to create an experience which would be memorable for the user due to the juxtaposition of the unknown with the known, in the familiar setting of a local gala event.
“This possibility for the absurd is important – our objects are not intended to create passive feel-good situations.”
As with any piece of public art, it is unique to its surroundings and only functions when it is placed in the context from which it was derived, although the imagery used may be a recurrence from their work, the project itself has its own meaning within the “idiosyncratic” events for which they were created. The “iconic” aesthetic of the work is intended by the artist to facilitate widespread dissemination of the work (through photography and film via youtube etc.) meaning it can also serve as a national art project despite its dependence/symbiosis with its environment.

been up to much?

i have.

I just started a masters of fine art and design at grays school of art. After a week and a half im settling in and can see some very interesting times ahead, with both group projects and the continuation of my own personal practice. future posts are likely to be discourse surrounding seminars that have been arranged as part of the course and will reflect upon contemporary design and fine art as a whole.