Development: The portrait, surveillance, looking at looking.

The Space Between Working and Thinking

Developing practice across modules.

Since walking back into the studio 5 weeks ago, there was a trepidation. The summer had been spent at home, painting, reading and trying to nurture ideas that may come to some kind of fruition. Also, once the lockdown had lifted, there was a chance to take in some exhibitions, one in particular was the Steve McQueen exhibition at Tate Modern.

I wasn’t ready for what was about to unfold. The presentation of image on screen, something i’d been exposed to many times before, this time seemed to arrest me in the moment. The visual language, in some way repositioned my place as viewer. There was something about the multi sensorial engagement that gave me, the viewer, a wider responsibility as a receptive entity.

The immediacy of discovery that seemed to develop as one traversed the space, came in the way of hearing the audio before I arrived physically in the space. All these dynamics have become apparent, in the way that, if one were to imaging finding a painting, you don’t hear it before you arrive, it silently sits there, waiting on your arrival.

Experiencing this exhibition, enticed a nagging feeling that I have had for a while. After being asked in a Critical Conceptual Studies class, by my tutor Andrew Hewish, “what does your painting do for painting?” I have struggled with the process of making. Taking that question away, compelled me to question how my paintings only copy images, capture in a fixed way, that negates or prevents accident or chance.

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Working notes to how I would like to present a short film idea.

For me, on reflection, putting painting to the side, allows a more arbitrary approach. The whole idea that what I present doesn’t necessarily have to sit within one specific medium, opens up my practice to a wider sphere of influence.

Since I have started this bachelors, I have become immensely engaged with the philosophical disciplines of Phenomenology and Ontology. I am now discovering that sculpture, and film weaponise my ability to respond to the concepts that present themselves within the discourse of object versus viewer.

The more I lend consideration to how objects present themselves to us, *see endnote, the more I see my role as an interpreter. A mediation seems to take place as I contemplate how, not only creating a work, but how that work, ‘sits’ or ‘works’ in a space.

Also, because of access, and in this sense I mean studio space, whether at the university or at home, presents the possibilities of restrictions to making as a process. Therefore film, i am now finding, creates an agency for me to consider where my practice can site itself in relation to the environments i find myself: a. reacting to, and b. documenting the response.

Sculpture on the other hand, forces me to consider objects in space, relevance, and meaning.

Making, for example, my clay fired ‘hoods’, presents the open ended possibility of how to display, site, or co-join a habitat for the work to exist in. So on reflection, the process of making becomes a small and almost too easy part of a more networked process that facilitates engagement, positioning and independence.

The challenges of relevance posits a wider responsibility as a maker. Discovering through the process of making, sometimes only at certain moments gives me an indicator or where the work is heading. It’s as if the journey between concept and actuality is a shared and interdependent happening. Unfolding in real time as both I and the materials engage as a cohort, so as to be complicit in that very same actuality, or at the very least, i become witness to an object as it emerges into an existence of its own.

Something that has also become evident in this process and as my practice now unfolds into new areas of making, and I feel this could best be explained over the next two images, is the results that become evident in concept versus experiment.

The contrast here is evident in the out come of two of my working processes. The first (fig. a), Is a deliberate and resultant exactitude of concept. I took an idea that I wanted to act as a sculptural expression of the Hegelian idea of spirit, essence or being. Without trying to divert this into a deeply philosophical essay, This sculpture pretty much ended up, as seen not only in my minds eye, but as drawn out in my sketchbook (fig. b) , during the contemplation period. Where as (fig. c) , came into being as I was breaking down a pallet. In a moment of spontaneity, I ‘saw’ what then became what I now call a self portrait.

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fig. a The Concrete Lampshade. (2020)

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fig. b Preparatory sketches from notebook.

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fig. c Self Portrait. (2020)

What is becoming evident, is there is a clear overlap in the contextual development as well as the experimental. Certain processes either produce moments of discovery or accidents that swerve the work in a new direction. A good example of this would be the first cast for Concrete Lampshade (2020). Whilst making the wooden shuttering (fig. d), I hadn’t taken into account how the concrete would encase the internal wood that was acting a way of leaving the centre of the cast hollow.

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fig. d First cast of Concrete lampshade (2020)

This happening, accident or moment, although a failure in outcome in relation to the project objective, opened up a new opportunity to see this object in a sculptural sense. Does this piece work as a stand alone object? what does the wooden shuttering present within the idea of surrounding, holding or encasing the internal concrete? And as a moment of reversal, what constrictions are presented as we consider the wood that has now become ‘entombed’, forever held in place, bar an act of violence to remove the wood from its capture?

So, In summary, these first six weeks have lead to discovery within new ways of making, that have tried to marry thinking, process and outcome, which open up further exploration within how to further the narrative within the work itself and more importantly the world it now inhabits.

* Having re-read this blog 5 months later, and to demonstrate some of the research influence upon me, I am not sure if I stand by what I wrote, when I said “objects present themselves to us”. If we apply Graham Harman’s philosophy of ‘overmining’, (reducing an object up to its affect "insofar as they are manifested to the mind, or are part of some concrete event that affects other objects as well.” [Harman, 2011].) we can take from this that there is intention set within the object to attract our attention. (Something I argue in my CCS Block 2 essay in regards to Hylozoism)