Evaluation: End of Year L5 Summary.

End of year evaluation

As the Method and Enquiry module comes to an end for the year L5, I can say that there has been a vast improvement in my approach to thinking about making and all the processes that go into my practice.

 

The fundamental embodiment of specific ways of thinking, including philosophical, aesthetic and socio/bio-politically, have shown an ability to think beyond the material aggregates and formulaic production methods that may be suited to a more commercial/industrial setting of commerce and utility.

 

Carrying over the practice of experimentation has driven my output of work to new grounds of unseen results, and occasions of the accidental have come to unfold clearer pathways into how I engage with the making process and the metaphysical and philosophical implications as to where the work resides.  

 

This careful consideration can take on whole new meanings of relevance, importance or oversight to how, as a maker, I respond to an ever-evolving world in a constant state of flux, be it politically, socially, culturally or ethically.

 

Thinkers that I have found invaluable over the year (and I know to sound like an award nominee trying to remember everybody at an acceptance speech) are Graham Harman for his Object-Oriented Ontology, Hal Foster for the unique way he fuses art criticism with current affairs, Rosalind Krauss, Arthur C. Danto, Martin Heidegger, Sara Ahmad, Timothy Morton, and much more who, by either browsing the index pages for their invaluable insight into topics as varied and expansive as Ontology, phenomenology, aesthetics and cultural, societal and humanistic embodiments of “Grounded thought” (here I thank and credit Rosi Braidotti).

 

This year has massively advanced how I approach my work as a practitioner and maker and how I contextualize, place, and site my work into environments of differing scales. From academics and institutions to organizations and groups, it has become fundamental that I learn how to articulate my practice to gain support from bodies designed to support and facilitate the showing of work, as well as appealing to galleries, owners, buyers and curators that I rely on to generate and promote my strong network of advancement.

 

 I feel more confident in describing, simply, where my work practice resides now, and that is within the gap between an object and its qualities, and the resultant space that acts as a place of agency (Cf. Karen Barad, Agential Cut, 2007)   

 

This confidence is starting to exemplify itself in my approach to making too. When I came to London Met, I sought a validation that I hoped would underpin self-pathologizing insecurity that leaked into my system to doing work, and reasons therein, hence the photorealist painting that exacerbated a perfectionism that was crippling my freedom to express as it pinned my output into rigorous prosaic articulation pictorially. General mimesis that was never going to break any moulds, as it were!

 

I’m thrilled with my development over this year. Most forerunners on the BA Fine Art course always said, ‘ah, wait until the second year, it’s the most fun year’ I agree that it’s been utterly invigorating to my making endeavours. The “Accidental Properties” of my ceramics to the abstract film making coupled with my CCS learning has been invaluable to helping me articulate what underpins my thinking within my process of working to a ‘moment’ that stands as a testament to the commitment and trust in the material process.  Below is a film walk around of my end of year piece ‘Beyond the Greenberg field’ (fig. 1) as well as emerging works that came about in the final weeks Fig. 2 & 3.

Stuart Lee

Basement Installation May 2021

London Metropolitan University

Stuart Lee

Either The Love of The Peace (2021)

Duration 4:13s

Format 16 : 9

Stuart Lee

Balanced Ecologies (May 2021)

Glazed Raku Clay, Wood and Steel wire.

One of a new series of 7 developmental works