Extension, research and play.

How do we extend practice -towards what?

Opening our practice/research up to different disciplines, inputs, outputs and/or collaborations; considering the possibilities of what can feed into our practice and what can also come out of it and for whom. What products and/or by-products do we generate, who is consuming or could consume them?

As an artist how can you extend your practice physically; perhaps by building on existing and/or incorporating new skills, adding breadth and/or depth to media manipulations, and/or exploring the time a space of art making? In another aspect, the research undertaken as an artist can be more refined, deeper, digging into territories that excite and enliven a practice. Considering how the work is consumed by the audience; are they viewer, consumer, participant, victim or judge? Do they have a choice, is that a factor? Will they have an input, an output or a takeaway?

If these queries are responded to the practice may develop depth and breadth that can be witnessed/experienced by both the artist and the audience. Challenges push towards improvement and clarity.

Personal:

Going forward areas for extension are:

Refine my research - focus, stop trying to cover so much that the message is diluted by conflicting and confusing messages.
Explore my palette - the limitations of colour choice may be holding the work back, let colour feed in as necessary and be a considered part of the work. Stop resisting it.
Audience and installation - entanglement is a theme that I have also resisted through fear of complications and lack of skills - PLAY with this.

How are we curious materially and yet focussed?

I don’t know how to answer this question clearly. I think this is because I am too curious materially and lack focus. My focus is my research practice which I have been developing for the best part of 3 years but gets swept up into tangents. These tangents allow for other questions and concepts to emerge but these make the physical work muddly and therefore tend to get logged and then stored as I attempt to restrict my concepts in an effort to maintain a focused practice. My thoughts work so fast due to my mental make-up that I have a tendency to run away with ideas and miss out large chunks of physical development as I have mentally processed the possible outcomes and decided on a path without physical exploration. The challenge has been to ensure that the development and exploration happens and is detailed and justified, a task that feels complex and slow. My material practice has suffered due to this as I don’t stay with something for very long (other than the tracings). I long to develop a piece over time but worry that the lack of quantity will be judged.

Purposeful play

This feels so relevant, it's now a part of my life due to my assigned roles of both Mother and Teacher, an aspect that has been somewhat absent in my practice due to being out of the teaching profession for a few years. Most of the cohort are teachers, of this I am aware. But I question how much we now look to play to move our students through their work, or is it a series of repetitive tasks to tick off assessment criteria and fill out the necessary paperwork. Do we work with our students, model best practice or ‘practice what we preach’ as the saying goes? I’m feeling invigorated to be teaching again, to have those moments in the classroom and the workshop where the simple task of joining in brings a new idea or dimension to my work. By removing the weight of research and context and simply making, how can I transform my practice, what doors with metaphorically open, what opportunities will show themselves?

What ideas and concepts are preoccupying you within your practice?

I’m still very much enthralled with the repetition of ‘daily life’ and the events of chaos that stir up the mundane. Feeding into this is the aspect of assigned gender roles and a thirst for philosophical knowledge (I just can’t stop listening to philosophy podcasts and reading!). Since the beginning of March, I have been working with a research group looking into the role of the Manifesto in art and this research has bought up some questions regarding the concepts behind art, the allocation of work to movements and the thinking behind the movements.

Currently, I feel an urge to move away from my sparse fragmented images into dense heavy pieces. Upon reflection, I can see this is a reaction to the now dense calendar I have, the weight of responsibilities, and commitments that now need to be negotiated.
Are there areas from the research that you did last year that you feel need more interrogation?

Since completing the contextual study I have a desire to explore the aspect of taking up space, navigating around a space and the physicality and illusion of form in space; linking to the manner in which we navigate around chaos both large and small, physical and mental.

What do you want to find out more about that could inform your practice?

Performance - I’m full of fear regarding performative art but am now considering how to make the audience the performers such as Gustav Metzer’s Crawl Space which I recently experienced in Abu Dhabi. The thought of performing is both thrilling and terrifying but perhaps I can navigate around that obstacle by enlisting the consumers of the artwork as the unwitting performers of it as well.