Outcome – An Exhibition of Three Postgraduate Projects
If you have followed my research for some time you will already know about the philosophical, neurological and political undercurrents that inspire and drive my practice. With the exhibition of Outcome coming to an end, it seems like an appropriate time to examine these ideas and being my Fellowship to a close.
A Thousand Plateaus and Soft Ground Etching
My Fellowship began with soft ground etching. After beginning to read the work of Deleuze and Guattari my first inclination was to begin to explore it physically. For me, the most intuitive way was through the medium of soft ground etching. Adapting the traditional method to suit my needs I allowed the allowed impure water to settle and oxidize on the plates. As the oxidization formed it created pathways that formed streams, which in turn informed the soft ground and eventual etch.
If you would like to look at some of the research into my A Thousand Plateaus Project – an investigation into soft ground etching please click here.
I was selected for the Ph.D. Fellowship, a scheme by which the University of Central Lancashire provides academic support as well as access to specialist facilities. For me, this meant access to the Artlab Printmaking Department and the Media Factory, as well ass time with relevant academics. My time on the Fellowship has been invaluable, giving me the space to explore complex ideas and develop questions that will be integral to my future research or a Ph.D. The time spent developing my own practice was also invaluable. Like most artist I spend my life multitasking, running from one project to the next, sometimes working for myself, sometimes working for others, the Fellowship granted me the time to spend developing my own practice and examine my own methods.
The fellowship began with me examining previous work in order to give a and present the outline of my practice as an artist to both MA and BA students. This was a great opportunity to really contemplate previous objectives and evaluate where I had come from. It gave me the freedom to begin to plan a practice based trajectory into research.
My work has evolved into a practice that examines broken systems, systems of discontinuity.
Throughout my work as an artist, one key thing seems to reoccur in each project. My obsession with understanding. For example my need to ‘understand’ when a memory is forgotten, how we daydream, what is a moment of the sublime? All of my work is a dissection of a hierarchy or taxonomy of understanding. It seems to me, that the more I learn of a subject, or system, the more that system seems to break apart. Perhaps with learning comes a certain intangibility? When you first look at an object it may seem stable and fixed, but the more it is examined the more incomprehensible and discordant it becomes.
Through lengthy conversations with Andrew Broardy, I was directed to the work of Deleuze and Guattari and their book ‘A Thousand Plateaus’. This is the theoretical context that I think I have been seeking for a number of years. Their theories of the ‘plateau’ the ‘rhizome’ and the ‘multiplicity’ perfectly underpin my ideas around the discontinuity of reality and social structures. In their theory everything is connected and accessible from any avenue, ideas are none hierarchical.
In the screenprint ‘Intermezzo’, I wanted to explore the idea of transitioning from one idea to another. In musical terms intermezzo is a transition from one piece to the next, Intermezzo is not part of the main, only an interlude to contextualize the change of ‘scene’. This is an apt analogy for subtext in language. Subtext is a transition from one conversation to another or a way of having two conversations at once. In the context of my practice ‘Intermezzo’ poses a way of exploring changing boundaries and layers.
http://www.uclan.ac.uk/news/work-art-display-uclan.php
During my time on the scheme, I have greatly expanded my professional network and had the pleasure of being mentored by several fantastic people who have broadened my professional practice and given me solid well-rounded advice. I would like to thank, Lubaina Himid, Magda Stawarska-Bevan, Tracy Hill, Andy Broady, Therese Taylor, Tina Dempsey, Jacqui Symons, and Jenny Steele.
To read more about the exhibition please follow this link to the University of Central Lancashire’s events page.