MA ISD Interim Show

Interim show H&S briefing

This morning we all met in the colleges Triangle space [gallery 1] for an interim show briefing. The show is a collaboration between MA Textile design and ISD students. Although the curatorial team was mixed the rest of us had never met each other. We are still unsure as to why we are having a joint show? there is an awful lot of us and I think everyone is slightly nervous about how the show will come together.  We have just two days to prep and install ahead of Tuesdays 17:00 private view. Having done shows every year with students I know the stress, stupidity and chaos of these situations . . this could be interesting.

Personally  however, I feel OK about the interim show. I will be purely presenting my narrative on my plinth and have decided that for distribution issues and costs I will be printing my narrative on sheets of paper and not in a book format. I have a simple installation set-up and just need to focus on getting a space that works for the project.

The original proposed location of my work is situated close to the bar and it doesn't work for me. I want my work to be placed within the entrance space due to the nature of the work [the audience picking up my narrative] too far into the space and it could feel like a sculpture that people may not engage with.

Thinking through drawing

This morning I had another tutorial and just showed Pete and my peers the spatial plan I had developed that had been helping me construct my narrative. I also wanted to take the opportunity to clear up anything unclear and spoke about drawing in a more sculptural and installation sense. Pete seemed happy with this and was starting to get excited about the prospects of my project [a huge change from last week!] This restored some faith in myself and that I was making sense with my proposal. Pete advised me to use unit 02 to give him some indication of what could come and to include proposal drawings in my portfolio submission. Drawing my experience is going to be a huge task and I am slightly lost as to where to start. How do I produce a drawing that shows body movement, weight and line of sight??

mapping out my notes taken from walking around the gallery

Every week I am bombarded with emails form the college that have a continuous line up of events for postgraduate students to attend. I haven't signed up to any before, mainly due to time but there was an event advertised at LCF entitled "thinking through drawing". With the direction of my project bringing up "drawing" as a fundamental element I decided to sign up and see what the workshop offered. If anything I was expecting perhaps a critical discussion about the importance of drawing and how I could approach drawing my experience [that was starting to consider multiple elements].  

The session was an introduction about drawing [as an approach]. It was very much focused on the discussion but did provide interesting exercises where we had to talk and draw with a partner. My role as tutor has helped me when working with student during tutorials and that exact process of mapping out and drawing whilst talking. I found it helpful as it forced me to consider how this drawing/sculpture/installation would communicate my ideas and experience. I know feel more confident in submitting some drawings that would hopefully start to communicate my proposal.

Activity 1 Mark making / Activity 2 drawing a problem through lines & forms

Activity 3 Drawing whilst talking

Activity 4 drawing your proposal in four different ways

Steel plinth fabricated

The plinth has been fabricated and it looks beautiful! it has had a counter weight welded into the base giving it weight that will prevent it from moving during the interim show.  The size of the plinth relates to my bodily walking measurements. A scale used in my unit 01 work when developing the route systems. the base is 1 Fardell foot x 1 Fardell foot with the height 1 Fardell step. Although this information is personal to me and will not be published to the audience I will disclose it to my tutors. I think having it fabricated from scratch has really added value to the work and I am looking forward to seeing how this will situate itself within the white gallery space and present my narrative.

The plinth will remain outside in my garden until I drop it off at Chelsea on Saturday 6th May. everyday I will be spraying the steel in a 60/40 mix of water and malt vinegar to speed up the rusting process.

MA tutorial / workshop discussion

This morning I briefly discussed my interim show plans and intentions. I felt that the feedback seemed rather blunt rude at times. I spoke about the idea of a narrative and that this would develop into a drawing. I use the work drawing lightly because of the connotations of people associating it with a sheet of paper and a pen. I have considered drawing as 3-dimensionla and very much spatial. Throughout the tutorial Pete kept asking me what my role was? I seem to be the only student who is asked this question . . is it because he doesn't consider me to be a designer? am I designer? a researcher? who knows. If I am honest I don't really care, I feel that at every step of the MA I have been responding to the research sourced in both my practice and theory. Another remark that I was taken back by was when Pete referred to me as a "Gagosian groupie" as to say that my work is some form of promotional claim for the Richard Serra exhibition. It was hard to not take this personally, but to avoid any further upset and to try and resolve perhaps Pete's understanding of my project I took it upon myself to read out the introduction to my CRP. This seemed to clear up so points and Pete was considerate to this mentioned that I write well. I have had some tough tutorials recently and this seem to be another one. I almost feel like I am defending my purpose for being on the course.

After the tutorial I went and spoke with Frank [lead technician] about my interim show ideas. Because I am going to be showing a document, I wanted to make sure that there was some considerable effort made in the presentation. I wanted to somehow create a visual connection to Serra's work that I was writing about as I am not going to mention his name within the narrative. I discussed with Frank the idea of making a steel plinth that would then rust and add mass and weight to the work juxtaposing with this light and white piece of text. We went through a series of options as Frank made it clear about the skills and workload involved in making this. He really wanted me to consider alternative options and we arrived at the option of cladding in steel a pre made MDF plinth that was no longer in use. 

I was however happy to find out that a family friend of my fathers could potentially be able to fabricate a steel plinth from scratch offering my the additional opportunity to identify a scale that was unique and connected to other elements of my practice.

MA ISD Meeting

It has felt like months since I have been into the studio and seen my peers. Almost three and a bit weeks of break and now it is time to return to what is going to be an extremely busy final few before hand-in. With all eyes on the completion and submission of the CRP it is fair to say the practice has taken a step back, but it is now time to really think about the direction of the project as I have an interim show in around two weeks time.

Notes from meeting:

- 10 studio days to complete interim show work

- 27.04.17: presentation and discussion of what interim show plans are

- 04.05.17: Submit interim show proposal (include notes, dimensions and sketches)

For the interim show I am going to concentrate on the production of a spatial narrative that explores the experience of walking around the Gagoisan space and engaging with Serra's work. This is something that has still been very relevant to my previous work and deals with experience, time and memory. It will also give me a chance to produce some additional written work which I have thoroughly started to enjoy. Writing about space that will hopefully set me up for unit 03.

Critical research paper [draft 2] submitted

The Easter break has certainly been an key opportunity to take a break from the whirlwinds of term 2. With the project slightly inconclusive and a bit grey, the CRP was certainly a struggle. I have worked incredibly hard on putting together a real robust introduction and context to the paper so that hopefully the feedback from Ken in a few weeks can focus on what next.  The writing certainly does offer an opportunity to reflect on all the research gathered and really gets me thinking about my interests.  I have pushed my luck with a submission that is way over the word count, but I am hoping that Ken will not dismiss this and provide me feedback on the whole paper.  It comes to light that 5000 words as a final thesis is not a lot and I am going to have to be very clever about how I continue to write and what about. What all this writing has done for me is enable me to relocate the practical side of my MA and consider some options moving forwards. I will be proposing this for the submission of unit 02.

I have run with the title "Museum of the Ordinary". This is a title I used on my portfolio and with my previous submission of both study plan and crp. Yet to decide if this is 100% the final title, although it hasn't been asked about, so perhaps it seems to work.