Unit 2 - Proposal
Current research through my critical writing and contexts presentation
The focus of these sessions is on sharing your research and critical writing.
You are asked to give a 6 – 8 minute verbal presentation (we will time it) to a small group of MA Fine Art students and staff.
We would like you to talk us through your current research through your critical writing and contexts.
You should illustrate your presentation either with a PowerPoint or with reference to images/videos in your online platform.
Please use these as a guide of areas to cover in your presentation:
Introduce your research question/core subject
Discuss your key themes and the specific focus of your research
Outline relevant contexts and critical debates and how they inform your research
Discuss your methods of research and approach to critical writing
Consider the ways in which you will develop your critical research going forward
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Confucius (trad. 551–479 BCE)
I am interested in what happens when we experience an art piece, I don’t like the word as work as it carries connotations of labour, as I think that we should be able to immerse ourselves passively or actively and be left with something, a residue after just a glance or after a long and meditative stare.
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This residue may well be considered knowledge but for that to have happened we will have had to reflect or to do as Confucius suggests.
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With this thoughts in mind I have set out to create curious "Memento Vivre," Talisman – happier and less austere than their cousin the Memento Mori that we see in churches and other places that we go to nourish our spirits.
I nearly called them Memento Morris, to remind us of William Morris's many quotes about art for all, and his many reminders to include art in the every day, and the every day in our art.
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Morris wanted art and beauty for all and I think the best place is to start at home.
For the purpose of this research I am including the everyday in the realm of 'The Domestic' as my everyday still includes my family and our daily activities, domestic rituals and my duties.
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Four seasons William Morris Stained Glass Windows, Cragside.
Dexter Dalwood talks in an interview during his Tate Liverpool exhibition about artists who find it hard to put everything that interested them into their paintings unlike songwriters who don't seem to have this particular struggle, he is of course both a musician and artist.
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I feel I am one of those artists and I am now heavily researching ways of making my meaning clearer and including my thoughts within my stuff – as Dexter Dalwood so perfectly puts it.
Jeremy Deller in Joy in People​ manages to put a familiar meeting place center stage.
I think this act of meeting, gathering and breaking bread is central to domestic life and it contains one of the strongest forms of magical memories: legends talk of the feasts after battle, family dinners after events are a perfect ‘final act’, where we assimilate, exchange and learn of news and things of “cabbages and kings".(Quote by Lewis Carroll: “The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk o...”, no date)
The cafe is a perfect place in which to play out these modern-day daily scenarios and observe human interaction, within the home the table takes Center Stage. The breakfast table is sometimes a solitary place but usually full of ideas and Lewis Carols Alice would think of 'Six impossible ideas" before she had even had breakfast. (Quote by Lewis Carroll: “Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she sai...”, no date)
I have found a rich source of research to reflect upon within the spoken word, the retelling of Greek tales courtesy of Natalie Haynes, who allows the female characters to take center stage once more, after being pushed back for centuries. Radio and podcasts have been very informative and fun to listen to as I paint or do the family laundry. Start the week has enlightened me on bubble theory, physics, and libraries just to mention a few episodes, the great women artists podcasts by the lovely Katie Hassle, have inspired me with wonderful tales of women artists so long ignored.
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This sort of research has punctuated the drier more academic forms of research I have undertaken– talks which have delved into the depth of pedagogy philosophy, in illustrious places of academia such as Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and Leeds along with international reports that look in the arts and their place in our lives and education.
This has accompanied by brilliant 'straight from the artist' talks at UAL, which have allowed me to put my practise in context with other current practises and schools of thought.
All believe that the arts have an important role to play in a happier healthier society and that the carer and creator are central for a successful outcome. they also confirm my belief that the both the teacher and the home are central part to the acquisition of knowledge though art.
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This is collaboration between teachers, wisemen, sages, Imams, mothers, parents and other sources of wisdom , with artists is an area I would like to further research; it may well provide evidence of the synergistic element I am seeking, the combination that allows us to convert experiences to knowledge.
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I am researching my everyday and the domestic and how magic thoughts feed and nurture, how they inspire our minds and souls assisted by those who carry out the tasks we associate with those realms, be they carried out the virtuous Eve or her less palatable counterpart Lilith.
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I am looking to convey the magic that I see and feel every day that makes me wonder and imagine. I say day loosely as I also love the night and the rain - the rain and the way it creates mist to rise from the ground timelessly.
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From cave paintings to film to the digital, this wonder has always been there, and I would like to successfully catch and redeliver this wonder and awe, “to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”(Quote by Anais Nin: “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and...”, no date)or to raise a cup and taste life.(Quote by Rebecca West, no date.)
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How and where is what I am researching now, looking at the stained-glass windows of Rossetti and Morris to the interiors and output of the Omega workshops along with elevated items and motifs in from tales, philosophy and other cultures such as Pandora's jar from Greece, Eves apple, the Korean moon jar the from the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910).
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I have rediscovered the simple doilies my grandmother crocheted along with the jams and bottled fruit we made each year in her kitchen and my grandfather's camera has just been unboxed but how these will connect I'm not yet sure, but they feel like they may, which is exciting.
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How to arrange my output my creations and entice my audience to ponder and take a moment to feel, that ratatouille moment, that is my question.
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I would like to give those away from home, or missing mum, a bit of domestic magic to start their day, rather like the way the refugee painter Oscar Kokoschka visited the national gallery every day to obtain respite from his homesickness and troubled thoughts so far from home.
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Alternatively, space, energy and resources allowing, create a place like Monet who created a garden to paint to create ‘the refuge of a peaceful meditation in the center of a flowering aquarium’.
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Now I need to address "Place".
Place
My forth pathway - still to be or realised or created by rearranging my three other pathways to create a space to be.
If I take a little bit of my domestsic magic and contain it in a painting will my audience be able to detect it or does the place dictate the way I do this and will the leval of success be dependant on both the place and my choices of method and materials?
To discover what a painting may deliver or impart, I need to concider, research and critally reflect on:
-what is the residue we get from a better place to be?
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-What is utopian or uplifting nurturing dometic succer and is it culturally universal in nature?
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-Could they be the reminders to live - memento vivere - I am looking for?
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Research:
-why when I stand where the artist stood does the time that seperates us melts away, Like eyes across the room -
I recall my "coversations" and subsiquent research about Titain and then Cezanne while transcribing at the National Gallery.
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- Compare cultures and other peolpes domestic utopian beliefs and intrests againt the ones I know and found in Unit 1 in each of my path ways. Possibly use collaboration to facillitate this.
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- Explore other process that might allow my final outcomes to be more accesable to my audience and more curious to encourage interaction.
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The picture- the place- the residue.
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A picture that Interreges me, having seen and experienced it as a child, that fits my requirements of a painting that attempts to imbue is Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of ‘The Last Supper’ – it reminded the fathers that they were here for a purpose.
Their teachings where embodied in the art, it became an aid memoir and gave them an identity.
This painting was uplifting at mealtimes, nurturing the sprit and soul while the congregation feed their bodies with bread and wine representing the body and blood of their lord. This was akin to the older superstitious beliefs of eating imbuing you with the food’s attributes e.g., a lion’s heart would give you courage and strength while a flower would magically make you more attractive.​
Lilith, Eve, have now been now joined by Pandora and Wonder woman how do these women Icons teach and impart knowledge?
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What is their impact upon current culture or female Identity?
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In the domestic, spiritual, other and place who is the person who creates that synergistic element that facilitates learning and the acquisition of knowledge or is there another unknown element or force at play.
I searched my home finding things that I keep as aid memoirs. They have strong emotional attachment to myself and others. I have elevated them, some I have enshrined in an almost religious manner.
I would like to explore this idea of collections and meanings. Firstly I will paint a still life to make a critical respose to a collections and in that process fatham the meaning of theses objects to myself. Then I would like to see if it is understood by others and what that effect may be.
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I went on a hunt around my home and found things I keep as aid memoirs, with strong emotional attachment to myself. I have imbued them and elevated them; some I have enshrined in an almost religious manner.
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My presentation was well received by those who know me, for those who are not sympatico or unfamiliar with how I work, my distributions of the “meaning full objects” did not elucidate my project, and my enthusiasm for it seemed to produce a negative response from them. I need to conceal a bit more and talk about my contexts and the physical histories and facts of my artifacts, rather than my enjoyment of their obvious beauty and curious attributes. This should give a ‘hook” for those interested in facts, the ones who actually read and enjoy instruction manuals, and like a map to apricate and follow an artist’s intentions.