7th November 2024
Week 6 – Affirmative Feedback
Essay
Essay no specific format (just legible).
Upload to folder on the MA Fine Art Digital blog.
GROTTO
Affirmative Feedback
Sean Davy’s video:
I feel...
(has to be an emotion - can’t say ‘I feel this is bad’ - instead ‘I feel uncomfortable / overjoyed / disgusted’ then briefly say why)
I wonder...
(let your curiosity run wild - eg I wonder why it was made this way - what would happen if they worked in a very different way - I wonder how it would be different using clay and acrylic)
I think...
(only think after doing the other 2 first — we usually go to thinking first but allow this exercise to connect to your emotional response to the work)
I feel...
Overwhelmed by the body of work he has managed to produce, although he seems critical of it.
I wonder...
If he is still working with his revised comic format, how he creates that by comparison to his original canvas paintings and if he still occasionally works with the bold colours of his canvas paintings.
I think...
His out-the-box thinking on the essay helped push his practice and discover a new way of thinking, even if he felt the pressure at the time. His comic panels were very detailed in the lines used, compared to the canvases that were detailed through the use of shading and shadow with the paint.
What worked for me…
His use of perspective and scale. The go-between of bird’s eye views to close-up imagery from the ground.
Elle Bown’s video:
I feel...
Calm and peaceful looking at her work, they’re really pleasing pieces to look at. The simplicity of the shapes and the lines that form the figure, but knowing how complex it would have been to make.
Group Critique
Challenging
What was the most challenging thing about doing this work or process?
Why was it a challenge?
In what ways did you meet the challenge?
What will you do next in response to this challenge?
Boring
What was the most boring or tedious part of this work or process?
Why was it boring or tedious?
In what way could you see value in this process?
What can you change or adapt to make this work or process more stimulating?
Exciting
What was the most exciting thing about this work or process?
Why was it exciting?
How do you know this was exciting?
What can you do next in response to this excitement?
Not working
What worked least well in this work or process?
Why was it not working?
What have you learnt about yourself from this not working well?
What plans do you have to adapt the work or process?
Group with – Dee, Roz, Tom, Daniel and Oi f Ho
Dee
Form a creative community, try and do a festival in Aberystwith – festival of love
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1045370379947?aff=oddtdtcreator
Lots of paperwork, forms
Workshops making wave paintings, having fun experimenting with how to make these in a way that is accessible to both practicing artists and a group of neurodivergent and down syndrome people
Didn’t understand until this year that practical work is a “brain scrubbing” activity, especially lately being a detox from the paperwork, and maybe it’s a brain scrub for other people too and that’s what the workshops are about
https://www.climateweek.gov.wales/EN/pages/Virtual_Conference_2024
Roz
Going back to painting despite nearly giving supplies away a month ago, trying to create something that’s "other"
How the brain transforms a 2D image into 3D and creates that space
Challenged to paint in the sessions, this gives a new perspective of her work, not preparing what to paint in advance
Used to painting for/in front of a classroom of students, having that reason to have to paint rather than painting for herself
“Seeing the world not as this thin crust that we exist on, but as this big mass.”
Conscious vs subconscious painting
There's a dialogue being created in the room between Roz's paintings and the one by her mum
Ashton
Presented new Tube Map work
Aware that, as I've not posted any blogs, no one will have a clue what I'm doing at the moment, so I've got to summarize a lot in the time slot, but without ADHD meds today this will be a hard focus
Dee: If you saw one of these transition tube maps when you first started, how would it have made you feel?
A: Overwhelmed, but at the same time, it would have provided so much clarity. There's a lot of stations options, but when you look closely you realise “okay, those stations in that line are all about fertility, and based on my sex-at-birth only the stations on that side of the line apply to me” and you can follow the line to understand what will happen next “I've been referred, I've had my board approval for funding, the next thing will be my first appointment”.
Dee: At any stage on this journey, did anybody talk about not transitioning to the other side of the binary? To suggest not transitioning from female-to-male, from binary-to-binary, but to agender for instance, and not male or female.
A: They didn’t, but probably because that's the conclusion I came to a few months prior, that I was agender. I had never resonated with the idea of being female, and felt very confused about the segregation in schools, I found it frustrating, and so agender made sense. After looking into it more, and considering the other side of the binary, it was like being hit by a brick wall, it just made sense. Within two weeks I had cut my hair, changed my name, and went back to college for my third year as Ashton and never looked back.
Tom: When you introduced the idea of the tube map it made sense. It's a journey, it's about navigation, and it’s about the different points on that journey. But it's a really interesting thing that you introduced, around the tension of the underground and its notorious unreliability, and the NHS and its notorious unreliability. I'm just curious if that's an aspect that you're working in consciously, and if there’s other aspects of the tube that you’re considering working in. I'm thinking of the signs with the “three minutes delayed” or “six months delayed”, I'm just curious if that’s something you've played with? There's the iconography around tickets as well. I’m 20 years in the past, you don't have tickets anymore, I guess. It used to be tickets back in my day.
A: It's something I want to play with more when I start on my personal tube map journey, having the actual wait times I’ve experienced between the stops written within the coloured lines. Possibly having little digital signs, like in the underground with key waiting points or saying that your train's been derailed, or even say that your trains been derailed but you're not aware of it, so now you’re waiting for some help. I want to be much more playful with my own map, where I feel I've kind of got the the time for experimenting. Yeah, I like what you’ve just said about the tickets. I've kept the appointment slip for nearly every hormone injection appointment I’ve had, I’ve also kept pretty much every empty box of the hormones, there must be over 50 of them at least. I like the idea of the slips acting as tickets for the hormone tube line, and referrals acting as tickets for surgery, if you don’t have an appointment slip/referral then you don’t have a valid ticket and so you’re kicked off the tube line.
Roz: The idea of the topographical map. When you're on the underground some places are miles apart and others it would have been quicker to get off of the tube and walk there, and for this I think it would map. When you read up on the underground, you know that these are not equally spaced. There's something about the order of it that you have, it's all cleansed, it's all neat and tidy and looks so smooth, but the reality is so complicated. It's something that feels really familiar, but you've reordered it. That idea that we have this idea of gender, but you've taken it apart and rebuilt it. It's a bit like genetics, that structure again, I like that it looks scientific.
A: Time doesn’t exist between the underground stations, and bringing that across to my tube lines, by listing these astronomical numbers of months and years, rather than days and weeks, between the stations even though they're right next to each other.
Tom also referred me to artist Lucy Chapman, who was in the year above us. They made a piece called The Bill of Health, about her conditions. Over the course of her treatment, she got hold of her patient records, and she compiled them into this amazing file documenting her journey: medical notes, sketches of the nurses etc. and it's just been sent to be part of the Wellcome Collection.
All links below:
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