Exploratory Project Draft Plan

Didn't quite realise previously to use the structured form, so again:

Project Plan.

1. What do you want to explore? Be specific.

I want to pick up in the visual work and ideas from previous MA projects involving material and museums. I had opened up some new areas of investigation, and now want to push these further, towards making a piece of Moving Image – not just some video footage. I feel the structure of previous projects was propelling me into new ways of working, making connections with my practice and wider areas of context. There are feelings and meanings for me to uncover and explore regarding the textile materials and other objects that can be within museum cabinets, and with museums themselves. There are parallels and provenance within my own life and experience which gives me much working material.

I am also aware that following up these projects from the first year of the MA allows a more integrated final MA piece to emerge, as if I am making it over the four years. If I look outside of the MA, I usually make work knowing what I wish to express in the end, even if I may not quite be able to grasp it or articulate it yet – of course, in the making, much realisation happens, and projects and thinking evolves. Within the MA, and linking previous projects as a linear trajectory – I am coming in at a different angle – I do not yet know what it is I am seeking to match within myself by making work – this time I am allowing the project, the materials and the context to lead me, and to uncover the meanings, rather than seeking a thought which is already within.

Reviewing work on previous projects – drawing invisibly with UV pen in the V&A, the exploration of material/textile, and how it transforms substance in light and in context; filming materials, again to transform its matter or media – I am looking for transformation of one thing into another, for objects or material to reveal the secrets I believe they hold. I have used vintage objects at various times in my work – I have been considering for a while how to use antiquarian items. I have some ancient items – bits of metals and rings from detectors. As before with vintage items, I now wish to delve deeper with things centuries old.

For my recent exhibition Vessels, using vintage bottles in a fine art context, I came up with phrase “trailing layers of provenance”. I feel this is pivotal somehow, in my stance and my understanding of what it is to be a person and an artist alive now. I am interested in the human impulse to make art, to see the world and its objects as meaningful. I’m interested in the museum impulse of the culture I come from, and the value we place on items.

All aspects of the psychological space of museums and galleries interests me, from directing an audience through a space, to our individual relationship with objects from imaginary previous lives. Objects can be like insights into other ways of thinking, and yet we could laugh at how little or how untruthfully our contemporary objects speak of us.

There are so many interesting dilemmas to explore: Worth – the age of items gives them provenance and history, even though they may have very little monetary value. They are precious items because they have survived and passed through hands and generations, or lain hidden. This suggested power is like a latent energy such as magnetism to me – perhaps invisible, but something for me to actualise. I also like the dilemmas brought up about using and remaking old things – having the nerve to break them up, using them alongside new things falsely democratises their value. Museums – museums are not answers, but a repository of questions always worth asking – and it’s still worth asking old questions – not everything contemporary is about the contemporary. Substance – my continued fascination with the definition of Moving Image continues – inverse ways of inventing film in objects, low tech / oblique / paradoxical inventions.

Metals and materials, transubstantiation, and transforming a museum cabinet into touchable Moving Image. This is my initial aim, to explore these ideas more fully, and to integrate them into a piece of work. The format and mechanism of the work will emerge as I go along, suggested by my exploration.

2. What is your personal challenge?

My challenge is to articulate, share and expose my thoughts as I am thinking them, and at the stages, moreover, where I am making the connections and leaps into imagining a piece of art. I will be completely open and transparent about process on my blog, and will identify as much of my process as I can and communicate my logic, references, influences and intentions along the way. In this way I can challenge and identify resistances to sharing and openness, in my own terms and at my own pace.

From where I stand, this is challenging, and in fact unfeasible that I will be able to sustain such transparency for months. I also suspect that I will feel various layers of resistance. I feel I will reveal too much, come to dead ends, and tamper with and somehow destroy my process by iterating it. I fear losing something by doing this, but can also step back and see how it will be useful and potentially enlightening to have done this. I also fear I will ramble on forever and only produce a very long explanation of a piece of work without the work itself.

3. What methods will you use? What rules will you set yourself?

I will collate more visual material and review previous. I will also take a couple of trips to museums to think and write out thoughts and plans. Rules I apply will be to integrate suitability for a museum and public and perhaps touchable and interactive setting.

4. Plan an outline programme over 15 weeks; build in time for reflection and evaluation.

I will spend most of the time in research and working on visual material, and allowing the planning of the actual piece to evolve. By the end of the project, I plan to have a piece ready to show, and to show and document it within a museum setting, even if I have to set it up guerrilla style. Therefore I would aim to finish making in 12 – 13 weeks.

5. What challenges do you anticipate?

Maintaining the transparency of process is my big challenge, to keep up that level of concentration. I see I may also be giving myself a challenge of developing a relationship with a museum to negotiate showing work.

6. What will you do when you get stuck?

There is always a different angle to approach work, either ploughing through or allowing things to brew. Sometimes things need deliberately thinking through.

13th February 2012