MA Reflective Conversations

The idea is that we all have a conversation with each other, to catch up and also to reflect upon recent unit and MA in general. Hope to get round all anyway, as some I have worked with more than others this year, and people vary in how they keep up their blog, or whether there is access to them at all!

Amelia
1st August 2013

Great talk with Amelia, as usual. We talked about how this Reflective Practice unit has made us peel back more and more, and actually write down all those things that go on in our heads - pinpoint them and define them. With both of us, there is more security in the base of our practice, although the work is perhaps less immediately gratifying- following the logic and timing of the project itself, rather than just making something which looks and feels good now. Art practice is delayed gratification of creativity!

Agreed that sharing and openness of blogs is really an essential part of our online experience, as if we have shared studios and can pop in to see what is going on. Having closed doors or inaccessible blogs makes it much harder to keep up with progress, work, thoughts, etc.

We are at different stages in the unit - Amelia has completed the making. I am still processing images and discovering what they mean to me and why, and making moving image trials. I am having to have a great deal of trust in my processing, and that the back of my mind knows perfectly well that I have a deadline.

Jo
22nd August 2013

Naturally the further on we are with the MA, the more there is to reflect upon, and we talked over what we have realised from the beginning. It's been an intense and long time to keep studies up while three years of eventful life and work have gone on - sometimes that has had to be irregular.

Jo talked about continuing her commitment to painting - we talked about how we have to immerse ourselves in the media we are drawn to, and how we come back to that and add more to it. What Jo specialises in painting is dynamics between people - she seems to have a searing insight or scrutiny into people. It's all to do with the slightly elusive direction of gaze. The relationships between the figures in the paintings can never be resolved in one look, they keep on happening.

Jo is going to concentrate on painting her relationship with her teenage daughter next year. We discussed exposing such raw and personal things publicly - it's very difficult. I told her that I'd just watched the finished version of my moving image piece, and found it quite emotional and sad - it could be read as a sad comment on the state of humanity, and the constructs we define ourselves by but also limit ourselves with. I seek the psychological insights in work, but also expose my psychology. Well, it should feel like something, because I do hope there is all that meaning and intention I work for within the work.

Talked how my work can be read as rather disturbing - unsettling. The imagery is deliberately - neutral, I suppose, or at least not deliberately or intrinsically unsettling like in a horror movie. Jo said my work is like a book, with layers, and a cycle of events, as if looking for the soul, The images with reflections were as if there is a hidden conscience following people. That's very astute of Jo. I think she has a great gift of allowing work to get into her.

Having unpeeled and built up our art practices in the MA, we are more accepting of our own tendencies, and see them as strengths rather than failings. Interesting to note that Jo spends all her time in working upon one image while I am compelled to collect multiple layers and aspects of an image.