Mapping the Territory 4

Recent debate in the MA site about this project has perhaps muddied the waters further. I am not the only one finding it hard to grasp the essence of this project, but still, for a while now, I have been thinking up solution upon solution, practical ways to resolve this conundrum, as if it was a brief or commission.

Again, confusion - using drawing to externalise thinking - it's the relationship and disconnect with text. Some in the forum seem to consider those of us with difficulties as being deliberately obstructive or closed. Text, drawing, context, mapping, art, it does not always compute.

No matter how I think of it, it is never clear and straightforward, and must therefore in manifestation be something of a conundrum for the viewer. A clear conundrum if that's possible. The problem seems to lie in the terms of reference. An artwork, or any piece of mapping, must refer to its own terms of reference. It invents its own codes. I keep getting pulled back to the imposed terms of reference, which do not actually make sense according to my imagined mapping solutions.

I do not usually get so stuck or immobilised in my work. I certainly encounter tough and tougher problems than this: technical, abstract, conceptual, clarity, practical, resources, and so on, but usually I work through them and find solutions within the work. I always believe that the solution is there for me to uncover. This time I feel I am being held back from beginning, that I must work it all the way through to solution in my head before I begin, in case I end up somewhere not suitable for the brief.

The mechanism of mapping is the interesting thing for me - the process and insight into how I, and the viewer, navigate and always see things, rather than the things themselves. The arena changes, but the method of mapping and navigation is the consciousness processing, editing, choosing what to see and how to see. If one has more insight and control over the idea of mapping, one has more insight into the areas or territories being explored.

I know I have come up with a few ideas and different directions which I would like to make, some involving mirrors, some a linear animation, some a layered animation, some a movable abstract painting. All of these ideas and more are where I want to be, and I will add them to my working list of ideas of the kinds of works I would like to make or incorporate into others. But for now, for this assignment, making any one of these, whilst satisfying and edifying for myself, always seem to come with clunky and inelegant add-ons to somehow fill in the confusing requirements for assessment - an overexplaination of irrelevant detail when the spare map would make the point.

I have given myself a starting point - a blank canvas, in fact a blank frame, about A1 size, without even a back. A piece of framed glass, so a virtual or suggested place for art - a surface. That is my base. I will use smaller frames, similarly empty, which can be placed on the main frame in any way by the viewer. They will lay across, over each other, in any combination. The frames will be horizontal, as a table top.

On each empty frame I will draw, using various permanent pens. Each frame will show or represent an area of my practice suggested by the assignment - showing work, influences, media, context, etc. The drawings in the main frame and the smaller frames will sometimes complete each other, and must be matched for lines to continue, etc. Therefore the drawings at times are layered. However, different frames contain lines and parts of different drawings, and so there is no one complete configuration that is correct for all layers and drawings.

If you match a drawing by placing a frame to complete a line, it may be at the expense of another drawing, which must again be adjusted. The aim for myself and the viewer is not to find the correct solution so that everything fits perfectly - the point is that there is no one solution, and that the map is all about the relationships between the frames or aspects - one always affect the others, and that in concentrating or making one side complete, others are left incomplete, or open to remaking.

The map is unsatisfactory or ongoing, depending on point of view. It is frustrating or insightful, puzzling or enlightening, exactly like the territory it refers to - my art practice and its context, and exactly like the assignment itself - an unsolvable jigsaw.

For me, what I draw is less important at this stage than the format of how I draw and how it will work. I imagine that they will be linear territories, perhaps abstract codes or mind-clouds about each. No text probably.

I have been looking through my materials and have not found yet, but am still convinced I have somewhere, some acetate offcuts from some years ago. I would like to use these instead of or as well as the frames, as the abstract shapes create drawings and relationships in themselves. However, if I don't uncover them, the frames fulfill an elegant function.

This multilayered paradoxical map rather pleases me as a true, accurate and logical representation and solution as to how I view the territory of my art practice, and how I view the world. It is quite a mind map which accords with some of the ways I regard thinking. It is changeable in itself and over time. I could add to it, develop it, take parts away, make it more or less resolvable, somehow learn from it. However, yet again I look at the assignment brief and realise that I will have to somehow go backwards to fill in some gaps for requirements.

I know it's not quite right for this. As a piece of work it potentially feels right. Reading the brief yet again reiterates confusion. I'll not ever really understand this. I understand what I have given myself to do and how I am interpreting the assignment, I think I understand all the parts individually. If we were to write a report about the material, and then use all the material to go away and make a piece of work, I'd understand that, but making a piece of work which is the collated material, the influences and contexts of practice, I don't understand that.

13th June 2011