Tutorial #2

23/01/26

Tutorial with Jonathan

Things discussed:

• What did I learn from putting on the exhibition? A number of things: 
• A lot about the practicalities of exhibition-making. I have organised some complex group shows but this is the first time that I have made a body of work for a specific space. There was also very little oversight, they just trusted that it would be ok. This felt good at first but did begin to worry me as the process went on.
• I really struggle to do some of the necessary consequential activities like Instagram, marketing etc. – this has to be fixed.
• Most importantly, completing the exhibition in the context of this course has given me a framework to think through what I do next. This has in turn made me face into my instinct to go off and do something completely different. I think that various factors (work patterns from my old career, behaviours I learned as an undergrad, my nature) have created a pattern of behaviours that have resulted in me treating landmarks in my activities as full stops after which I have to change course.
• A consequence of this is that I am not sure that I always pursue my questions as far as I can.
• We talked about the group conversation where we discussed exploring. I was particularly struck by some points that were made about exploring a smaller area at a greater granularity. I need to give myself permission to do this with painting.
• I am booked onto another animation course in February, but I am not going to reactively make animation my primary activity for the coming months.
• What does it look like if I carry on painting? I have loads of ideas for more paintings based on the research I did for the exhibition. Normally these would be abandoned, this time I am going to carry on.
• You can focus your practice without narrowing it.
• I sometimes settle for being good enough rather than striving to be really good.
• I really enjoyed the free writing exercise at the end of the last Zoom and basically wrote the bones of my last journal entry in that time. I need to do this more.
• We talked about the Interim Exhibition. I have changed my plans now that I know what the space is like. I think that I would like to make a paper sculpture on one of the A-frames. This would be a good solution as it would be ephemeral, it wouldn’t matter if it got damaged and it would form part of my process as collage is a key research tool for me. Jonathan agreed despite the fact that this leaves him having to extract a load of staples on the Monday!
• We briefly discussed the upcoming assessment and the nature of the Study Statement as a working document.
• We talked a bit about my question and the fact that I still haven’t completely pinned it down. I posited my idea of ‘ontological drift’ and this led to a conversation about the nature of memory. Jonathan raised the idea of ‘transactional memory’, and this is a useful avenue to explore.

Next steps:

• Continue to think about this reconfiguring of my practice.
• Carry on painting.
• Finish the assessment.
• Start working on ideas for interim exhibition.