Thinking about the end of year...

It's just a few weeks until the end of the first year of my MFA.

Here's what I want to achieve between now and then:

1. Installation plan of the 3-4 works I am planning to present.

2. Artist statement. I really want to hash out a decent statement starting this week to give me time to weed out all the bullshit which will no doubt be in the first draft

3. Finalising my works. None of my works are finished. I have planned my time so that finishing them should happen by end of year, but at the moment they are still unresolved.

4. Titles. I don't want my titles to be untrue to the works. So this time I will try and be real with myself and the work and title them in a way which adds to the work or sits comfortably along side the work versus taking away from the work while adding confusion.

5. Organise a meeting with supervisors. This year I haven't taken advantage of having my supervisors around as much as I could/should have. It has really been a stressful couple of months for me, but now I have a bit more time. So I want to prioritise MFA studies over work and family commitments for the next couple weeks.

Alrighty,

Today I want to hash out the bullet points of the statement and work on refining my works.

Next week I will do my installation plan and organise a Zoom meeting with my supervisors.

The week after that is install time!

Artist statement bullet points:

• Why do I choose salvaged surfaces to paint on? Is it significant to my practice?

1. Imperfection of the surface -Significant to practice

2. The chance factor -Significant tp practice

3. Economic Affordability - Insignificant to practice

4. Investigating what a found object can afford to a painting- Significant to practice

• How do I choose my colours?

1. Factor of chance. It depends on what is in the eco-waste bin.

2. Factor of choice. I will choose from colours out of the ones that are available by chance. I choose colours which might act dynamically together.

• When do I stop?

I stop when the work is sufficiently doing what I want it to - Which is inspiring moments of imagination and curiosity.

• Why this method of working?

1. Curiosity of outcomes (in terms of what the materials can offer)

2. Passion for storytelling

3. Material availability

4. Desire to use what already exists. There is so much potential in objects that already exist, and have had a previous purpose before my intervention. That potential is wasted when they are discarded to rot in a dump.

5. An interest in how an object can increase and decrease in value depending on where and when in time it is.

6. An interest in how my alterations of an object can alter this increase or decrease of value.

These are the main points of interest in my practice. So now I will try and group these ideas into a rough artist statement plan:

Methodology:

• I use salvaged materials because of their history, and the imperfections which make them more interesting to work with.

• Salvaged materials have an existing perceived value which I can change by making the objects into artworks.

• Salvaged materials can offer an element of unpredictability.

• I am curious of how far I can push an object to work outside of what its original purpose was.

Field:

• Adding to conversations about object-ness which already exist within Neo-Expressionism.

• Borrowing notions of automatism from Surrealism

• Society wise - the potential value of discarded objects

Ideas:

• There is more to explore within the conjunction of salvaged materials to create painting-objects.

• The salvaged materials could be seen as a result of living in an age and place of excess and an awareness of the potential value and reuse of discarded found objects.

• The chance of what you get from a salvaged object could add to automatism and creative outcomes.

• Art could be a way to use otherwise perceived useless items, not as the main point of making the artwork, but just as an element of value.

Questions/Potential thesis:

• Could be related to how the artist and, (specifically salvaged), object work together to create the critical context of an artwork.

• The value that is added or taken away from the object by the artist or the viewer

• What the addition of human imagination and curiosity add or subtract from the object-painting