2. Evaluative report, AR7007
I feel that my practice has developed almost beyond recognition as a result of the MA and that I have surpassed my original research enquiries in a number of key areas, but especially in the way I have learned to synthesise my practice-led research with critical thinking.
My final submission is an assemblage of handmade and cast sculptural objects made using a contrasting range of materials and processes, all of which relate to the body, specifically my body. It's a self portrait. However, it’s much more than this; it’s also a contemporary sculptural environment of carefully synthesised parts which together embody a number of connected, complex and nuanced ideas, leading to a range of readings and responses.
Ensemble
Penelope Curtis uses the term ‘ensemble’ to describe installations which ‘are animated by their viewers as well as by the sculptures which disperse or condense the spatial environment around them' (2017, p266). She says ' ... the way the figure is approached, and lit, the length of a direct or circuitous approach, the possibility of circumnavigation, all count' (ibid).
I consider my final submission to be an ensemble, a carefully curated space which invites the viewer to walk through and around it. Although ideally I would have preferred more space, I feel I have created a small yet immersive ‘world around the person in a way that makes them feel part of and inside of it… Viewers become “participants” and no two people experience exactly the same thing’ (Anderson, 2020). It also seems to be successfully activated by the presence of the viewer.
Ambiguity
I have learned that ambiguity is central to my practice. My current research has focused on ways to visualise the spaces between a number of binaries - self/other, embodiment/disembodiment, form/formlessness (Bataille), absence/presence, order/disorder (Douglas), inside/outside, public/private, amongst others, and, ultimately, life and death. Anthropologist Mary Douglas suggests that ‘boundaries provide certainty; considering them as thresholds acknowledges them as flexible which leads to disquiet and a range of conflicting responses.’ She says that this ambiguity prompts ‘not only danger, but also power’ (1966). My work has always provoked a range of responses; I’ve now discovered that it’s because it’s ambivalent.
I feel that I have successfully combined a range of devices in this ensemble to emphasise this sense of ambiguity:
Transgression
This tension of opposites also seems to amplify the transgressive aspects of my work. Douglas goes on to say
‘anomalous and ambiguous things are often seen as disgusting, disruptive, and dangerous. However, these are not the only possible reactions; there is a whole gradient on which laughter, revulsion and shock belong at different points and intensities according to the type of transgression’ (1966, p 47).
The sublime
I now know that much of my theoretical research connects with the sublime:
‘The sublime is … also connected to the blurring of boundaries and the paradox and ambiguity this produces. The resulting feeling is paradoxical itself, aptly named … "pleasant terror" and "delightful horror." Like the abject and the uncanny, the sublime causes uneasiness and confusion in destabilizing the boundaries created by human beings to make sense of the world’ (Baird, 2013, p12).
Individuation
Behind this sense of ambiguity, the uncanny, the abject and the sublime is Jung's individuation, which I feel is pivotal to this ensemble. He talks about balancing our multiple selves with the dark side or shadow of our self. He says it's a preparation for death.
Embodiment
Nathaniel Stern describes embodiment as ‘moving-thinking-feeling’ (Stern, 2013, p2). Through the MA I have discovered that, like him,
'(c)entral to my work are the feedback loops between sensation, experience, movement, and understanding. What do we sense, and how does that make sense? Where do we move, and when are we moved? What do we value, and how does that change our values? Materiality and embodiment, affect and perception, transformation and time. I want to foster greater dialogue around these complex and relational ecologies' (Stern, no date).
The mark of my hand has long been critical, but I now have a much greater understanding of the role of my body in my practice. I’ve been researching ways to embody these complex ideas through the mark/s of my body, as the physicality of casting and metalwork has involved the whole of me. I’ve been drawing with metal, using the form and force of my body; casting my feet and hands has involved hours of intensive emotional and physical labour; I’ve used the dimensions and volume of my body as a template. I see it as the labour of performative making.
Thinking through making, materiality and process
I’ve become much more adept at thinking through making. The intensely physical, new labour-intensive, repetitive and transformative processes are especially suited to Csikszentmihalyi’s flow, which leads to a deep and different way of thinking. Neurologist Frank Wilson describes the complex links between the actions of the hand and the development of thought. He maintains that ‘the curious, exploratory, improvisational interaction of the hand with objects…gives rise to what we call “ideas”’ (1999, p8).
Linked into this flow is how the distinctive properties of each material have agency in the final outcome. As Ingold suggests, I have found that
‘the forms of things arise within fields of force and flows of material … by intervening in these force-fields and following the lines of flow … practitioners make things … bind their own pathways or lines of becoming into the texture of material flows … in an ongoing generative movement that is at once itinerant, improvisatory and rhythmic' (2009).
Extending this intuitive interplay between my body and knitting to a wider range of materials has, I feel, introduced a distinctive change to my practice. My visual language has become more subtle and idiosyncratic.
When I started the MA, I focused my research almost exclusively on how I could use knitting as a research method. Now, I have extended my enquiries and discover that much of my research, relating to knitting, readily transfers to a range of materials and processes.
I feel that the role of knitting in my practice has become much more sophisticated and nuanced, in terms of colour, form and installation and through synthesis with more traditional materials. I’ve learnt new skills in metalwork and casting, working with a range of materials and researching the significance and meaning of materiality and process. I finally selected steel, lead, concrete and plastic to frame my knitted sculptures as a creative illusion.
Critical writing
Following my research for MF7001, I’ve also developed a practice of critical writing alongside making and thinking, recording my reflections here on my MA research website. Of the Bauhaus weavers, art historian T’ai Smith says:
‘thinking indeed emerges within manual practices...craft and labor are not about turning off the brain but about reactivating different centers…ideas became manifest in their physical manipulation of the loom’ (2014, pxxv –xxvi).
For me, as Csikszentmihalyi suggests, writing, by ‘(o)bserving, recording and preserving the memory’ brings ‘order to consciousness’ (1990, p5). I’m convinced that this cycle of making, thinking and critical writing is an appropriate methodology for my practice.
Artist-researcher
I quickly realised that I couldn’t do justice to my proposal for MF7004, to synthesise the 3 very diverse strands of my practice - sculpture, performance and social engagement – during this module. I subsequently decided to focus on sculpture, specifically on materiality and process, while I had access to the fabrication areas at Bath Spa. I am thrilled with the final outcome as I feel that I have a much greater understanding of the connections between the central themes of my practice after the extensive research of this module, both in the thinking and in the physicality of making.
Revisiting my MF7004 presentation, Self and Other, I recognise that I now have a much deeper understanding of the ways in which, as research-practitioner, the whole of me - my mind, my body, my personality, my self - is pivotal to my practice. As artist-researcher, my ‘sensitivity, empathy with others, and tolerance for ambiguity’ are critical to the research’s progress and results (Jongeward, 2015, p255). Echoing crochet artist Olek, for me, ‘life…and art are inseparable’ (in Vannier, 2018, p91) and I still feel that ‘if I could put my body into my work that would be the ultimate’ (in Kino, 2013).
Primary and secondary research
Although my exhibition is essentially a sculptural ensemble, I know that the projects, residencies and exhibitions I have been involved in during this module have also greatly influenced this final outcome. I recognise that using my mind and body to embody an idea through making, moving and thinking, in real space with real people, activates more thought and more making, and enables me to successfully make ideas visible.
I’ve also honed many skills in metalwork and casting and have developed confidence to continue working in these areas with more independence once I’ve graduated. I plan to find an appropriate workshop with the tools and support I’ll need to explore these skills further. I am of the generation where girls didn’t use power tools, so having the confidence to now use them independently has been one of the most significant learning outcomes. Also, beginning to understand the visual language of different materials and how combinations of materials communicate different meanings has been another important discovery.
Visiting art exhibitions has sadly not been as significant a part of my research as it would normally have been, because of the pandemic, but I’m grateful that I’ve visited so many exhibitions over the years. Many of them have informed my current research. I’m really looking forward to being able to visit art exhibitions again. I also know that I need to continue engaging in critical dialogue with others, so will set up opportunities to do that.
I have also gained inspiration from an eclectic selection of contemporary and other artists, through books and the internet, most significantly Cave, Messager, Boltanski and Bourgeois.
Conclusion
I feel that I have skilfully ‘knitted together’ a unique, rigorous and transparent practice-led research methodology. I have also become adept at assimilating my ideas through the cycle of making, reflecting and critical writing, researching the work of other artists and applying critical thought. Through careful consideration of materiality, process, concept, colour, form, surface and mode of installation my work communicates a range of complex meanings and provokes a range of conflicting responses. I look forward to developing and researching the idea of ensembles further.
My final submission is an assemblage of handmade and cast sculptural objects made using a contrasting range of materials and processes, all of which relate to the body, specifically my body. It's a self portrait. However, it’s much more than this; it’s also a contemporary sculptural environment of carefully synthesised parts which together embody a number of connected, complex and nuanced ideas, leading to a range of readings and responses.
Ensemble
Penelope Curtis uses the term ‘ensemble’ to describe installations which ‘are animated by their viewers as well as by the sculptures which disperse or condense the spatial environment around them' (2017, p266). She says ' ... the way the figure is approached, and lit, the length of a direct or circuitous approach, the possibility of circumnavigation, all count' (ibid).
I consider my final submission to be an ensemble, a carefully curated space which invites the viewer to walk through and around it. Although ideally I would have preferred more space, I feel I have created a small yet immersive ‘world around the person in a way that makes them feel part of and inside of it… Viewers become “participants” and no two people experience exactly the same thing’ (Anderson, 2020). It also seems to be successfully activated by the presence of the viewer.
Ambiguity
I have learned that ambiguity is central to my practice. My current research has focused on ways to visualise the spaces between a number of binaries - self/other, embodiment/disembodiment, form/formlessness (Bataille), absence/presence, order/disorder (Douglas), inside/outside, public/private, amongst others, and, ultimately, life and death. Anthropologist Mary Douglas suggests that ‘boundaries provide certainty; considering them as thresholds acknowledges them as flexible which leads to disquiet and a range of conflicting responses.’ She says that this ambiguity prompts ‘not only danger, but also power’ (1966). My work has always provoked a range of responses; I’ve now discovered that it’s because it’s ambivalent.
I feel that I have successfully combined a range of devices in this ensemble to emphasise this sense of ambiguity:
- Contrasting materials (hard/soft, traditional/contemporary, masculine/feminine) (Parker)
- Knitting as ‘matter out of place’ (dirty/clean, comfort/discomfort) (Douglas)
- ‘Sloppy craft’: Subverting the expectations of craft as perfect and finished, everything here is intentionally unfinished, showing the traces of my making (finished/unfinished, absence/presence) (Surette and Patterson, Douglas)
- Zipped PVC body bags: the colour and form of the abstract, visceral, knitted pieces; trapped, they become alien, abject, other (form/formlessness, revealing/concealing, trapped/overflowing) (Bataille/Faiers)
- Surface: Specific surfaces are carefully selected/made for their sensorial attributes so that there’s a merging of the senses of touch and sight. ‘The eye…does not simply look. It also feels. Its response is both visual and tactile…’ the senses are ‘…each enfolded in the other’ (Barnett, 1999 p 185).
- Hanging: Louise Bourgeois asserts that ‘Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence and doubt’ (in Larratt- Smith 2011).
- Body parts: castrated body parts are uncanny and abject (self/other, familiar/unfamiliar) (Freud, Kristeva)
- Site-responsiveness: Almost everything is interchangeable and connects to almost everything else, which could potentially lead to an infinite number of variations in installation. Miwon Kwon (2002, p4) discusses the ‘impermanence and transience’ of art installed in response to ‘one site after another’ (impermanent/permanent)
- Apparition: The deconstructed forms give an illusion of instability; tensioned, balanced, fragmented, changeable, precarious, unravelling (illusion/reality, stability/instability, form/formlessness, order/disorder) (Douglas/Jung)
- Lighting: Choosing very low lighting makes the space more immersive and means that the viewer has to step into the installation to see the detail of the work. It also adds to the abjection.
- Shoes: Old shoes have associations with the body, but also with absence and, ultimately, death. One sandal is set in concrete, the other is worn by a castrated foot. Already they seem to add some macabre humour (absence/presence, comfort/discomfort)
- Lead hands: The distinctive qualities of lead add further meanings. My lead-cast hands are pocked and poisonous, referencing the ubiquitous contamination anxiety of touch during the ongoing pandemic (Kristeva, Douglas)
Transgression
This tension of opposites also seems to amplify the transgressive aspects of my work. Douglas goes on to say
‘anomalous and ambiguous things are often seen as disgusting, disruptive, and dangerous. However, these are not the only possible reactions; there is a whole gradient on which laughter, revulsion and shock belong at different points and intensities according to the type of transgression’ (1966, p 47).
The sublime
I now know that much of my theoretical research connects with the sublime:
‘The sublime is … also connected to the blurring of boundaries and the paradox and ambiguity this produces. The resulting feeling is paradoxical itself, aptly named … "pleasant terror" and "delightful horror." Like the abject and the uncanny, the sublime causes uneasiness and confusion in destabilizing the boundaries created by human beings to make sense of the world’ (Baird, 2013, p12).
Individuation
Behind this sense of ambiguity, the uncanny, the abject and the sublime is Jung's individuation, which I feel is pivotal to this ensemble. He talks about balancing our multiple selves with the dark side or shadow of our self. He says it's a preparation for death.
Embodiment
Nathaniel Stern describes embodiment as ‘moving-thinking-feeling’ (Stern, 2013, p2). Through the MA I have discovered that, like him,
'(c)entral to my work are the feedback loops between sensation, experience, movement, and understanding. What do we sense, and how does that make sense? Where do we move, and when are we moved? What do we value, and how does that change our values? Materiality and embodiment, affect and perception, transformation and time. I want to foster greater dialogue around these complex and relational ecologies' (Stern, no date).
The mark of my hand has long been critical, but I now have a much greater understanding of the role of my body in my practice. I’ve been researching ways to embody these complex ideas through the mark/s of my body, as the physicality of casting and metalwork has involved the whole of me. I’ve been drawing with metal, using the form and force of my body; casting my feet and hands has involved hours of intensive emotional and physical labour; I’ve used the dimensions and volume of my body as a template. I see it as the labour of performative making.
Thinking through making, materiality and process
I’ve become much more adept at thinking through making. The intensely physical, new labour-intensive, repetitive and transformative processes are especially suited to Csikszentmihalyi’s flow, which leads to a deep and different way of thinking. Neurologist Frank Wilson describes the complex links between the actions of the hand and the development of thought. He maintains that ‘the curious, exploratory, improvisational interaction of the hand with objects…gives rise to what we call “ideas”’ (1999, p8).
Linked into this flow is how the distinctive properties of each material have agency in the final outcome. As Ingold suggests, I have found that
‘the forms of things arise within fields of force and flows of material … by intervening in these force-fields and following the lines of flow … practitioners make things … bind their own pathways or lines of becoming into the texture of material flows … in an ongoing generative movement that is at once itinerant, improvisatory and rhythmic' (2009).
Extending this intuitive interplay between my body and knitting to a wider range of materials has, I feel, introduced a distinctive change to my practice. My visual language has become more subtle and idiosyncratic.
When I started the MA, I focused my research almost exclusively on how I could use knitting as a research method. Now, I have extended my enquiries and discover that much of my research, relating to knitting, readily transfers to a range of materials and processes.
I feel that the role of knitting in my practice has become much more sophisticated and nuanced, in terms of colour, form and installation and through synthesis with more traditional materials. I’ve learnt new skills in metalwork and casting, working with a range of materials and researching the significance and meaning of materiality and process. I finally selected steel, lead, concrete and plastic to frame my knitted sculptures as a creative illusion.
Critical writing
Following my research for MF7001, I’ve also developed a practice of critical writing alongside making and thinking, recording my reflections here on my MA research website. Of the Bauhaus weavers, art historian T’ai Smith says:
‘thinking indeed emerges within manual practices...craft and labor are not about turning off the brain but about reactivating different centers…ideas became manifest in their physical manipulation of the loom’ (2014, pxxv –xxvi).
For me, as Csikszentmihalyi suggests, writing, by ‘(o)bserving, recording and preserving the memory’ brings ‘order to consciousness’ (1990, p5). I’m convinced that this cycle of making, thinking and critical writing is an appropriate methodology for my practice.
Artist-researcher
I quickly realised that I couldn’t do justice to my proposal for MF7004, to synthesise the 3 very diverse strands of my practice - sculpture, performance and social engagement – during this module. I subsequently decided to focus on sculpture, specifically on materiality and process, while I had access to the fabrication areas at Bath Spa. I am thrilled with the final outcome as I feel that I have a much greater understanding of the connections between the central themes of my practice after the extensive research of this module, both in the thinking and in the physicality of making.
Revisiting my MF7004 presentation, Self and Other, I recognise that I now have a much deeper understanding of the ways in which, as research-practitioner, the whole of me - my mind, my body, my personality, my self - is pivotal to my practice. As artist-researcher, my ‘sensitivity, empathy with others, and tolerance for ambiguity’ are critical to the research’s progress and results (Jongeward, 2015, p255). Echoing crochet artist Olek, for me, ‘life…and art are inseparable’ (in Vannier, 2018, p91) and I still feel that ‘if I could put my body into my work that would be the ultimate’ (in Kino, 2013).
Primary and secondary research
Although my exhibition is essentially a sculptural ensemble, I know that the projects, residencies and exhibitions I have been involved in during this module have also greatly influenced this final outcome. I recognise that using my mind and body to embody an idea through making, moving and thinking, in real space with real people, activates more thought and more making, and enables me to successfully make ideas visible.
I’ve also honed many skills in metalwork and casting and have developed confidence to continue working in these areas with more independence once I’ve graduated. I plan to find an appropriate workshop with the tools and support I’ll need to explore these skills further. I am of the generation where girls didn’t use power tools, so having the confidence to now use them independently has been one of the most significant learning outcomes. Also, beginning to understand the visual language of different materials and how combinations of materials communicate different meanings has been another important discovery.
Visiting art exhibitions has sadly not been as significant a part of my research as it would normally have been, because of the pandemic, but I’m grateful that I’ve visited so many exhibitions over the years. Many of them have informed my current research. I’m really looking forward to being able to visit art exhibitions again. I also know that I need to continue engaging in critical dialogue with others, so will set up opportunities to do that.
I have also gained inspiration from an eclectic selection of contemporary and other artists, through books and the internet, most significantly Cave, Messager, Boltanski and Bourgeois.
Conclusion
I feel that I have skilfully ‘knitted together’ a unique, rigorous and transparent practice-led research methodology. I have also become adept at assimilating my ideas through the cycle of making, reflecting and critical writing, researching the work of other artists and applying critical thought. Through careful consideration of materiality, process, concept, colour, form, surface and mode of installation my work communicates a range of complex meanings and provokes a range of conflicting responses. I look forward to developing and researching the idea of ensembles further.