Initially thought I would spend half an hour, immediately after I recieved the brief, walking around by myself, attempting to notice minute details of the room. It was much larger than our spaces for first year, and was split down the middle to create two corridor style spaces. The ceilings were high, with a large set of pulley operated windows to one side. There were also two seperate lighting systems, bright halogen daylight tubes highest, with smaller, yellow, repositionable gallery lights lower down. I thought this could be particularly useful which switching between creation and display, the daylight bulbs showing colours much more accurately initially, and then the gallery lights used to soften the work and test it for display. These new 2nd year studios felt much more functionable, with greater room for experimentation and spread out working. Handily, a dual plug socket also protruded from above the chip wall directly above my spot, providing mains power closeby.
There were a few questions highlighted in the brief, all of which were designed to open up our curiosity for our space, practice and peers.
What am I? Who are they? What might I make here? What might I do here?
As Wednesday was our first full day off, I got in contact with one of my studio neighbours to try to organise a plan to work forward from to tackle the project, however found out that the rest of the people had, unbeknown to me, already gotten together and completed all the work. I found this was very much what I had feared in a project of this nature, as it is easy to be left behind when there is no specific time frame to work in and so close to the start of the project when everyone is still settling into routines. I was annoyed that I had missed the activities, as it would have been fun to work with everyone on outcomes which may have been well outside my practice, however I continued to be very busy working on my large canvas for the Balance exhibition, and couldn't have known otherwise. Luckily she did send me her documentation of their work for me to analyse, however I didn't want to simply regurgitate the work already created without being initially involved in the creative process, as this felt this would achieve the exact opposite of the aim. I didn't know what the best course of action was to take in this circumstance, so emailed Craig. He responded;
I did also see the merits in getting to know my peers' practice and having a look at what they came up with as a group. According to Laura's notes, most of the activies involved the artist setting the task to leave the room as the rest of the group got started working in their style. This drew interesting parallels to my own position, as I was an outsider to the entire situationl; never in the room in the first place. I thought perhaps I could take interesting aspects from their work due to my phyiscal detachment from it. She also made a brilliant point I had not considered about the further potential effectiveness of the task; "Although much of the exercise may be social, the roots could help myself investigate how my work is portrayed by others."
The first involved taking turns to hammer pieces of reclaimed wood together, in the style of the first of the partaking artist. An interesting detail in this, I thought, were the different levels of control demonstrated by collaborators of varying proficiency. Some nails were hammered straight in, in uniform lines, others sporadically bent and crooked. This gives the piece a worked finish, not dissimilar to the unique way a workshop bench becomes marked, nailed and destroyed in an unending number of creative ways during its practical use. I think this lends the piece a very industrial, functional nature, even if in actuality the piece is entirely functionless and non representational.
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