KICKSTART PROJECT - REFLECTION

" This year you will be increasingly focusing on your own autonomous direction for your practice whilst also developing co-operative and collaborative working processes. This one week project encourages you to work with your studio colleagues and start to become familiar with the studio space that you share. The project encourages you to ask 3 questions: What might I (or we) make here?"

The project is broadly split into 2 phases, the first stage is for us to become familiar with the location, the studio itself and our colleagues within the studio space. The second phase is to make work in relation to the intentions of each individual within the space. 

To become familiar with my surroundings I first wanted to find out the definition for the term 'space' to give myself a clearer idea as how to approach  the question 'Who am I?' and 'Who are they?'

"the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move."

 As the people occupying the space we are in term all things that exist and move with that space. I monitored each persons movements and how they all react to their own personal section of that space and the surrounding areas. I then listened and documented the communication and interaction between the group. After this I spoke to each individual to create an understanding as to how they plan to interpret the space and what sort of ideas they have to utilise it.

'What might I do here?'

For this phase of the brief it seemed necessary to collaborate with each others practices to develop an intimate understanding. I created an idea which combined the materials I use within my practise and each individual within the space. A corroborative sculpture project in which my colleagues control the development of the sculpture with the materials I provided. The goal was to create a sculpture in response to the space, the materials and each persons individual artist perspective creating a physical conversation between myself, the studio space; materials and my colleagues but simply through an act.

Aside from my own studio project we each explored each others thought processes and materials used within our practises, developing an understanding of the fundamental and influential elements within our works. To do this we experimented by creating our own piece within a project set by each individual. The end result is a collaborative piece intertwining each occupant in the studio space.

Oliver's idea was to record human existence within the studio space by painting the hands, feet and recording the height of each person in the studio and displaying the findings within each individuals personal space. Through this he achieved visable interaction between everyone in the space, creating an 'existence' within the space itself. 

Hannah wanted to use string to wrap around everyday objects that we may come across in the studio space. Creating sculptures that had a practical, functional use and making them impractical, taking away any form or power from that particular object. She was massively influenced by artist Judith Scott who uses fibres such as string to wrap around objects in multiple layers. The fibres and the object then combine creating abstract forms.

Laura is interested in the psychological changes and impacts that people go through. She visually documented the ever merging interaction and communication between the group using visual-psych and developed a small scale investigation into how we are fundamentally similar with many differences and how we will all impact each other as the year progresses. Using these recordings she developed a task which saw us each writing a line focusing on our own practises and what we find fundamental within it including and main influences. In term this created a poem linking each person in the space but also showing our hugely different approaches and views. 

Through researching for this project I found that there are huge similarities between how we as a group approached this and 'The other Fab Four: Collaoboration and Neo-Dada' a plan for an exhibition by J.D. Welch. Our group projects combine a range of art forms coming together to produce a series of performance art works documented through each other.

Fostered by the revolutionary spirit of institutions like Black Mountain College, a minority artmaking movement working against the Modernist/Abstract Expressionist style and theoretical framework appeared in the early fifties, eventually giving way to what we now term Pop. Referred to as ”neo-Dada,” many artists of this transitory period/style  resurrected the Dada traditions of the readymade and composition by chance operations (among others) and used alternative materials and formal constructions to make their art– from paintings and sculpture to performance, music and dance.

The looseness of the organisation and disparate practices make it hard to categorise the movement either by its temporal period or by shared elements of style. The only universal trait of neo-Dada is its free-form and disparate nature. In this exhibition the years from the end of Abstract Expressionism to Pop are considered in the context of the movement’s appropriation of the historical avant-garde sensibility coupled with radical innovation into sophisticated performance-based works.

Instead of a general survey of the movement, however, the focus here is on the collaborative aspect of the artforms, making specific example of a small group of collaborative performances that arose from the collective work of painters Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, composer John Cage, and choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham.