This train will call at...
Please mind the gap
I write this whilst on my last train journey between Lincoln, where I work, and Manchester, where I currently live. After seven years I am moving across the Pennines to Lincoln. Yesterday (just after I was asked by this year’s cohort of MA fine art students to write something for this publication) I started to wonder if a train journey could be a metaphor for the journey of an art student? Today I thought back to my first journey from Manchester to Lincoln for my job interview.
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I clearly remember a mix of uncertainty, excitement, confidence and expectation on that first trip. Over the years I have read, researched, written essays, formulated exhibitions, developed and made art, dozed, engaged in numerous far-reaching conversations and been bored. On this final journey back to Manchester I feel a little strange, but I am also excited in anticipation for the next passage in my life.
In my experience an art student feels a mix of uncertainty, excitement, confidence and expectation on their first day. Over the years of study they read, research, write essays, formulate exhibitions, develop and make art, doze, engage in numerous far-reaching conversations and hopefully not be too bored. At the final point of the course they probably feel a little strange, but also still excited for the next passage in their artistic lives.
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Ashleigh McDougall
MA Contemporary Curatorial Practice Nottingham Castle May 10 - July 7, 2013
The Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery Café Table Commission was selected and curated by Ashleigh McDougall in conjunction with Castle staff. The Commission took the form of an open call for artists, drafted, reviewed, and selected by Ashleigh. Lincoln artist Aislinn Ritchie produced an inaugural series of new artworks for the Castle Café Table Commission. Using collected postcards as her medium, she created imaginary landscapes; fitting together impossible and diverse scenes that draw attention to the constructed nature of the world around us. The artist made a very strong proposal, and her work took advantage of the unique nature of the café table display format. Each bespoke piece referenced a different type of landscape, and drew visitors in, encouraging them to engage. Identifiable landmarks and buildings within the works were also reflected in the panoramic map of views of Nottingham located just outside, on the café’s terrace.
Aislinn’s work initiated a conversation with the past, in which found images were altered through cutting and assembly. The original context of the imagery on each postcard was removed, and the features presented with unique and alternative meanings. Aislinn is fascinated by what results when elements that should not necessarily connect, are combined. She aimed to encourage the development of narratives, stories, and questions around her created landscapes, which are comprised of images that would ordinarily only receive a face-value reading. Aislinn is a recent BA Fine Art graduate from the University of Lincoln, living and working in the city. Her practice has featured postcards and other forms of found imagery for several years, and she has exhibited in both Lincoln and Nottingham.
Ashleigh McDougall
MA Contemporary Curatorial Practice The Collection, Lincoln April 22 - May 12 2013
Mondegreen Ekphrasis featured the work of :
Early last term, myself and my peer group of MA Fine Art students were asked to read and discuss an article by Søren Andreasen and Lars Bang Larsen entitled “The Middleman:
Shahira Allen,
Beginning to Talk About Mediation.” Within it, the authors discussed the role of the curator as a middleman or mediator, but also disparaged the silence surrounding individual curatorial practices. This perceived unwillingness or inability of the curator to engage in discourse about the thought processes and issues that surround their work struck a chord with me. The following discussion regarding the conceptual framework of the exhibition Mondegreen Ekphrasis was my attempt to combat this curatorial quiescence, and to facilitate understanding of thought-processes that may have otherwise remained hidden.
Andrew Bracey, Lewis Gaukrodger, Amir Ghazi-Noory, Diane E. Hall, Victoria Hall, Linda Hollaway, Laura Johnson, Chutatib Promgul, Gemma Rabionet, Jessica Rawlings, Duncan Rowland, Carlos Ruiz Brussain, Miranda Jingyan Zhang.
Just as a pebble thrown into a pond produces a series of expanding rings, ripples of inspiration have emanated from great works of art throughout history. Taking this idea as a premise, MA Fine Art and MA Design students from The University of Lincoln were brought together in the exhibition.
The word “mondegreen,” from which the show took part of its title, was coined by author Sylvia Wright in 1954. While listening to the ballad The Bonny Earl O’Moray as a child, Wright misheard the words “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen.” In her adult life, she referred to misinterpretations that give new meaning as “mondegreens,” and the invented word has recently been incorporated into the dictionary. The concepts of artistic collaboration and the appropriation of images and ideas were explored in the exhibition, which grew and evolved each week. This showed the process of ekphrasis, a Greek term that has come to mean the description of one work of art through the creation of another. A new piece by lecturer Andrew Bracey acted as the starting point in the centre of the gallery. By the end of the exhibition, the works of three groups of artists and designers were placed around this central piece. Artists and designers in each group took inspiration from a piece that was created in the group before, creating individual chains of artworks linked together in something like a visual game of “Chinese Whispers.”
During their individual journeys each of the MA fine art students has been taken to happy, productive and successful places in their work and almost certainly a few awkward, dead ends that they did not want to go, but for the sake of the journey needed to. It does not matter if that journey is direct or goes via numerous stops, diversions and changes in direction; as long as each student comes out in a different place to that which they embarked on the course. You are now arriving in Sheffield
While waiting for the connecting train at Sheffield I finished reading an essay by the critic, curator and artist, Robert Storr that I started yesterday on the way over from Manchester. Almost the first words I read are: The primary means for “explaining” an artist’ work is to let it reveal itself. Showing is telling. Space is the medium in which ideas are visually phrased. Installation is both presentation and commentary, documentary and interpretation. (1)
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Amir Ghazi-Noory MA Fine Art
The Anxious Grotesque Nonsense of Amir Ghazi-Noory
Diane E Hall MA Fine Art
Journeying through The National Forest area of Leicestershire, the transformation from opencast mining to forest cannot fail to intrigue. It is the enigmatic qualities of this fragile equilibrium, between the industrial and natural environment, that is a source of fascination for me. My work is a response to the changes in this landscape through a detailed investigation into the specific Site of Long Moor and its layered history.
James Hall MA Fine Art
Victoria Hall MA Fine Art
The work explores the dissection of experiences through a combination of abstraction, colour and composition transferred on reflective surfaces. The viewer is encouraged through the use of their own reflection to contemplate personal experiences in reaction to the piece. These translations strive to explore how experiences overlap to form our life as a whole. Moreover, the abstract dialogue within the work drives the continuous evolution of both meaning and understanding.
Linda Hollaway MA Fine Art
Equality noun the state of having the same rights, opportunities, or advantages as others Regular reports in the media of violence to women and girls indicate the value given to females in many countries of the world. Using hair as metaphor, my practice investigates the status of women in contemporary societies in social and domestic contexts. The work explores both vulnerability and the rebuilding of lives following trauma.
Lindsay Mann MA Fine Art
When humans invest meaning in a portion of space and then become attached to it in some way... it becomes a place. Streets and tower blocks found on many council estates are built and designed with persistent sameness and repetition in design. This being the architect’s intention to encourage a sense of familiarity but which in turn, along with tenancy restrictions, limits residents capabilities of differentiating their home from others. This study of work followed residents of the Orchard Park Estate in Hull moving home due to the current housing regeneration schemes. The work addresses how residents use the space in their home and how they establish place identity amongst the repetition of design in the multi-storey tower blocks.
Cresswell, T. (1996). In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology & Transgression. Minnesota: Minnesota Press.
David Robinson MA Fine Art Photographer
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. Dorothea Lange
The art of street photography is realising when to stop and isolate the moment around you. What started as street photography has developed into something more abstract and personal to me. These photographs show my feelings, my viewpoint about the world and my interactions within it.
The students have been questioned and challenged about their work; regularly having to explain their actions, thought processes and ultimately their work. This lengthy process is vital in trying to reach a point where the work is the primary way of explaining itself. The test is whether (now that the students have installed their work in space) the audience is able to visually ‘read’ the work and to generate meaning; to see if showing is really telling.
We are sorry to announce that the 19:44 to Liverpool Lime Street has been delayed by approximately 10 minutes...
As is relatively common the connecting train was late coming into Sheffield and as I had finished Storr’s essay I flicked to Twitter on the mobile and then further clicked on a link to a blog-post that caught my eye. Simon Fell describes his blog as follows. How many times can you start your career? Quite a few I hope. want to look at the process of learning how to get beyond the privacy of the studio and expose my thinking and artwork to a wider world. I hope to capture some crucial points about turning a practice into one that has a public aspect, logging what that involves and how it affects the balance of my activity and my ideas (2).
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I imagine this sentiment chimes with many of the reasons why a student embarks upon an MA in fine art. In this particular post Fell speculated on how “Changing your mind is integral to the creative process, perhaps it is the main ingredient.� I believe this sentiment is crucial to all artists, but particularly true for art students; to be able to change track in a works progression and to know when and how to do this is a vital thing to learn.
I wish each of these artists (they are now no longer art students) well on the next part of their journey. I hope this one has been worthwhile, memorable and stimulating. Most of all I hope that this show will mark just one (albeit important) point on a far larger trajectory of what they do as artists. I feel fortunate to have been privy to this part of their journey. I look forward to seeing what they go on to do. Bon voyage. (1) Robert Storr, ‘Show and Tell’ in What makes a Great Exhibition, ed. Paula Marincola, (Philadelphia Exhibition Initiative, Philadelphia, 2006), p. 23. (2) Simon Fell, ‘ReStart’ http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/ single/3465384, accessed 10 July 2013
Andrew Bracey Programme Leader
An exhibition and catalogue of work by students from MA Contemporary Curatorial Practice and MA Fine Art Lincoln School of Art and Design, University of Lincoln. September 2013
Ashleigh McDougall
Amir Ghazi-Noory Diane E Hall James Hall Victoria Hall Linda Hollaway Lindsay Mann David Robinson
Andrew Bracey Programme Leader
All change please. All change...