It was such a fascinating and humbling experience to work with professionals such as Jonathan, Betty, Adam and his team. The speed at which my pieces were installed and the ease with they seemed to be dragging 5m ladders, hanging wires up, installing electricity, I was absolutely blown away. Everything looked exactly as I wanted it to look and on top of that the wind blowing from the outside into the space made the lamps swing and dance without me planning it at all. I am also truly grateful to Betty for staying a while longer after I finished my lamp and experimenting with me by setting up my painting in various ways, to find the best way it worked with the lamps above it. I am so happy I had a few balls of red yarn bought by mym mum, which I was able to place underneath the painting and keep it suspended with a metal wire so it looked like it was constantly moving and balancing, unstable, like the brain of a rapidly changing pubescent teenager. And I also remain eternally grateful to Jonathan for taking everything down, while we were having fun in our workshops.
Overall impression: fantastic experience, I would love to do it again. It was great to have my friends and family come and see it, to hear their comments, to have a crit with other MA Fine Art Digital students, both from Year 1 and Year 2, to have my parents, brother and my kids come and support me.
Positive: people really interacted with the piece, used the remote controls from the little shelf attached to the beam next to the lamps to change the colours, my daughter coming back after looking at other people’s pieces to change the colours, which she found calming, meditative and fun. A lot of people pushing the buttons on the remotes and watching the colours change said it felt relaxing and meditative and I am really happy that this is how they felt even though it wasn’t really my intension.
Strange but interesting: a couple people mentioned something about the fridge painting The Maiden, which is based on the body insecurities of pubescent girls, taking my own thoughts and my friends thoughts and combining them with illustrations of awkwardly positioned and twisted elongated bodies. And it was that the red/orange and pink paint dripping from the top of the painting seemed to them like menstrual blood. I wondered whether I should feel disgusted by these thoughts or rather interested because the painting is supposed to be envisioning the experiences of pubescent girls. That also led me to an IDEA, which I am planning to experiment with over easter break: to knit a scarf to go around the frame, to add hand knitted tears to the scarf and to make a red tears frame cover, which could enhance the paintings meaning.
REFLECTION 1: Should the artist ignore people’s opinions of their artwork if they’re completely different from the artists intension? Or can the artwork change meaning depending on who is looking at it? And what is more important: the artist’s intension or the viewers interpretation?
REFLECTION 2: Does the artwork truly exist when the artist is done making it? Or does it only come into existence when someone else decides to look at it and shape an opinion about it? Or is it when two people are looking at an artwork and they start having an interaction?
Negative: quite a few people had issues getting their families and friends to actually find the space. Apparently the students and ticket people in the main hall where the tickets were being checked were “not aware” of our exhibition taking place and kept directing everyone towards the main hall rather than the MA Fine Art DIgital show space. We tried to clear this but felt a little bit like an afterthought in the midst of a giant Art Storm. We felt next time someone needs to make sure people checking tickets as well as other students know where the MA Fine Art Digital space is. That said, it was an amazing space because it allowed pretty much anyone come in and experience the show, random people without tickets included and that worked wo much better with the inclusive ethos of our course.
The hardest thing was thinking: what’s next? I felt unprepared and a little bit lost when in our group crit people wanted to know what’s next.