Initial map to outline concerns and interests in studio practice
October 2015 work landscape
The 5 stage creative process: gathering, responding, developing, resolving, reflecting
Mapping 5 stage studio process
Defining the subject matter and starting points in my creative practice
The map above lead me to realise that there are two potentially opposing ways of working with objects going on, which I have outlined below
Object-based enquiry versus material experimentation
In beginning to work out how to frame the enquiry and relate it to my studio practice, I have been very influenced by ideas in Tim Ingold's Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture Routledge, 2013.
Ingold asserts that object-based material culture studies (in anthropology) tend to look at objects only as finished examples which can be studied to extract knowledge. This creates a bias. "in so far as they continue to treat art as a compendium of works to be analysed, there can be no possibility of direct correspondence with the creative processes that give rise to them"
He questions the idea that objects are created by the imposition of form on matter (hylomorphism) because this way of thinking treats the material as inert, without energy, dead. Instead he suggests that materials are in constant flow and "the maker joins forces with them in anticipation of what might emerge"
In the process of making a basket "The form was not imposed on the material from without, but was rather generated in this force field, comprised by relations between the weaver and the willow." Essentially, material is active not passive. Making is an active confluence of different forces, and "In the field of forces, the form emerges as a more or less transitory equilibration."
In a lecture on Thinking through Making (The Institute for Northern Culture on YouTube in October 31, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygne72-4zyo) he said
"Here I present an alternative account of making, as an inherently mindful activity in which the forms of things are ever-emergent from the…sensory awareness and material flows…of life.
Artefacts and thoughts are the…ephemeral cast-offs of this process, strewn along the way. Rather than imposing form on matter, the maker…is caught between the anticipatory reach of the imagination and the frictional drag of materials. Nothing is ever finished."
This gives me a starting point to research the Companion Objectfrom the point of view of a maker, which naturally includes cultural and historical context, and to reflect more consciously on the the process or 'flow' in my studio practice, and how the two strands influence each other.
Feb : Process - the avocados, the stitch, all the many tests & samples and experiments I have already done. Including photos, creative writing, maps, more drawing.