background + now

just over a year ago i swapped a full time job in the construction industry which i had been doing for five years, for a two year Masters in Fine Art at the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, North Netherlands.
some would see this as a strange step but for me it made perfect sense. although i enjoyed my job, which took me to Glasgow, Ipswich, Liverpool and London, i had a growing sense of not quite being in the right place. i had a couple of studios and group shows in this time where i was trying to develop my own work as an artist, at the same time as working in my job, but i realised that in order to progress my ideas i needed to be in a learning environment. although i am still working more hours in a job here in The Netherlands than is ideal, the difference between working in a building project office and delivering mail on the streets of Groningen is that i feel there is now more thinking space, and less demand made on my job related performance.

having spent my first year of study here experimenting with sculpture, installation and film (some results of which can be seen in earlier posts on this blog) i have reached a point now at the start of my second year where i am trying to focus my work into three specific but related disciplines: photography, film and writing.
at the moment i am in the production stage where i am taking photographs, writing daily, editing film material and arranging my thoughts on what type of films i want to make. and all this in the conceptual frame of the 'poetic image'.

during this process i am reading about the general nature of the poetic from the viewpoint of literary poetic works (Octavio Paz, Samuel Beckett, John Berger, Henry Thoreau and some literary theory), the poetic principle in photography (Jean Baudrillard, Gabriel Orozco), by attending regular film screenings at Shadows Film Club and by trying to analyse my output in terms of where i feel i am closest to my intentions.
which is all very well but the hard part is working out how to combine these activities in the studio into a finished piece(s) of work.

below some more images from my local area (the project i started a couple of months ago).
the next post will be some of the written work i have been working on.

don't look away.

 

blackboard writing

writing is becoming more and more important, and i am trying to write everyday. the way i write is by allowing words to form on the page without trying too hard to create meaning or order. the first draft is my original material which i then refine in the second and third drafts. by cutting and pasting sections together, i make connections between phrases and words.  

at the moment i am looking for ways to combine writing, film and photography. these three blackboard panels from my studio are an immediate way to see exactly how a piece of text can function outside of a notebook or off the written page. 

the more i write, the more i want to write. in part, it is about re-discovering the qualities of words themselves, and in part about accessing experiences in the present, and experiences in the past.

the first one is dedicated to Mo Jupp.

don't look away.