What do you hope to gain from your foundation course?
I am hoping to encounter new challenging experiences to increase my range of making and more importantly thinking. I hope to find synergy in form and content to make my work more meaningful at least to me. Keen to get started I have a tendency to respond quickly to an idea perhaps without sufficient consideration as to its purpose, depth or potential and so in time I am inclined to lose heart. With this in mind writing may be as useful to me as experimentation with materials. I note that artists increasingly seem to justify their work in written conceptual terms perhaps to satisfy the need for prefaces and exhibition notes but surely this too must create a firm premiss for the work in progress.
Developing purpose of expression.
The strange and interesting upbringing of someone such as Louise Bourgeoise could take a lifetime to reflect upon but how not to lie in a stupor and realise that those pieces of fabric stored under the bed so meaningful in her childhood could present a way for her to express something 'unspeakable' and so emotionally raw. Her journey has been drawn from her personal experiences an approach continued by artists such as Tracey Emin. Other 'Young British Artists' have explored social, eco and political themes forever responding to shifting hot topics as they may well be the way to get noticed or funding. I suppose finding out what is sufficiently worth developing is much the same problem for writers who are usually advised to dig deep into their own experiences even if they are painful then, of course, to have the courage to see them as valid unique, and worth expressing.
Somewhere here I plan to refer to artists' works and musical compositions which correspond to values which I cherish and would like to find their way into my work. In trying to grasp what I am trying to express I often make lists of adjectives but the content through which to realise them continues to be the challenge.
