'If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough'

Assessment

I have a final assessment for this academic year on Wednesday and am sorting through all my work wondering what to include and what to leave out - there is too much to show it all as we only have 30 minutes and I want to include the 'slide show' (see my post on the Home to Home exhibition) which I consider to be the most important work this year (that could take up all the time so I will need to compile a shorter version). Then I need to move on from the (almost) obsession I have with these images - difficult!

As for other work the 2 images shown here are the ones I have selected to show, chosen from a larger body of photographs taken during the year - still not sure where this work is taking me though - I took them after discovering the work of Uta Barth!

It has been a fragmented year and I have felt largely disconnected due to personal circumstances. This has been reflected in the work I have developed through the overall theme of failure in my praxis project, and linking it to my main practice of working with chance, uncertainty and instability, both of materials and process, and also taking into account my own errors, self-evaluation and limitations. A part of this has included reviewing the unpredictable results of past work that I’ve considered ‘failures’. As time goes by they seem to feel more relevant and right, just not resolved. So I’ve followed the journey of these 'failed' images, using bits of mistakes to create new pieces of work. I have often been guilty of rushing on too fast to the next new, exciting idea, without really interrogating the last one. I seem to have spent a lot of time walking and thinking through ideas too!

I have experimented with other ways of presenting the material, some more successful than others. Printmaking has resulted in images, which exist in their own right but lose something of the quality in the slides. The film I attempted to make from scanned images of the collagraphs has been very disappointing and I have abandoned it for the time being. I have not felt as excited by these diversions and keep returning to the slides and projector. I still consider this as the most successful work produced this year!

I’m finished with Failure!

The book/catalogue is finally finished and was handed in to the University at 12 today – hooray!!  The size is A3 so it is quite a large book. I even made a slip cover to protect it – fiddly but not as difficult as I’d imagined.

I loved making the book and it has sparked lots of ideas for future work but I am glad to have the pressure of the deadline removed and to be able to move on to the studio practice which is going to be assessed in 2 weeks. 

As I’ve been concentrating on the book I have done little else so need to give it some serious attention – but tonight I’m having the night off and going to have a glass of wine and see a film at the Plymouth Arts Centre.