Research - A Proposed Final Exhibition

I have had a meeting with the head of research and I have had an agreement that the college will help me fund a final exhibition that focuses on my long time involvement in drawing, both as a practice and as a pedagogy.

There will be several elements of this final exhibition.

The central focus will be of course a show of work and one fundamental issue in relation to this will be framing. Framing large drawings is problematic, and in order to build a lasting legacy I have decided to work with a framer who has had over 20 years experience and who understands the nature of the work.  We have already had a meeting and he has measured the drawings, the largest of which are 8 feet high. The first stage will be to make a model of the corner jointing system and backing supports, so that this can be used as a demonstration model for anyone wishing to pursue a similar undertaking in the future.   Each stage will be recorded and evidence of the process also posted to this blog. Andrew, the framer, was also a student on the first ever part-time access programme and he obtained his first job as a framer on finishing the access course, so it seems fitting that he is now part of the research and will help towards putting together the final legacy.  He is costing the materials this coming week and will also be bringing in equipment so that the framing can be done in the studio.

The whole process of putting the exhibition together, including making a gallery model, will also be used as a learning tool. 

The second element will be a publication that will be launched on the exhibition opening. This will be both an exhibition catalogue and pedagogic tool. Different approaches to drawing will be singled out and on the one hand directly linked to ways into understanding what lies behind my own drawings and on the other hand, the issues will be framed up as potential drawing starting points for students. This will be in a very old pedagogic tradition that includes Crispijn de Passe’s manual for artists, which has the wonderful motto on the title page, ‘Nulla dies sine linea’ (Never a day without a line). The catalogue will on the one hand be providing a commentary on the long history of drawing pedagogy and on the other providing drawing exercises for today’s generation of students as well as of course acting as an exhibition catalogue. 

I will also give a valedictory lecture, that will explore the narratives of drawing, both as an educational tool and as a philosophical statement. This will be an interweaving of clichés, experiential learning and artist statement.

Underlying all of these issues is a long standing commitment to the exploration of visual narrative and whilst the exhibition is on, I would hope to host a seminar on issues in contemporary visual narratives.

I have been given a date of January 2016 for the exhibition, so have a long lead in and hopefully plenty of time to get this together. Writing about drawing is something that I strongly believe is more akin to creative writing than something that is accessible to academic theory, and therefore I would hope to also be able to explore much more poetic approaches to the development of pedagogic languages associated with drawing within the art school curriculum.

Research

It seems a long time ago now but the research started last year has come to some sort of conclusion. This summer I have been able to finalise the idea of an Exhibition in a Box. I put together all the work I did in relation to revisiting silkscreen printing and made a complete set of 54 cards that responded to the research into Tarot. 100 sets were printed and I trailed them with an audience during a studio open weekend that was put on as part of the Chapeltown Arts festival. People seemed to quickly get the idea of how to use them and could see how they could be used to develop their own narratives.

Each set of 54 cards comes with its own box. The cards can either be used to play a Tarot type game with, or the cards can be exhibited as you would a series of small prints. I had the cards printed by a company based in Colchester and they are printed using a standard poker deck format. The majority of the cards were designed using 4 colour separations as you would design for a silkscreen print, but they were then 'flattened' so that digital prints could be made. The company were very user friendly and they print samples so that exact colour matches can be made. The final cards having a rich intensity of colour  that I believe was required to carry the weight of the possible narratives. 

Getting these cards done has allowed the final stage of my research project to now come back into focus, which is to work towards a final exhibition when I leave. This summer has been a time whereby I have been trying to write more about drawing and looking at the possibilities of combining narratives about drawing itself with narratives of life. 

Back to Work: Fine Art Year One

It has been a slow start back to work this New Year. I have been back for two weeks but week one consisted of pastoral tutorials with the first year and Monday week two was about catching up with those who weren’t spoken to the week before. On the Tuesday we took the students on a tour of local galleries. Most of this was to do with making sure students are well on with their modules and that they understand what to do for each one. Not my most favorite aspect of the job but it is now a technical requirement that students understand module outcomes; they will be asked directly whether or not they were helped understand how they would be assessed and answers go into the student survey, which will at some point be published. Students are working on three modules. The first of these, ‘Individual and Social’ will need to be handed in during week three of the new term. This is the module most of us would have in the past thought of as ‘studio practice’ or ‘the student’s work’.  Alongside this module they are also developing evidence for ‘Materials and Processes’, which is essentially a record of every technical process they come across. It mainly consists of documenting inductions into workshops, and the other module is ‘PPP1’ a professional development module whereby everything from visits to art galleries, transcriptions of artists talks, and reviews of art magazines is done. This can also be a blog, so some students will just have to tell me they are ongoing with this as there is no computer terminal available where I’m working. Both these modules will be handed in later on nearer the end of the term. The rest of my time has been spent doing dissertation tutorials. On Wednesday I sat from 9.00am till 7.45pm doing these one after the other. The writing is now getting to the point that I can see what is emerging and on the whole students are coping well with something that can be an onerous task. The hand-in is mid February and once that date passes I might reflect on the process.

Probably the most interesting session last week was the galleries visit. We started with our own gallery that is showing a curated response to the Brontes, a very Yorkshire show, but one whereby I could explain how sometimes galleries will work to a theme. In this case the work ranged from projection, via intricate paper-cutting to weather records of the Yorkshire Moors. It was put on in conjunction with a conference over at the university and curated by an ex-member of staff, Nick Cass.  This was totally different to the show over at the Burton Gallery which was hosting Christopher Wood an ex student from the 1980s. Chris has been painting for some time now and has a solid reputation. This was his first one-man show in Leeds, which surprised me. He was showing a lot of his prints, mono and etching in particular. We also looked at how this was hung. The prints were all different sizes and Chris had had them all hung to an invisible horizontal at an eye level of about 4 feet from the floor. Students were asked to check fittings and to think why each exhibition was hung differently. After looking at the permanent collection we went on to the Henry Moore institute. The 1913 show is very good, but I’m aware most students are not aware of how important some of these pieces are. In particular I wonder how long it will be before we see a classic Metaphysical De Chirico, Duchamp’s ‘Standard Stoppages’ and a Picasso cubist still-life together on show again in Leeds. There is also an excellent Helen Chadwick show on which details how she put together her light-boxes. Colour tests, technical drawings, mock-ups etc. were all used to help get a picture of how she went about thinking through the process, this was excellent material for the PPP1 module. Hopefully it was also a useful experience for any student thinking about what it is to be an artist. Before we left to go for dinner all the students were inducted into the Henry Moore library, again a fantastic resource.

The afternoon was spent initially at the Leeds City Art Gallery  Nike Savvas exhibition and students were taken into the accompanying installation by Amanda Phillips the education officer. Whether or not they liked the work, the control required to get all the coloured tapes in place was a useful lesson, together of course with an understanding of how the artist sent the work, (rolls of coloured plastic tapes with instructions) an aspect of sending work off to exhibitions that is so often forgotten about.

Finally we went to ‘Mexico’ (an independent art space) and another ex-student, James Maxfield gave a presentation as to how the space had developed. I could tell this was where most of the students were at last taking an interest.  The fact that the curators were young and not long out of college obviously ticked their boxes and this was the first time students asked questions all day. Fair enough I thought. This was something they could relate to and James was able to explain to present students how his second year cohort developed a gallery in a basement and that the experience had been invaluable. Making links and networking as always seem to be the key elements to getting off to a successful career. If only I had been better at it. 

An exhibition of foundation students' work

Terry has e mailed me an image from an exhibition of foundation course work. I remember this because it coincided with Leeds United playing in the European Cup Final against Bayern Munich.  They lost a contested match by two goals to nil, all the staff watching the match in a London pub after going for a meal in one of the places Andrew Tilberis used to recommend. It must have been the end of May 1975. I was still very raw and impressed that we were invited to show work in London. I didn’t yet realise the importance of the foundation course’s history.

This (below) is the full text of Terry’s e mail, as he says I havnt mentioned complementary studies yet. It is for me a very important subject, so will get round to it at some point, but not yet:

Searching through various damp boxes in the garage I found this page which might be of interest to you.

It refers to an exhibition called Foundation organised by Philip Hughes and held in London in the early 70's at something called the International Art Centre (I've forgotten where this was). It included work by the then Jacob Kramer College, Bath Academy of Art, Chelsea School of Art, Croyden College of Design, London College of Printing, Ravensbourne College of Art, and seven schools, mainly in London that had 6th form foundation courses in competition with college foundation courses.

The page I have included says a lot, I think, about the ethos of the JK foundation at the time. There is an air of breathless excitement about it which is quite amusing but it reminds me of a part of the course that you haven't mentioned yet - complementary studies. At the time there was a feeling that this was a distraction from studio practise but in retrospect it was probably a contributory factor in broadening the experience of the student.

I seem to remember that small groups of foundation students came together with small groups from the graphic, textile and furniture (and other) courses and they spent a week together each term on a project devised by the complementary studies department. I suppose this was a way of 'mixing' the students, exposing them to a wider group of staff ( each foundation tutor could run a project as well: I remember taking a group of students around all the cinemas and theatres in Leeds - far more than there are now, and still in their decor of the 1920's and 30's - to study and record the architecture. We also watched the films showing in the afternoon and rehearsals at the Grand.

The list of subjects introduced and visiting lecturers are both particularly interesting. Science, history, religion, pottery all seen as useful information. From what I remember anything was grist to the mill, but it was argued it should always be delivered around students working on the studio floor. Lefty Frizzell was an obscure country and western singer that had been picked out by putting a pin into a telephone directory and researching the surname found. (This was well before the time of Google) This became a starting point for both staff and student work. I can remember Terry in particular making organic guitars as a response to this and the LP covers we sourced in second hand shops. 

Patrick encouraged me to become a 'wondering intellectual' not that I felt very intellectual, it was just that my knowledge base was different and I was around and about and talking to students. Glynn Thompson and the complementary studies staff had other agendas and when the two systems came together sometimes it was fantastic, but at other times the studio was totally out of synch with the experiences students were getting from what was supposed to be 'complementary' study. This needs opening out in detail at some point, but the reality was that often opportunities were missed. Ideas woven through Glynn's lectures or introduced in the complementary studies weeks, (these could be anything from cooking to politics) often ignored or just not picked up on, when they could have helped drive students' work towards a much broader set of responses.