Assignment Five Contextual Studies

Assessment edit, contextual studies Assignment Five – Final draft

assignment-five-april-4-2016-pdf

Assignment Five – update prior to assessment

Assignment 5 – updated 4^th May 2016

The documents that are required at A5 are a descriptor for the work and a course reflection.

The Reflection:

An evaluation – Body of Work at Assignment Five

The course has been both the most challenging and also the most rewarding. The challenge to find a way forward had me considering what it was that I wanted to gain from photography as a means of communication i.e. what did I want to communicate and for what purpose? This process of deliberation was the most difficult period of the course as a whole, and yet it proved to be decisive in breaking through with determining what, and how, my personal voice would proceed and develop. It was clear on reflection that I was unsure what the Body of Work would be ‘about’ until the end of Assignment Three, and yet through the process of reflection I became sure that what I wanted to deliver was a discourse on the ‘personal’ and how I fit into the world I inhabit.

The Work

The impetus to work in “Purgatory” provided the psychological trigger to make a work based on my ongoing relationship with my deceased father. There were a number of avenues of exploration that I tried in order to enter into a conversation with ‘him’. For example I tried to bring his effigy into view in a number of ways but it was only after retrieving the last of his personal belongings – his jewellery – that I found a route to insert ‘him’ into the frame through those objects presented as archeological artefacts.

I felt the need to provide a textual narrative device to enable the viewer to contextualize the work. My first attempts didn’t work particularly well, in that they were too diverse. Refining them, making them more specifically personal have strengthened them, although I am concerned that I have overdone this aspect, something I am sure that will come out at assignment review. Feedback through critique from various sources, as part of “Sustaining Your Practice” have helped me to place some critical distance between the work and myself in the final edit. I am mindful of a comment Fiona Yaron-Field made in her feedback regarding the texts “The last three pages from the sting of his spittle [text], next landscape, and then the rings works brilliantly together. Each element expands the narrative, is very moving and visually connects. They are all open and leave me space as the viewer to enter. Some earlier text and image are too literal and leave me outside the work.” The need for access points for viewers, to have a sense of ambiguity that fosters engagement has been a very difficult line to find and follow and one that I still find continually ebbs and flows.

The landscape imagery, though difficult to edit down to a manageable quantity all exhibit the sense that I want to express. That sense though came about as much by examining the work as a whole, before editing/sequencing, to form a narrative that worked visually. There are many images that remain outside the set that individually hold significant connotative strength but do not work in the series. And whilst I think that my visual language has developed, I recognise there is a distance still to go.

The Outcome

As the work progressed from an undefined work in progress, to a project with defined parameters, I felt a growing sureness of how the work might or might not be presented. An early decision was to make the work small. I wanted the imagery to be personal and to represent that with images that were sympathetic to that goal. I had printed and exhibited most of the landscapes at an exhibition I had organised at the South Street Gallery in the Churchill Hospital permanent artspace from 1^st August – 24^th October 2015. I was pleased with the way the work was hung, I was required to work with a professional technician who works for the Modern Art Oxford Gallery in physically hanging the prints which I mounted in 20” X 16” frames. Visitors at the exhibition needed to be at a distance to these prints to view them, for assessment I felt that by making them smaller, presenting them as un-mounted photographs they would be able to be held in hand and be interacted with them as objects. They would thus have a private experience with them, and so I have made them approximately A5 size. I also made photographs out of the texts, so that the words became more physically present. I felt that if there was a sense that the words were printed from a text file they would have had an ephemeral nature. I wanted the words to have a sense similar to that of the artefacts, of having a history. These words though have remained – worn with time and remembrance – either as they had been expressed at me a half century or more ago, or with my recently un-silenced voice. I’m not sure whether viewers will capture that notion, but it has been embedded. This idea of remembrance, of memory resurfacing has become a component of my research for my new work under the umbrella project title“Legacy”.

The Box

I designed the box to contain the images with twin purposes. Primarily it was a practical means by which the prints could be held and presented for viewing. The design was a collaboration between a mechanical designer, a carpenter and myself and I think it works very well from that perspective. It also addresses the relationship I have with my father and his continual disdain both for my need to design, create and make things as well as my apparent failure to do anything well. It was important to me that the box addressed those criterion and that I achieved a measure of success and I believe the box and the work achieve that mark I set for myself. I am also aware that the box has visual connotations to memento mori, a casket perhaps and that I have also chosen to call it a container.

Take-aways

There is a fine line between allowing the work to develop, to wander, to find direction and recognizing that the work is ‘about’ something. In one of my written journals I made a note to myself to ‘believe in the project’, this was before Assignment Four. It was at a point when I ‘knew’ how I was going to complete the project – or at least the form of presentation (editing issues notwithstanding). It is evidence of maturation, I think, that enabled me to make that critical decision and subsequently feel confident enough about the work to be able to enter into discussions with interested parties about the narrative. This confidence provided me the authority to ask for feedback from comparative strangers, albeit knowing they were enabled to respond from a critical distance. I am very sure that in my next piece I won’t be so unsure about whether the project is a work in progress or a confusion of imaginings.

Once the work developed a ‘path’ I became settled in what I found myself describing, and to that extent I feel that the subject that I want to continue to research now has definition, at least for the foreseeable future. It is somewhat comforting that this sense of a ‘voice’ has found a way to direct what I shall be working on and I have some ideas about projects to work on post this course.

The comfort I feel about a ‘voice’ appearing during this final phase of the course is in stark contrast to the way in which I felt about a lack of one at the beginning of it. I feel a resonance with the way this project has developed a sense of what I want to make work about, and the conceptual framing of the work itself. The landscape imagery was conceived as a psychological response to the space that I was in and it follows that that response was a way for my voice to surface and express itself in the way it has. And I find it curious that I am still very engaged with how I see that the work is seemingly successful, but maybe that’s a part of the sub-narrative.

I would like to think that I will work on other projects that allow other voices to emerge, but the central theme of love will, I think, never be far from what I want to talk about.

Looking Forward

Presentation

Some time ago I felt that the idea of finding a white wall space to exhibit this work wouldn’t be the right way to present it. As described earlier I feel the physical handling of the images works better and various people who have examined the work have corroborated this notion.

I have considered designing a book, which would be hand-made in collaboration with a bookmaker and designer I know. My thoughts are currently that in making this book it will become quite a precious object and that might not work due to the narrative and so have stayed that decision.

I have designed a web-site to host this and other work and have had significant critique resulting in several updates to the site. There is a plan to update the site further with the inclusion of a blog that will detail developments in new work on-going. See below.

Artist Talk/Presentation

I have been invited to present some work at an upcoming symposium as part of Jesse Alexander’s residency at the Bank Street Gallery (BSA) in Sheffield. Link here: http://bankstreetarts.com/people/residencies/jesse-alexander/

“Pastoral Paradigms: Explorations in Landscape and the Self

The symposium that will run as part of the residency will consider how contemporary landscape practice has shifted from its pastoral traditions and embraced more nuanced and personal approaches and narrative strategies. It will be an opportunity to hear more about Jesse’s collaborative project with BSA, The Nymph and the Shepherd, as well as hear him discuss his broader research interests in critiques of pastoral representation, and the potential for landscape practice as autobiographical expression. Several other artists will also present their practice, including the photographer Michal Iwanowski, whose major project Clear of People (currently under publication), retraces the footsteps of his grandfather and great uncle as they escaped from a Soviet prisoner of war camp at the end of the Second World War back to their hometown in Poland. Further information and details of other speakers to follow.”

I’m very excited about this prospect. It has been suggested that I should prepare a presentation of around 30-45 min’s and that more details about the event will be forthcoming. My ambition at this stage will be to focus on the BoW but also to finish with an example of my new work, very probably a video.

The Family Ties Network is a research group of artists, filmmakers and writers who explore memory, space, place and the family in photography and moving image. I had the opportunity to present my work, in a previous edit, at an informal session on the 20th Nov 2015. I have asked whether it would be possible to resent my BoW at a formal session at the next event, which is tentatively scheduled in Sunderland in spring of 2016. I feel this would be the ideal venue to present this work for the following reasons:

• The Network is a research group whose main area of interest includes the main tropes of my work: memory, family, space and place.

• The mode of delivery of the work is for the presenting artist to discuss their practice (their identity as an artist) then show their work before an extended question and answer session mediated by a facilitator.

• Notes regarding the presentations and subsequent discussions are then hosted to the Network’s website to enable other practitioners in the field of inquiry to interrogate and develop the network.

The presentation methods at the FTN events are image projections, which may or may not incorporate sound. Some very careful consideration of how the work would be seen by an audience would be required to ensure that it was received sensitively. I have a thought that I might also accompany the work with a reading from a piece that I wrote some years ago, which would provide some contextualization as well as presenting some other work that I have completed at HE6 (level three).

I feel I am being realistic to suggest that my chances of being selected, amongst the august academics and practicing artists in the Family Ties Network, are slim.

Web-Site

I looked at the Adobe on-line courses for “Muse”, which will enable me to design and construct a web-site.

For some time I have taken an interest in the way in which artists, and in particular lens based artists, have created their on-line presence. The practitioners who inhabit the FTN arena have been of particular interest for obvious reasons, but I can discern no particular ‘house-style’ and they appear to be as disparate as any other practitioner. In fact diversity – or at least the apparent aspiration to be an ‘individual’ is the only common denominator amongst all those I have looked at. There are some who have clearly used “canned” ready-made profiles, some have used ‘blogs’ as a means to display themselves, there appears an almost endless variety of means to an end.

I have a couple of works that are ‘ready-to-go’, but I will make space for ambition, I’ll create a void in which new works will need to be made. Now complete – link here:http://www.johnumney.co.uk. I am grateful to those who provided support and critique in what is an area of real importance to a practicing artist.

And finally

I have a strong sense that this BoW, along with other works that I have worked, on will continue. This work, as it appears for tutor assessment, will have an edit which is current and this may well change for final assessment.

The presentation at the symposium will need to be tailored to the time allotted and my current thoughts are about twenty – twenty five images/slides. If I am successful for an artist presentation with the FTN I suspect that I will have a greater amount of time which would enable me to show all the current BoW and some other work.

It is all a work in progress.

_______

The Project Descriptor

The event specific descriptor for the Sheffield Symposium is as follows:

‘I keep looking for him – I think I always will’ uses landscape photography as a vehicle to reflect on personal memory and autobiography. Using the relationship with my deceased Father as a starting point, I explore the complex and multi layered nature of the father-son relationship through a presentation of landscapes set in Purgatory, an unsettled village in Oxfordshire, text and personal artefacts that relate to this relationship. Memory is capricious, malleable and fallible and this (perhaps impossible) search for the truth of our relationship informs ‘I keep looking for Him …’.

The overall project descriptor has changed a little from the document I took with me to the event at the Glasgow School of Art:

Descriptor:

I keep looking for him.

I think I always will.

This work deals with the relationship I have with my deceased father. Through various phases of my life I have faced success with greater trepidation than failure, for failure was a constant prediction and, therefore, more readily welcomed. Despite many clear and very obvious personal and professional achievements my learnt responses to them have always been negative. This work is the first structured correspondence into a relationship that has maligned many events in my history. And whilst he has been dead for nearly twenty years it is this burdening legacy that I have confronted here.

Purgatory is an unsettled space a few miles from my home in North Oxfordshire. I found a trigger for this project there because it had both physical and emotional resonances at a time when another potential success loomed (the final project of these studies). My technique was to try and elicit an image with the eye and then ‘find it again’ in the viewfinder. I wanted to respond to the image in an emotional way, fully aware of why I was in this ‘place’ called Purgatory. These images have very distinct personal connotations, which I recognised and composed for, seeking that ‘Punctum’ that Barthes talks about but, rather than in a photograph, I sought to find it in the making of the image.

In Purgatory I went searching for unspecified imagery that would become specific, to see if I could find, through the sub-conscious, a ‘Punctum’, fully aware that the context of the image is rested within only one person and perhaps might never resonate elsewhere. And whilst I had been focused solely on that bondless father and son relationship I now realise that the work, in its construction, reflects also on it’s meta-narrative, love.

The work comprises views of the land in and around Purgatory. Intertwined with these perspectives of the place I have introduced artefacts from a box supplied by my mother. This small box of items was given to me as a response that I made to look at whatever physical objects had survived him – this appears to be all that’s left of him. My mother didn’t want the box or its contents returned, in which I found an interesting corollary with worth/value. They were of no monetary value, nor it appeared any emotional substance – she was happy for them to leave her as he had done nearly twenty years previous.

I am principally concerned with relationships, personal and close bonds, both intergenerational and otherwise. Ideas around the presence and absence of love and how those twin perspectives might be described and illuminated. Purgatory deals with love at a meta-level, but from a single perspective, no account is made of an others view – either his, my mothers or indeed, a detached observer and this may form the basis of further research

The Wooden Box

Here’s a short video – with sound of the wooden box:

When I gave the drawings to the carpenter it was an act of faith, would he produce what I had in mind – how I had envisaged it? Or would it be something else. He called after two weeks to say that he had a few problems to do with the joints and could he modify it to firstly make it more easily but also ensuring the finished box would appear better. Well he’s the carpenter so, after we discussed it a while, I agreed to his suggestions.

Needless to say I became nervous as to the outcome before I met with him to take possession. I knew I have plenty of time to rework or to abandon the idea before assessment in July, but the more I thought about a ‘box’ to put him in, a container for my memory’s of him the more I thought it appropriate to house him inside a wooden box.

I am pleased with the outcome, the carpenter had made another decision in the making which he hadn’t told me about, but which I think will add to the experience.

I’m confident of the this part of the presentation, but I am wondering about the artefacts – should I include them or not? Including them brings a burden or presentation to the team for assessment which might go down so well. Things to think about. I’m looking forward to comments on how the video looks and will update after.

 

Presentation box

I had a meeting with a carpenter over the weekend to discuss the design and construction of a bespoke presentation box for assessment purposes. We discussed a number of options, – choice of wood, inside covering, type of joints, wax or varnish, stain. I’m now awaiting a proposal against the eight page set of drawings I’ve provided. I appreciate there is plenty of time before assessment but I wanted to get this started in good time in case I need to change/modify the design.

More outings for the work

 

This weekend I shared the current edit of the work with two groups; on Saturday with the Thames Valley Group and on Sunday with Forum, a print group I set up over a decade ago.

For both groups I wanted the viewers to have individual experiences of the work, not a coupled sharing where two or more viewers looked at the work at the same time. Similarly I wanted any discussion on the work to take place after the work had been reviewed by all of each group.

Overall I am pleased that most, if not all, of the viewers found in the work an emotional response, but more than that, it evoked differing responses as much as their individual experiences with their own fathers had been. I had contextualized the work similarly in each case, saying only that the work deals with the on-going relationship I have with my deceased father.

There was common accord with readers in evoking memories of their relationships with their fathers, I am very pleased with that, and whilst the TVG spent some time discussing the text, both as a pacing element as much as contextualising the narrative – both as a positive and negative reading of that relationship – it was Forum who also inquired about the artefacts as much as the text. I wonder if it is because of their practiced craft of printing that distinguished the different aesthetics of artefacts over landscapes; inquiring about the deliberate setting of both. I had made that decision, to image the artefacts coldly; full tone renditions and holding nothing back in terms of information. Whereas the landscapes are all muted, deliberately ambiguous, withholding evidence for the viewer.

Additionally the Forum group focused on the interruptive effect of the artefacts, the use of the jewellery to interrupt the flow – add punctuation – and to introduce ‘him’ to the conversation “it is your father”.

One thing that did concern me was one of the texts. Both the groups had at least one viewer discuss that the text about the ha’penny provided a nuanced vision of my father, something that “I had wanted to portray” about him and to some extent, according to one viewer it presented a sentimental narrative – something I hadn’t either expected or craved. I will consider very carefully about editing this text/removing or replacing it.

Thoughts on presentation

In her commentary on my final assignment for BoW Wendy, my tutor, suggested I reflect on the presentation modes I have used and am thinking of. When I completed Assignment Five I presented the edit in a cardboard box that I half covered in brown paper and utilised ribbons to lift the work and present it to the viewer. And it was in this boxed form that I took the next edit to the Family Ties Event at the Glasgow School of Art presentation and whilst I provided some thoughts on presentation in my accompanying note for Assignment Five, it was suggested that I make it more explicit.

The image above (and below) show the envelopes that I produced as part of the FTN event, they were to accompany the full edit in the cardboard box. I decided to adopt this strategy as I wasn’t sure of the space or environs at the event. I had five envelopes, each labelled with an Episode number; 1 through 5. Viewers to my work engaged in both the box of prints and the envelopes – I was concerned at one stage whether they were focussing on the envelopes only! I had selected sub-edits, that I termed episodic narratives and included a set format of prints, texts and artefacts into each envelope.

Whilst there is no specific temporal narrative in the work as a whole, viewers seemed keen to develop one in the order 1 to 5, which I found interesting; Wendy noted how it emphasised the mutability of memory, which is a theme of my work and my dissertation. However I will settle on a box for the assessment and I am working with someone, who has greater carpentry skills than I, to design and make a box intended to present the images to their best advantage.

 

The envelopes worked, but not as I had expected and it was a useful exercise in presentation.

Post assignment tutor review

I don’t think I could be more pleased with the feedback I have received for my final assignment in this course.

The clear advice I have received I have considered and implemented, and the resultant work has a much stronger sense of personal voice. The changes I have made to the edit based on the various feedbacks I have received, from the Glasgow FTN event at the Glasgow School of Art, various requests from the network I am continuing to build and those from the first assignment of Sustaining your Practice, have all helped to develop the work and make it stronger.

I will write up separately the thoughts and investigations in to the form of presentation that I have considered and employed so far. I have several things to do as the course comes to a conclusion, one of which is to provide my reflection on the work and the feedback session. Wendy’s notes are here:

John Umney –Feedback: Assignment 5 – Body of Work

SKYPE feedback – Monday 7^th December (1 hour)

Many thanks for your submission for Assignment 5 for Body of Work, which took the form of: a hard copy edit of your project, written notes and an evaluation/summary of the work to date.

Your project for BOW has significantly developed since your last submission and in my opinion this submission is of a very high quality.

In summation you have:

1. Provided a clear and comprehensive evaluation on the project as it stands.

2. Submitted a proposed final edit of your project (for the purpose of this course), which works well. *

3. Provided a clear route map for the way forward and development of this project as you transit into your next course (Sustaining Your Practice).

* Most notable in this edit is the way in which you have developed the content and position of text within your project. I think that your final chosen texts (first person and confessional in tone) work well and are much more effective that previously used strategies (i.e. using quotes on father and son relationships from fiction).

As discussed in out feedback session, I would recommend that you:

1. Finalize the edit by re-arranging one or two of the images (a minor edit) as discussed.

2. Consider using the title ‘Legacy’ (with your existing title remaining but perhaps becoming a sub-title) for this project and as an over-arching title to embrace an area of research that will span several projects (to be further articulated as part of Sustaining Your Practice.

3. Rewrite your project summary to include a description of Legacy as part of a wider, ongoing series of projects. This will allow you to set the stage for the development of your work in your next course.

4. Provide a short couple of paragraphs on modes of presentation employed to present this work and explain why you have selected the box form in particular.

 

 

Assignment Five

And so in the post tomorrow to my tutor will be the final for Assignment Five and two additional documents. I almost wrote ‘final edit’ but of course that will depend on Tutor feedback and, in respect of SYP – the blog for which is here – where it will undoubtably continue its development. The documents that are required at A5 are a descriptor for the work and a course reflection.

The Evaluation:

An evaluation – Body of Work at Assignment Five

The course has been both the most challenging and also the most rewarding. The challenge to find a way forward had me considering what it was that I wanted to gain from photography as a means of communication i.e. what did I want to communicate and for what purpose? This process of deliberation was the most difficult period of the course as a whole, and yet it proved to be decisive in breaking through with determining what, and how, my personal voice would proceed to develop. It was clear on reflection that I was unsure what the Body of Work would be ‘about’ until the end of Assignment Three, and yet through the process of reflection and I became sure that what I wanted to deliver was a discourse on the ‘personal’ and how I fit into the world I inhabit.

The Work

The impetus to work in “Purgatory” provided the psychological trigger to make a work based on my ongoing relationship with my deceased father. There were a number of avenues of exploration that I tried in order to enter into a conversation with ‘him’. For example I tried to bring his effigy into view in a number of ways and it was only after retrieving the last of his personal belongings that I found a route to insert ‘him’ into the frame through objects presented as archeological artefacts.

I felt the need to provide a textual narrative device to enable the viewer to contextualize the work. My first attempts didn’t work particularly well, in that they were too diverse. Refining them, making them more specifically personal have strengthened them, although I am concerned that I have overdone this aspect, something I am sure that will come out at assignment review. Feedback, as part of “Sustaining Your Practice” has helped me to place some critical distance between the work and myself and this edit has resulted from considering those various feedbacks. I am mindfull of a comment Fiona Yaron-field made in her feedback regarding the texts “The last three pages from the sting of his spittle [text], next landscape, and then the rings works brilliantly together. Each element expands the narrative, is very moving and visually connects. They are all open and leave me space as the viewer to enter. Some earlier text and image are too literal and leave me outside the work.” The need for access points for viewers, to have a sense of ambiguity that fosters engagement is a very difficult line to find and follow and one which I find continually ebbs and flows.

The landscape imagery, though difficult to edit down to a manageable quantity all exhibit the sense that I want to express. That sense though came about as much by examining the work as a whole, before editing/sequencing, to form a narrative that worked visually. There are many images that remain outside the set that individually hold significant connotative strength but do not work in the series. And whilst I think that my visual language has developed I recognise there is a distance still to go.

The Outcome

As the work progressed from an as-yet undefined work in progress, to a project with defined parameters, I felt a growing sureness of how the work might or might not be presented. An early decision was to make the work small. I wanted the imagery to be personal and to represent that with images that were sympathetic to that goal. I had printed and exhibited most of the landscapes at an exhibition I had organised at the South Street Gallery in the Churchill Hospital permanent artspace. I was pleased with the way the work was hung, I was required to work with a professional technician who works for the Modern Art Oxford Gallery in physically hanging the prints which I mounted in 20” X 16” frames. Viewers needed to be at a distance to these prints to view them, I felt that by making them smaller, presenting them as un-mounted photographs they would be able to hold them in their hands and interact with them as objects. They would thus have a private experience with them, and so I made them approximately A5 size. I also made photographs out of the texts, so that the words became more physically present. I felt that if there was a sense that the words were printed from a text file they would have had an ephemeral nature. I wanted the words to have a sense similar to that of the artefacts, of having a history. These words though have remained – worn with time and remembrance – either as they had been expressed at me a half century or more ago, or with my recently un-silenced voice. I’m not sure whether viewers will capture that notion, but it has been embedded.

Take-aways

There is a fine line between allowing the work to develop, to wander, to find direction and recognizing that the work is ‘about’ something. In one of my written journals I made a note to myself to ‘believe in the project’, this was before Assignment Four. It was at a point when I ‘knew’ how I was going to complete the project – or at least the form of presentation (editing issues notwithstanding). It is evidence of maturation, I think, that enabled me to make that critical decision and subsequently feel confident enough about the work to be able to enter into discussions with interested parties about the narrative. This confidence provided me the authority to ask for feedback from comparative strangers, albeit knowing they were enabled to respond from a critical distance. I am very sure that in my next piece I won’t be so unsure about whether the project is a work in progress or a confusion of imaginings.

Once the work developed a ‘path’ I became settled in what I found myself describing, and to that extent I feel that the subject that I want to continue to research now has definition, at least for the foreseeable future. It is somewhat comforting that this sense of a ‘voice’ has found a way to direct what I shall be working on and I have some ideas about projects to work on post this course.

The comfort I feel about a ‘voice’ appearing during this final phase of the course is in stark contrast to the way in which I felt about a lack of one at the beginning of it. I feel a resonance with the way this project has developed a sense of what I want to make work about, and the conceptual framing of the work itself. The landscape imagery was conceived as a psychological response to the space that I was in and it follows that that response was a way for my voice to surface and express itself in the way it has. And I find it curious that I am still very engaged with how I see the work as successful, but maybe that’s a part of the sub-narrative.

I would like to think that I will work on other projects that allow other voices to emerge, but the central theme of love will, I think, never be far from what I want to talk about.

Looking Forward

Presentation

Some time ago I felt that the idea of finding a white wall space to exhibit this work wouldn’t be the right way to present it. As described earlier I feel the physical handling of the images works better and various people who have examined the work have corroborated this notion.

I have considered designing a book, which would be hand-made in collaboration with a bookmaker and designer I know. My thoughts are currently that in making this book it will become quite a precious object and that might not work due to the narrative and so have stayed that decision.

I am however, in the process of developing a web-site to situate my developing practice. My old web-site, which hasn’t been updated since before these studies began, is, in my view extremely poor. It does, however, represent the distance I have travelled during these studies and although the site still gets a lot of ‘hits’, it is no longer how I see my identity as an artist and so needs to re-made.

The Family Ties Network is a research group of artists, filmmakers and writers who explore memory, space, place and the family in photography and moving image. I had the opportunity to present my work, in a previous edit, at an informal session on the 20^th Nov 2015. I have asked whether it would be possible to resent my BoW at a formal session at the next event, which is tentatively scheduled in Sunderland in spring of 2016. I feel this would be the ideal venue to present this work for the following reasons:

• The Network is a research group whose main area of interest includes the main tropes of my work: memory, family, space and place.

• The mode of delivery of the work is for the presenting artist to discuss their practice (their identity as an artist) then show their work before an extended question and answer session mediated by a facilitator.

• Notes regarding the presentations and subsequent discussions are then hosted to the Network’s website to enable other practitioners in the field of inquiry to interrogate and develop the network.

The presentation methods at the FTN events are image projections, which may or may not incorporate sound. Some very careful consideration of how the work would be seen by an audience would be required to ensure that it was received sensitively. I have a thought that I might also accompany the work with a reading from a piece that I wrote some years ago, which would provide some contextualization as well as presenting some other wok that I have completed at HE6 (level three).

I feel I am being realistic to suggest that my chances of being selected, amongst the august academics and practicing artists in the Family Ties Network, are slim. It is with that I mind that I shall develop a web-site to show this BoW and other projects more recently developed.

Web-Site

I am about to embark on a series of courses, which will enable me to design and construct a web-site; this is how I constructed the previous site. For some time I have taken an interest in the way in which artists, and in particular lens based artists, have created their on-line presence.

The practitioners who inhabit the FTN arena have been of particular interest for obvious reasons, but I can discern no particular ‘house-style’ and they appear to be as disparate as any other practitioner. In fact diversity – or at least the apparent aspiration to be an ‘individual’ is the only common denominator amongst all those I have looked at. There are some who have clearly used “canned” ready-made profiles, some have used ‘blogs’ as a means to display themselves, there appears an almost endless variety of means to an end.

I have a couple of works that are ‘ready-to-go’, but I will make space for ambition, I’ll create a void in which new works will need to be made.

And finally

I have a strong sense that this BoW, along with other works that I have worked, on will continue. This work, as it appears for tutor assessment, will have an edit which is current, this may well change for final assessment. It may well change as it is expressed on a web-site and, if I am lucky enough to be chosen, for presentation at a future FTN event.

_______

The descriptor has changed a little from the document I took with me to the event at the Glasgow School of Art:

Descriptor:

I keep looking for him.

I think I always will.

This work deals with the relationship I have with my deceased father. Through various phases of my life I have faced success with greater trepidation than failure, for failure was a constant prediction and, therefore, more readily welcomed. Despite many clear and very obvious personal and professional achievements my learnt responses to them have always been negative. This work is the first structured correspondence into a relationship that has maligned many events in my history. And whilst he has been dead for nearly twenty years it is this burdening legacy that I have confronted here.

Purgatory is an unsettled space a few miles from my home in North Oxfordshire. I found a trigger for this project there because it had both physical and emotional resonances at a time when another potential success loomed (the final project of these studies). My technique was to try and elicit an image with the eye and then ‘find it again’ in the viewfinder. I wanted to respond to the image in an emotional way, fully aware of why I was in this ‘place’ called Purgatory. These images have very distinct personal connotations, which I recognised and composed for, seeking that ‘Punctum’ that Barthes talks about but, rather than in a photograph, I sought to find it in the making of the image.

In Purgatory I went searching for unspecified imagery that would become specific, to see if I could find, through the sub-conscious, a ‘Punctum’, fully aware that the context of the image is rested within only one person and perhaps might never resonate elsewhere. And whilst I had been focused solely on that bondless father and son relationship I now realise that the work, in its construction, reflects also on it’s meta-narrative, love.

The work comprises views of the land in and around Purgatory. Intertwined with these perspectives of the place I have introduced artefacts from a box supplied by my mother. This small box of items was given to me as a response that I made to look at whatever physical objects had survived him – this appears to be all that’s left of him. My mother didn’t want the box or its contents returned, in which I found an interesting corollary with worth/value. They were of no monetary value, nor it appeared any emotional substance – she was happy for them to leave her as he had done nearly twenty years previous.

I am principally concerned with relationships, personal and close bonds, both intergenerational and otherwise. Ideas around the presence and absence of love and how those twin perspectives might be described and illuminated. Purgatory deals with love at a meta-level, but from a single perspective, no account is made of an others view – either his, my mothers or indeed, a detached observer and this may form the basis of further research.

Artist research

After assignment four was submitted my tutor has suggested some artists to research and consider. Rafeal Dellaporta’s work, particularly the Antipersonnel series was suggested as another approach to my own in the presentation of artefacts. Dellaporta, in his work of deadly devices, describes these still-lifes in a beautiful chiaroscuro light against a black background. The background elicits the notion of preciousness, as if they were jewelled treasures from an auctioneer’s catalogue, the accompanying text though firmly places these objects as if from a manufacturers’ catalogue:

“Antipersonnel Bounding Fragmentation Mine

V- 6 9 Italy

The V-69 antipersonnel bounding fragmentation mine can be set off by footfall pressure or through a tripwire. When detonated the fuse sets off propellant gases that fire the mine’s inner body 45cm above the ground. This explodes sending out more than 1,000 pieces of chopped steel. Between 1982 and 1985, its manufacturer Valsella sold around 9 million V-69s to Iraq. The mine was given a nickname by Iraqi minelayers: the “Broom.”

1. 120 mm wght. 3,2 kg”

The disembodiment of the treacherous device from any sense of context, its complex beauty transliterating from purpose to object d’art is the beguiling device Dellaporta uses to conceal the artifice. The indexical properties of a photograph, which might catalogue both the device and the mis-en-scene of its designated purpose come together off the page. Nowhere in an armaments catalogue would the collateral damage be available for viewing. These objects aren’t typologies in the Becher tradition, though they are imaged in a very similar construction, distant from their purpose yet imbued with menace by the accompanying textual referencing.

The artefacts in my work were conceived to the distant, their emotional presence distanced by, what I have hoped is a forensic aesthetic methodology. The visual rendering of the images is as wide as I could make it; I wanted as little information as possible missing from the frame, from the artifact, the whiteness suggesting a clinical presence. Perhaps that’s the key differentiator – black versus white, or vice versa – Dellaporta’s work draws one in whereas my imagery holds the viewer from the frame.

Also mentioned was Celine Marchbank’s work ‘Tulips’. This work is a very tender rendition of the artist’s mother decline through cancer to death. I suspect it was mentioned to me because of the imagery within the images, clearly very personal and it reminded me of fellow student’s Penny Watson’s work about her Nanny as well as Colin Gray’s work ‘In Sickness and in Health about his mother’s decline, I wrote about it here. I hope to meet Colin in Glasgow when I attend the FTN event on the 20^th November as he is part of that collective.

Also suggested was Laura Larson’s work ‘Hidden Mother’ which I think has a lot more going on, archive clearly with its concomitant historical perspectives, but also about representation and motherhood. I’m not sure what relevance this has for my work, but I am intrigued and will come back to it when I have more time.

Introducing the work – updated 9.11

I am in the fortunate position to be able to show my work for critique before I finish the final assignment for the course. I have been offered the opportunity to present my work for critique at the Family Ties Network event in Glasgow on the 19th of November, I will be amongst other students presenting their work in an informal session, called ‘new voices’ by the organiser Dr. Nicky Bird who saw my work, in a previous edit and thought it worthwhile to have at the event. The programme details are here: Family Ties Network – events

It is a great opportunity and despite comments from my tutor I am a little daunted at the prospect – but in a good way. I attended the previous event in the University of Bedford and wrote about it here. I wasn’t able to stay for the post event reception last time, but I will be able to this time and hopefully find some opportunities to discuss my work within the context of the Network’s aims.

I have spent a good deal of time re-editing the work, the scale of the artefacts, the text and its position on the image. Tomorrow I will present the work to Tom, an artist I have known for sometime and who has agreed to provide a critique. Assignment five asks for the final edit (I won’t be ready too make that cut until after Glasgow) as well as an introduction. I will take the opportunity to provide Tom with an introduction I have recently completed and an artist statement – both of these I have shared with Wendy.

I shall ask Tom for his response to both these texts as well as formative responses to the BoW. No-one has seen this current edit, I have removed the video of the previous sequence due to its inherent issues as much as it is out of date.

My Introduction:

I keep looking for him.

 I think I always will.

This work deals with the relationship I have with my deceased father. Through various phases of my life I have faced success with greater trepidation than failure, for failure was a constant prediction and, therefore, more readily welcomed. Despite many clear and very obvious personal and professional achievements my learnt responses to them have always been negative. This work is the first structured correspondence into a relationship that has maligned many events in my history. And whilst he has been dead for nearly twenty years it is this burdening legacy that I have confronted here.

Purgatory is an unsettled space a few miles from my home in North Oxfordshire. I found a trigger for this project there because it had both physical and emotional resonances at a time when another success loomed (the final project of these studies). My technique was to try and elicit an image with the eye and then ‘find it again’ in the viewfinder. I wanted to respond to the image in an emotional way, fully aware of why I was in this ‘place’ called Purgatory. These images have very distinct personal connotations, which I recognised and composed for, seeking that ‘Punctum’ that Barthes talks about but, rather than in a photograph, I sought to find it in the making of the image.

In Purgatory I went searching for unspecified imagery that would become specific, to see if I could find, through the sub-conscious, a ‘punctum’, fully aware that the context of the image is rested within only one person and perhaps might never resonate elsewhere. And whilst I had been focused solely on that bondless father and son relationship I now realise that the work, in its construction, reflects also on it’s meta-narrative, love.

The work comprises views of the land in and around Purgatory. Intertwined with these perspectives of the place I have introduced artefacts from a box supplied by my mother. This small box of items was given to me as a response to look at whatever physical objects had survived him – this appears to be all that’s left of him. My mother didn’t want the box or its contents returned, in which I found an interesting corollary with worth/value. They were of no monetary value, nor it appeared any emotional substance – she was happy for them to leave her as he had done nearly twenty years previous. The texts are principally from my own recollections, though a couple are drawn from art literature, a key is provided.

I am principally concerned with relationships, personal and close bonds, both intergenerational and otherwise. Ideas around the presence and absence of love and how those twin perspectives might be described and illuminated. Purgatory deals with love at a meta-level, but from a single perspective, no account is made of an others view – either his, my mothers or indeed, a detached observer and this may form the basis of further research.

¹ – Purgatory is an unsettled space a few miles from my home in North Oxfordshire – see attachment. I have not provided this attachment in this post.

My artist statement is:

John Umney’s project – “I keep looking for him. I think I always will.” – provides a psychological response to an environment inextricably coupled with memories from his past. Currently completing an undergraduate degree in Photography with the Open College of the Arts, John Umney has previously exhibited at Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital permanent artspace May/June 2015 and the South Street Gallery, Churchill Hospital, Oxford July/October 2015 and will informally present his work for critique at the upcoming Family Ties network conference in Glasgow in Nov 2015.