Blog 2
The beginning of the MA:
I began my course knowing I have a lot of freedom and time to develop my art project for the portfolio. As I had decided to focus on running as the subject, I began by going to the library and looking for books related to the subject and reading up around the historical contact contexts of using the body as art, the body in the landscape and movement and mapping as art. I probably should have started immediately with experimenting with my own work in a making sense, but I felt that I needed some sort of grounding first about what historical or contemporary context I'm making my work in. For example, there are people like Michael Creed Martin who used running as performance and then there are people like Daniel Bellesco who used GPS data from walks as a form of art, and I needed to figure out where I could go before I then started down each avenue myself.
I really enjoyed the artist talks we had over the weeks. We learned from practicing artists how they got to where they are and how they maintain their profession, get commissions and get into galleries. We heard from some previous students that had done the MA course, what they got out of it and tips for our own work. We also learned in the Vocational Practice module about getting into art teaching and how to do everything from one-to-one tutorials, facilitate small group sessions or deliver lectures and seminars. For the lecture side, we will have a practice of doing that by presenting our own work in a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation at the end of the semester. Public speaking is something that I tend to avoid at times, but it is a very important part of my art practice and could be very valuable in finding things like teaching jobs and gallery opportunities where you must pitch yourself and explain things out loud in detail. I have got a lot better in the last couple of years by doing more public talks about my work in exhibitions, and at private views to say this is me, this is what my work, is this what it's about and answering questions from the public.
All these things, as well as building the website, have been on my mind this semester so it has been quite a juggle switching my brain between teaching, designing, making, researching and writing. I have enjoyed the challenge though as next semester and next year will be much more focused on only the making, the reflection and the exhibiting which will be nice but also more on your own doing the work.