Unfinished MA

I did my BA at London Metropolitan and finished in 2017. At the time the art school was in Whitechapel where I worked managing a bookshop. On the tour around the buildings there I could see that the workshops and studios were well equipped and there was lots to work with. I spent four years there while I did the foundation and degree and I enjoyed my time at the school.

The foundation and first year were well guided and through those guided activities I found some techniques and interest that continued to reappear through my work going forwards. I can’t remember how I landed on it but at some point I made newspaper into yarn. I made nets, crocheted and knots and enjoyed the material.

In the third and fourth years we were given a choice of ‘studios’ which were each run by a different team of tutors. In the third year I took part in a studio called Future Ruins that was run by artists Pil and Galia Kolektiv and Matthew McQuillan and I thrived. I tried some techniques that I hadn’t before and took opportunities.

This school year was set against the backdrop of the continuing gentrification of the area of Whitechapel and Aldgate, and it became personal when we heard that the art and architecture department buildings would be sold. I thought and read a lot about class and gentrification, and drew a lot of buildings. It was one of these sketches that I won a competition with and as a result had the work printed and fly-posted around Shoreditch and Aldgate.

I printed a version of this drawing as a performance at a school event, and also worked with audio and video for the first time for my final piece. I found myself in a position where the idea I had had didn’t work in the format I was planning. I learnt to let go of the old idea and move forwards with what I had, accepting that I didn’t know where I would end up. This experience was formative for me and allowed me to be a more honest artist.

One of the first pieces of work I did that year was this essay I wrote. To quote myself at the time “I was glad however, that they understood the format was not serious and I found a name for this kind of thing: inappropriate discourse.”

Another work that was very pivotal to my practice, yet I can’t find a photo of it anywhere, was The Monument. In the Future Ruins studio we were given a briefing to create a monument that would be made in the future to a past event. I imagine these future people in a world of ruined skyscrapers and made a monument was a string of crocheted yarn periodically marked with ring pulls. It was intended to dangle and twinkle and jingle in the wind, and to be easy to transport. I continued this exact technique on the MA towards a very different outcome.

The discussions I had around these works brought me to three important concepts: defamiliarisation, inappropriate discourse and overidentification. I also keep going back to In Defense of the Poor Image. I continue to think around these topics.

The next year I took part in Black Box run by Galia Kolektiv, Patrick Ward and Nicky McCarthy and kept on thriving. This school year ran in tandem to Trump’s campaign, election and first few months in office. The idea of politically relevant, let alone politically motivating, artwork seemed like reaching for the stars. The feeling of hope I had generated for myself by making some subtle inroads in to political art over the last year had vanished and been replaced with a sense of futility. In the same way that I imagine conspiracy theorists do, I took refuge in a world of invented esoteric knowledge and imagined power. I turned to witchcraft.

To quote myself at the time: “I’m sick of trying to fix things. I’m sick of reacting. I’m sick of being defensive. I’ve given up bad habits and now I’m on the offensive. A spell, a curse, an action. I don’t need much, I work with what I’ve got. Mostly I use my love and my hate. Mostly I use my admiration and my vitriol.”

It is a testament to how caught up in the work I was that I had very little documentation. the pictures I have below are some of the only records I have of the work of this time.

The gifs below are not my favourite work, and are nauseating to watch, but they do display the elements of the work that were the most frequently seen: tarot cards, ring pulls, reused images, shiny things, photocopying, annotation.

My participation in those last two years on this course was such an intellectually stimulating time for me and I was introduced to new concepts that forced some hard thinking. The anarchist in me loved it. I will always be especially grateful to Galia Kolektiv who thought enough of me to introduce me to over-identification, and also to Pil Kolektiv who saw enough of me to warn me off it. I was touched by how much Galia and Pil Kolektiv considered all their students capable of, and I found it encouraging. I found the tutors I worked with at the school mostly very genuine in their enthusiam to help me learn and I am very glad I waited to go to university until I was together enough to appreciate the opportunity.