Unit Two | Assessment Feedback and Reflections
Reflections
interconnectedness of natural systems
role of radical kindness feels significant for others and for yourself. What else might be revealed, what connections might be made through an experiment of radical kindness?
common practice of Ancestor Worship in Hong Kong, food worship and offerings
Is there perhaps a personal grief that is being skirted around in the work?
what might happen if you only listen to intuition ignoring the critic? What is unearthed in this experiment? Is there a new balance to be had between intuition and critical analysis? Similar to the freedom you felt in your previous work—when you were more imagination-based and less encumbered by external obligations.
video/animation and flip books
General Feedback
● The shift from perceiving the earth merely as 'landscape' to understanding it as a complex network is a significant conceptual advancement. Your investigations into compost heaps, fungal colonies, and the 'Boneyards' concept demonstrate a deepening of your inquiry into the interconnectedness of natural systems.
● You have an awareness of how your practice fits into historical, cultural, and contemporary discourses demonstrated by your research paper, ongoing experiments and artist and process/technical research. As you continue building your critical framework the role of radical kindness feels significant for others and for yourself. What else might be revealed, what connections might be made through an experiment of radical kindness?
● The recurring themes of transformation, decay, and relationality are handled with care and intentionality as evidenced in your sketchbooks, experiments, contextual research and the DCS space. The videos of your compost heap process bring to mind your experience growing up in Hong Kong and the common practice of Ancestor Worship there. One reviewer commented: I’m struck by the shared themes, ritual and symbolism of these practices of connection to ancestors, of food and offering, and what it might mean especially as you write that you have never visited the gravesite of your loved ones. Is there perhaps a personal grief that is being skirted around in the work?’
● Whether you choose to go deeper into your material exploration or whether it becomes foundation for understanding in Unit 3 is an exciting place to be. You are attuned to the material, ecological and philosophical aspects of making and we encourage you to continue being open to new possibilities, what might happen if you only listen to intuition ignoring the critic? What is unearthed in this experiment? Is there a new balance to be had between intuition and critical analysis? Similar to the freedom you felt in your previous work—when you were more imagination-based and less encumbered by external obligations.
● Drawing as understanding, drawing as connection, drawing as community, drawing as kindness. The potential seems endless and we look forward to seeing how or whether you choose to resolve or push the tension between drawing and painting. You have talked about drawing being so open, open for new things and looking to paint in a way that has ‘hungry boundaries’, a sense of rambling flow, less haiku more long prose poetry, endlessly exploring, twisting, turning, diving into, emerging out of, getting lost, circling round a point of interest, then catching something else in the corner of sight, wandering and wondering again, not knowing, tending to the current position, aware of other possible routes, jumping, pausing, long gazes, fast scanning.. and on… and on…
● Rachel Jones a British painter who focuses on emotional landscapes and Black interiority may be of interest to you. “that’s what i think about a lot in relation to making things how passing through time, or it passing through you, becomes a way to learn things so looking at the back, and the front and the sides one convergence of experience or thought or feeling, and then springing forth from that how the paintings aren’t about one thing, but an accumulation of things felt over time eaten in little meal-like portions to consume and digest endured-enjoyed” ([https://ropac.net/usr/documents/exhibitions/press_release_url/665/rjsalzburg23_pressrelease_v02.pdf](https://ropac.net/usr/documents/exhibitions/press_release_url/665/rjsalzburg23_pressrelease_v02.pdf))
● You write that you had no interest in video/animation yet we are interested in how you choose to present your sketchbooks and your obsession of making flip books as a child. We are curious to see whether /how video or durational performance might form part of your future direction
Overall the challenges you have set yourself, not least in using the compost heap as a source of material, whether paper or ink or other inspiration, is mesmerising. The technical challenges may feel huge, with weather, space, time all contributing to the difficulties. However your openness to the material and the unknowing of the process or even where it is all going is highly commendable (and yet even in this place of exploration you are still making some wonderful work, even with the feeling that deep understanding of the work you make it still a few years away). This approach seems like the foundation that has reduced the sense of ‘galloping’ and allows the tending of the tentacles.
One reviewer remembers hearing the artist Ryan Gander talking about his art making process and this may be an interesting point to leave you with to reflect on. Gander said something like:
If I make a work that is successful, and I know how I did it, the works loses its challenge. I need the work to take me to places I don’t know even if those places are scary.
Research Paper feedback
Bethany, your meticulous writing and precise language pierce through the questions you pose, exposing insights that emerge quietly towards an impassioned crescendo; engaging the imagination and raising further questions while treading a fine line between introspection and an outward gaze.
Your evident ability to use language to connect meanings is a skill that will serve you well as you continue to explicate your worldview through both your art and writing. The aims of your paper are clear: correlating drawing, empathy, and ecological distress into a system of action and catharsis.
By engaging with Dryden Goodwin’s work, you lend critical support to your notion of drawing as a means for empathic connection and kin-making. However, there is a distinct sense that the subject of Breathe functions more as secondary support to a wider, subtle, hypothesis. At times, the text reads more like a discursive essay as you weave a deeply felt interpretation of Goodwin’s work through his interviews and published texts. The analysis of Goodwin’s work expands beyond his oeuvre, skilfully transforming the interview transcript—a talent that will serve you indefinitely.
Your treatment of Goodwin’s artistic process is compelling, particularly your focus on the tension between stillness and motion. The exploration of the intersection between the personal and the political—scaling from intimate gestures to universal implications—is a hallmark of your paper’s strength and ties up well with the idea of collective ecological grief through more localised kinship.
The analysis of Goodwin’s small-scale, handheld drawings highlights the ethical and material implications of his process. By juxtaposing the intimacy of pencil on paper with the vastness of ecological and political concerns, you demonstrate the duality of drawing as both a personal and public act. This duality is mirrored in Goodwin’s choices to display Breathe in diverse contexts—from Salisbury Cathedral to urban environments—shifting between stillness, motion, and scale. Your ability to connect these elements to broader questions of vulnerability, collective grief, and kinship is one of the paper’s most striking achievements.
The section on physiological synchronicity between language, cognition, and somatic response, adds an empirical grounding to what might otherwise be considered a more subjective and conjectural discussion. You may find Alfred Gell’s work on the agency of artworks useful for expanding on this area. This connects with your description of drawings subjected to degradation, and their potential for developing kinship with viewers through empathic reactions which is suggestive of your own work.
Your interpretations offer insights into how you might enrich your own future development and articulation of it. The essay’s introspective tone, while remaining detached in viewpoint, creates a sense of intimacy that grows through the gradual unfolding of the narrative in the third person. This ability to “observe” another subject from within is a gift that allows you to apply a poietic objectivity to your own subjectivity.
You handle the delicate matter of Ella with sensitivity and circumspection, tying together the three notions you begin with: empathy, kindness and kin. And have cleared a path for considering the idea of made-kin: its durability and whether such a relationship is empathic or resource-driven. As you intimate, such questions are particularly relevant in a world increasingly defined by collaborative endeavours.
The conclusion outlining both the limitations of the paper and its revealed ideas, demonstrates an acute awareness of the contextual implications of the text. Overall, this is a thoughtful, imaginative, and ambitious paper that effectively intertwines personal reflection with scholarly research. It offers insights into the role of drawing in fostering empathy and kinship, particularly in this case, amidst ecological distress. Your work has the potential to inspire significant discussions, not just about art, but about the collective human response to ecological crises.