MA Tutorials

Tutorial 5 | Jonathan and Bethany

Friday 21st February 2025

Today’s tutorial was more of a general chat and catch up than previous tutorials, with which I have brought a weight of expectation, hope and desire to unearth something that had escaped my notice, something that could take my work forward. I feel my work is in a good place currently and we discussed my feeling that the wider and more uncertain my art practice becomes, the more focus I seem to show. Previous to the MA I had squeezed the life out of my work trying to make it consistent and gallery-worthy only to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Useful particularly was confirmation from JK that the final show is just a snapshot of where we are at this point rather than a curated exhibition of mature, fully realised work. Common sense but a relief to hear nonetheless as I have been dreading having to force work, which I have done for too long. My work is flowing nicely and it would be a shame to interrupt the flow having taken so much hard work to get to this point.

We discussed my work moving into a sort of conceptual quilt format where bits of work are tacked onto previous bits of work and removed or added to as required. The formality of a fixed sized, shaped painting in a frame on the wall is intolerant of new thinking, new perspectives and I love the idea that my work might have less bound up edges. I still love a square painting framed on a wall but I also like scrappy drawings and collections on paper like my cork board, which is an assemblage of ideas over time, conversed with, negotiated with, debated with over time until it changes entirely. I described my idea of tracing paper layered into something between a performative drawing, a three dimensional entity and an animation by adding drawings one on top of the previous until it starts to grow out of itself. We also discussed my idea of making holes with the bookbinding punch at points where the lines and elements intersect, more in line with mycelium and naturally interrelated systems as I have seen in my compost heap.

It is apparent to me at this stage that I am arriving back where I began with ideas of grief, ancestral worship, antiquities and memorialisation of belonging and loss. So much was there already but it was not organised on a platform of understanding so it seemed to me thin, insubstantial. Through the RP particularly I have really unearthed the landscape around me, unearthed myself and my origins and possible, frayed futures. I have enough to keep me exploring and learning for several decades.

Towards the end we explored PhD ideas and I asked about collaborative doctorates with institutions such as the British Museum or V&A which might add an external research dimension with my interest currently in the Admonition Scroll and other Chinese Antiquities. I also mentioned that I am meeting Dryden Goodwin in London and will be exploring options available at the Slade.

Tutorial 4 | Jonathan and Bethany

Monday 2nd December 2024

We discussed how in the previous session I had identified concerns of two islands of thinking. We explored this. I feel the islands exist above the surface but that there is now a land mass beneath that connects the various tentacles of my art practice. We mixed lots more metaphors around the ideas of glacial shifts, tentacles, octopuses, composting and interconnectivity. We moved onto paper making and what I am doing with it and how it relates. Jonathan asked what the tentacles look like and we discussed paper lace with frayed, hungry edges, more tolerant and less of a ‘blunt cut’ but more of a transitional, fluid moment of making. This feels good to me rather than the neatly defined work I was making before. Connections are everywhere and loose paper hangings, book-like or otherwise, seem to be the emergent thinking. I love the idea of paper as medium where the wisdom of the book becomes integral to the paper rather than ON the paper.

We talked about my post here on Sarah Gillespie’s moths and her attitude to drawing as an apology or a deep bow. We discussed this sense of observation and participation, how it relates to my RP in the empathetic exchange, the falling in love, the transformation beyond self. I talked about not knowing where the paper lace idea was going but I am interested in looking into stitching and the idea of two threads connecting or one single thread and its precarity, unfinishedness and vulnerability to all coming apart. I will think about all of these ideas over the Christmas break. I am always left wondering after these sessions if Jonathan has something in mind that he is leading me towards or whether these questions are a general device for self reflection. Probably the latter but I can’t help but feel curious about whether I am a thirsty horse with my back to the water.

We briefly touched on my desire for more rigorous feedback, which I see as another hungry edge. My practice feels like slime mould, oozing into new possibilities and I hope to feed the possibilities with more interesting conversations.

Tutorial 3 | Jonathan and Bethany

Monday 13th May 2024

Jonathan asked how things are going.

Discussion around ongoing gulf between experimental work at home and painting work at the studio. I have reorganised my timetable to facilitate more studio time but this will start from this week. We talked about the experimental work, mostly the compost heap, and the octopus of thought channels it is giving rise to. I am still a bit frustrated that I have this gulf but there are fragile connections forming and we agreed that creating small links between the two will consolidate the two islands of creativity. In response to a question recently from Jonathan during a Thursday session about whether we see passion in our work, I felt sadly that I don’t feel much juice in my experimental work as much as I find it interesting. The last time I felt passion in art was seeing Dean Fox’s work at No.9 Cork Street, which brought hot tears. I feel a burning desire to paint and to paint expressively and freely. We discussed my recent crit and my peers urging me to make doggy portraits and pink tulip paintings, just because they are light hearted and less weighed down. We had a giggle about that and decided that the discernment is right there: do what feels viscerally important, which is painting. I think the experimental work is the teacher but the painting is the important bit right now.

The compost heap seems to be my base camp currently and I will continue to explore drawings, paintings, paper installations, artist books and possibly sculpture from there. Open minded but decisive.

We discussed the research paper and I talked about the project as exciting but as yet nascent at best. Something around drawing, compost heaps, maybe some Anna Tsing or possibly a Seurat drawing or two. I am taking my time to allow an idea that excites me rather than squeeze something indifferent into a timeline. If I do decide to go down the PhD route it will be a good exercise in choosing a subject that will really motivate me for years to come. Jonathan mentioned the Donna Harraway coupling of “beauty and fury” - I look forward to exploring those meanings in the compost heap.

I asked for permission to minimise input on the video project and online exhibition to focus on my core work and it was generously given.

Tutorial 2 | Jonathan and Bethany

Monday 5th February 2024

Catch up since our last session. Jonathan asked how things are going since we last spoke.

Discussion continued around my various lines of enquiry and I talked about feeling a lack of general enthusiasm. Even though I am aware of a discomfort around a ‘growth spurt’, I am feeling a bit less enthusiastic about my work in general than I would like. We discussed the disconnect between ‘gallery work’, which is financially necessary and the exploratory work, which is creatively necessary and I am going to make the decision to just accept it is the way it is. Long term it is an aim to marry the two channels in the hope that they become one and the same eventually. But that will take time.

We talked about development of work towards the Interim Show in March and how my experiments are going. I have not documented well enough so far but I have learnt some useful lessons, particularly that working IN the landscape feels relevant. I have started some rubbings and larger drawings and my reading into Barbara Walker’s site specific large drawings have sparked curiosity. Jonathan suggested wall paper lining paper as a cheap way to experiment and we also talked about a site specific drawing in the woods. Having shared with Jonathan that drawings on the Dene felt artificial and contrived and that edges of the drawing would need to harmonise with the surroundings, the idea began to feel somewhat more positive.

My big realisation this week is that my 10 metre drawing is most likely to fail at this point in its entirety but a version of it will be entirely possible. The paper is falling apart and will be too difficult at this point to transport and hang effectively. I will therefore focus the Interim show on the remnants of my first attempt and consider smaller versions of layered drawings for this show with a view to making a larger drawing at a later date having spent longer investigating the technical aspects of such a huge presentation. I feel greatly relieved that my failure has been a way to move forward and I have long craved a series of delicate, layered drawings. I am looking into book binding or sewing techniques to bind the drawings together.

We agreed that although I don’t feel my ideas are that imaginative there is plenty to work with and I should continue on this vein for the Low Residency.

Tutorial 1 | Jonathan and Bethany

Tuesday 24th October 2023

Jonathan: “What do you want to see happen on this course?”

Discussion begin around where I am currently in my practice. I feel ready for an expansion phase and the timing feels ideal but I am uncertain about what I imagine or expect to happen in the coming weeks, months and two years. I have been making “more of the same” work for a gallery in London and I feel some disconnect between making more of the same, whilst at the same time looking for a new avenue for expressing my ideas.

I expressed annoyance at my new, experimental work as feeling ‘thin’ and after some analysis of whether the process or concepts seem to be at fault, Jonathan suggested referring back to a time in the recent past when experimentation did feel productive or less ‘thin’. The project I began at the RCA last year immediately leapt to mind and I expressed great interest in the 10 metre long stretch of calico, which I envisioned as a Bayeaux Tapestry type of hanging. Images below.

Much discussion continued around this and it became apparent that I had fallen at the first post as the project had felt interesting to me but I had failed to reconcile presentation of the work in the short timescales of the RCA course and I had lost my way once the course came to an end. Despite attempting various solutions, the hanging idea had felt appropriated and I gave up. Jonathan encouraged a move away from prescriptive language like ‘hangings’ but rather to refer back to that time when the experimentation was going well and look to progress the work from that point onwards.

I was reminded of how I wrote my first prose poem about this work and how it flowed out of me with such freedom. It seemed to make sense to continue this long extension of canvas or fabric into a stretch of visual prose: a rambling, visual story without punctuation at this point.

Learning: