• 

• 

Evaluation

My original aim for this final project was to explore the dichotomy between receiving nurture and lacking it. This was a natural progression of focus for me from previous projects as i kept relating back to the topic of care. This theme was so closely relevant for my own personal life as at the time i was moving out of my family home and experiencing all the motions that come with detaching from something that was the source of so many difficulties. I was worried going into this project about how i would handle the sensitivities that come with it and how easily i would be able to produce work without getting too caught up. It proved to be quite a challenge, even though i aimed to approach with a lighthearted intention and positivity, i found that i was constantly battling between avoiding getting too personal or letting my feelings guide me through it. I wanted to keep the discussion of my family relationships vague but my complicated relationship with my mother kept reappearing. Half way through the project i had to accept that this was the only thing on my mind and reevaluate how i would deal with this. I found it very helpful to look at other artists, such as Mary kelly, that deal with this topic. Seeing how she could document the relationship with her son in very analytical ways made me think about how i can use my situation as a tool to explore the original theme of nurture. At this point i also attended Neil nodzaks workshop on Sequential artwork, this was a key turning point for me. Being introduced to the artist Aiden Koch helped me realise how much i love portraying a story and showed me ways that it was possible to do so within a contemporary art context. Nearing the end of this project i was able to enjoy creating work more and my theme took the back pedal for a while whilst i let myself play around with sequential work. This was an important moment as it allowed me to realise the theme didn’t need to be so specific and broadening it to be simply “Nurture” gave opportunity for a more visually and conceptually explorative project.

Ive experimented with a fairly wide variety of mediums, beginning with clay and moving through drawing onto textiles. I think that it has helped to decide that textiles was the strongest medium to produce my final work in because of its relevant connotations. However, i wish i had expanded the area of imagery i explored sooner as i felt that towards the end i was discovering richer sources like healing plants and milk. This would have allowed me to really delve into what worked and be more confident that my work was coherent. Another regret is that i didn’t leave enough time to fully explore the video work i produced, i really liked making the video were i stung myself with nettles and heal them with dock leaves. During the final crit, my peers all picked up on how it was strong imagery and directly connected to care/self care. It also had distinct connections with my mother because of her career with plants and the knowledge she passed to me. In hindsight, i was at a point in the project were i had to make a decision between two areas to develop and combining them would have felt too haphazard. Had i realised this work earlier i think that it could have produced something quite interesting, however, the sequential work had come quite far already so i think it was a good decision to go with it. My processes and techniques were a bit confused and nothing felt right or that interesting until i realised how sequential work was relevant for my project. After this i saw that i could bring in my own experience through writing and found out about the connection between text, textiles, weaving and storytelling. Everything began to fit together and make sense so my focus and interest returned. I found that i would be able to utilise the techniques i learnt from weaving in early experiments whilst also thinking about how i can tell a story through the final work.

The resolved piece is a continuation from my previous sequential work. I found myself writing down memories in a structure similar to a poem these seemed like the perfect thing to translate into a sequence. This particular one explores two different interactions with my mother, in both of which we are in the sea. Water is something that i have always related to care so this piece of writing felt particularly relevant. In the first memory we are snorkeling and we come to the edge of the reef, my mum senses my fear, brings me to safety and swims away whilst i wait for her. In the second, it is late and i am in the water whilst my mum tells me to get out, in a moment of resistance i submerge myself in the water to seek refuge, in this moment i feel safe and nurtured. I chose this writing for the base of my final work as it talks about self nurture and moments where my mum is present and absent in these moments of care. I was inspired by Aiden kochs work to see how i could convey a story with as little language as possible, which resulted in two drawings each with only four words- “safety in her presence” and “suckle in her absence”. I struggled to know whether these works were clear enough or show my theme well enough but after a 1-1 i realised that they didn’t need to read out my specific story exactly because a viewer could understand by looking at them that they tell a story of care. This lead me to leave out the words in my final piece as i felt they were trying to explain itself too much and weren’t right for it. Instead of fully weaving the work i decided to make it from a piece of fabric stretched over a frame as i wanted to include drawing, i felt to tell the story i had to involve the image of a hand holding a rope for safety and a person falling/swimming in water. I feel that these images next to each other are quite strong and i like how i have merged them with the textiles. However, i feel that i could have managed the fabric differently, i like the frame because of its nod to the structure of a basic loom, but i feel that i could have incorporated weaving more. The embroidery comes across too delicate and would have liked to cover the whole canvas in hindsight. This was partly a time management issue, with the holidays and strikes i completely lost my motivation so in the last few weeks i had to really push myself to make up for lost time.

Overall i think that the result is successful, the gaps in the fabric is something that i have maintained throughout all my textile work and i feel that this manages to discuss the complications and missing parts of a difficult parental relationship. The idea of sequential work is not where i thought this project would go but im really happy that i was introduced to it as i can see my work going forward into this process.