MACA Contemporary Arts 2010-2011: June 2011

JENNIFER RICHARDS
MACA ART PRAXIS 1 LEARNING AGREEMENT
FINAL DRAFT 19 TH JUNE 2011

Task
I have always been intrigued with history, and recent explorations and research into my own family tree have provided the catalyst for my interest in creating a discourse with my ancestors and my role within the family. I wish to create a dialogue between myself and the exploration of past generations. This will be expressed through an artist’s book and a garment.
Objective
For Art Praxis 1 I wish to create a series of encounters with my own personal archive. I am interested in the way in which documents such as photographs and written texts are kept over the generations and how these can be interpreted and re-interpreted in new ways within my own lifetime through my practice. I will collect and collate information from memoirs, letters, photographs, writings, interviews and objects as research to create different modes of documentation. I wish to express my outcomes through a variety of materials and processes in order to engage with and explore the themes in more detail. There are four generations of seamstresses in my family, and I am particularly interested in textiles, mixed media and stitch.
Contextual Framework
John Berger (1978 p.8) states that “The way we see things is effected by what we know or what we perceive”. I am interested in the authenticity of images and how narratives can be easily constructed around what we see. The truth of the image is not necessarily what we view. This in itself can be a construct set up for the viewer by the photographer or subject to provoke a particular response.
I am also interested in exploring the use of the photograph in Fine Art practices. Gerhardt Richter and Christian Boltanski both use photographs as a starting point for their work. Boltanski uses found photographs and creates new narratives around the images to re-contextualise the photographs that we view. Clarke (1997 p.205) claims that by this creation of a collective identity Boltanski establishes a “critical space between the reader and his images”. In relation to the Monument: The Children of Dijon, he adds that Boltanski’s work acts with a kind of duality. He is both trying to raise the status of the photograph but also using it in a more celebratory capacity. He asks the viewer to question their own view of the photograph and its significance in how they “accrue status and meaning”. This is an idea that I wish to explore through my documentation and research into how the photograph can be re-interpreted through different processes and technologies.
Hal Foster (2004 p145) “...the nature of all archival materials are found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private”.
Foster’s An Archival Impulse argues that there is a growing interest in artists using the idea of the archive within their work. Charles Merewether’s The Archive also discusses the growth of this within contemporary art practices, and supports this idea in reference to the accessibility to the archive through digital means. I wish to explore this idea through my research into artists such as Susan Hiller who use material in an archival format. For example, From the Freud Museum (1991) is of particular relevance to my work in terms of the use of documentation and inclusion of different mediums, from photographs to writings and ephemera.
Deliverables/Assessed Outcomes
Exhibition of Documentation (Garment)
Artist’s Book
Assessment Weighting
Artwork 75%
Written Reflection/Analysis 25%
Specific Assessment Criteria
Activities/Processes
Research – Primary and Secondary sources, collecting and collating information September-October 2010
Collecting Materials – October/November 2010
First Experiments with media and materials – December/January 2010/2011
Documentation of Process – January – March 2011
Further Secondary research – Critical Essay and exploration of writings – February, March, and April 2011
Review and Editing of Documentation – April – May 2011
Development of Final Outcomes – May – June 2011
Personnel, Resources and Requirements
Open Space
Plinth for Artist’s Book
Bibliography
Berger J (1978) Ways of Seeing London Penguin
Clarke G (1997) The Photograph Oxford: Oxford University Press
Foster H (2004) An Archival Impulse Massachusetts: The MIT Press
Merewether C (Ed) (2006) The Archive: Documents of Contemporary Art Massachusetts