Assignment 4:Feedback

My feedback for this assignment was good. My tutor liked my experimental approaches, which makes me happy because I enjoyed doing those and am keen to experiment more. In this project I changed my approach, still aiming to fulfil the requirements of the exercises, but holding the instructions a bit more lightly and following the directions in which my processes were leading me rather than doing exactly what the instructions said and no more or less. This greatly enhanced my enjoyment of my work, and I was much less stressed as a result. 

My tutor liked my photo collages and shape book. She commented that I would need to simplify in future work in order to meet the requirements of a brief, but things can be more complex in my experiments. I’m slightly worried about the need to keep simplifying. I can see the value of it when wanting to create immediate impact and communication. However, I have never been drawn to minimalism and I do like working with patterns and decorative elements. I wonder how I might simplify yet hold onto pleasing imagery. I wonder how much the viewer’s enjoyment of an image must be sacrificed in order to grab any of their attention at all. Our culture is so image-led compared to other eras, and yet we scroll past remarkable images in fractions of seconds. 

An area where my tutor was less happy with my work is my research. She would like me to make more connections between my visual research and my own work, or reading about art and connecting this to my own creative processes. I’m happy to do this. In this project the artists we were asked to research were not very appealing to me, and the only thing I could really say about my work in relation to theirs is that it’s entirely different, and that I couldn’t find anything within this body of artwork that inspired anything new within me. I hope to be more enthusiastic about my future research subjects and make more connections with my own art. 

In terms of additional suggestions, my tutor is keen for me to do more composition thumbnails and investigate different compositions. I really liked her idea of experimenting with scale, so that the blackbird in my poster image could have been further away or even closer. She encouraged me to continue working with atmosphere and light, so I may have more crack of dawn adventures with my camera in my future! She also suggested working with my dawn photos in collage or linocut which sounds fun.

For my next two assignments I will be studying photography. I asked my tutor whether this needs to be presented as ‘pure’ photography or whether I can continue to work with them in mixed media. The answer seems to be both. Follow the instructions and also keep experimenting. Yay!

I’ve also spoken to someone from Learner Support who says I can take extra time as a reasonable adjustment for my disabilities. I have applied for this, as, even if I don’t end up needing the extra time, the fact that it’s available will enable me to work at a sustainable pace without worrying about my health and the extra time studying takes me because I’m visually impaired. This bit of leeway is such a relief to me as it means that I can take time to enjoy what I’m doing, and follow up on these ideas for mixed media experimentation and more engagement with my research because I’m able to set longer deadlines. For now I have set deadlines which are only a little longer and will see how this goes. It may be that, after project 6, I might slow down a bit. For now I will see what I can achieve in a relaxed and experimental manner in five weeks per project. 

I feel that I’m now starting to bed into this course and get a bit more of a measure of what the expectations are of my work. Each bit of constructive criticism and each suggested alternative makes me more happy and contented in my work, because I keep being asked to do more of what I love. If I can now reduce my own pressure on myself I will become more productive and playful. 

I’m excited about the electives because I’ll get to spend a couple of months learning about a medium that I’ve used less. When I did my HND in Fine Art I did some photography during the first year. I didn’t specialise because all I was doing was having fun mooching around taking photos and then playing in Photoshop. It didn’t occur to me that this was work because it was so much fun. I thought I was there to work hard so I dropped photography and went for printmaking, for which I was actually getting less good grades than I was for photography. So now I get to revisit that decision and choose differently.