MA Presentations

This week, we had even more Masters/MA students, delivering us short lectures about their individual practices. I enjoy this format over having just one speaker, as they are more concise, and it is interesting to see the different aspects they all focus on, and how varying their works are, despite all doing the same degree. Moreover, it is extremely helpful to get first-hand accounts on what the masters programme is life, since I myself am starting to consider what I would like to do once I finish my BA degree. Doing this masters in Fine Art is certainly an option.

The first person to speak was Brad Dawson, who described his practice to be divided up into three stages; the first being conceptual, the second is centred around order and the third was described as impulse. To describe these further to us, he gave examples for each stage. Conceptual was mainly to do with video and performance, with Dawson himself featuring in them. They all were focused around the darker side of life, with particular interest in loss and mortality. The second stage, order, was a way for Dawson to express himself, again keeping the theme of darkness, but this time to do with his own personal fears and pain. Finally, for the third stage, impulse, he took the first two, and conveyed them via an immersive experience. It was almost as though he had a storyboard, with a beginning, middle and end, with each one homing in to the final result. His use of masks also, for me, linked in with these more dark themes, since they looked similar to classic 'Comedy and Tragedy masks', where wore the tragedy one. It gave an almost Greek Tragedy, or Shakespearian feel to his work.

The second to speak, was Karen Halewood. She was focused on a spiritual, almost hippy-like theme, which was something I liked as it helped me to understand who she is as a person, aside from her artistic practise. In terms of her practise, she has been creating art since the 80's, when she was extremely experimental with performance pieces and the incorporation of music, and themes of feminine

sexuality. These themes stayed a key element of her main ethos, and she continued to work into the mid-90s, turning her art to more digital based, as technology progressed, with elements of photography and video. For her MA, she is in the full digital swing, and has taken her interest in photography, and began to make collages with it. She used these collages to embody meditation and spirituality, really trying to show all the different elements of these, for example via cut out shards of mirror, which capture various motions and movements, which the audience would otherwise be unable to see. Moreover, these pieces of mirror almost distort reality, which further allows the viewer to immerse themselves into a similar mental state of spirituality and almost trip-like state. I really liked this, and it has encouraged me to think more about the viewers perspective in my own work - how can I, the artist, link together with the audiences mind? How can I try to help them to see what I see? Going forward, I am certainly going to consider this alongside my usual artistic aims.