MA Presentations

Continuing on from my last blog post about MA/Masters students, delivering the Visiting Artist lectures, we were also given talks by three more of them. I decided to make this into a separate blog piece, since I like to keep them short and concise, in order to keep the reader's full attention.

Vinne Quirk was the next artist to deliver, and immediately I resonated with something he said. He stated how he was an artist who creates art, but struggles to explain it when asked. As I am currently building up my portfolio, and writing a 1,000 word written statement to go alongside it, Quirk's words really hit home. Sometimes it is hard to actually understand where you conjured an idea from and why, and sometimes, as an artist, you want to make art without there having to be a deeper meaning behind it. That being said, I was slightly confused as to why he would agree to deliver a lecture about his art, if he couldn't actually talk about it. Despite this, Quirk did manage to explain his main ethos, both in life and in art. He used his practise to work through and express his personal trauma, something which I thought related to previous lecturer, Brad Dawson. This was because of the dark themes and the autobiographical nature. After this, he simply showed us a film he had made, which I understood as sometimes, to properly sympathise with art, you have to experience it rather than just being told about it. The film was almost gory in nature, with lots of disturbing images of things such as a dead rat, and various body parts. These were juxtaposed with more man-made, mechanical items, like tubes and pipes. Quirk stated that, in order to get the full experience of the video, then it should be watched on repeat for an hour. Personally, I think this is too long to realistically ask an audience to do, particularly due to the disturbing motifs shown. However, this may relate to his ongoing trauma, and the lengthy process of him trying to work though it. Overall, I liked Quirk's work, but it would've be nice for him to have tried to explain it a little, in order to help with my understanding and therefore appreciation of it.

Next to speak was Mary Hennessey-Jones, whose practise varied massively to Quirk's. She seemed to have fun with her art, and tried to use it as a story-telling device. She kept it fairly simple, focusing on "saying so much with so little". In some of her most recent work, she has been paying particular attention to buildings, their stories and what happens within them, inspired by the phase "if these walls could talk". Hennessey-Jones decided to further explore the bricks from an old tobacco factory, extracting them and doing things such as wrapping wet paper around them. To me, this was interesting as she was somewhat giving them a new story, taking them from their history and covering them in something fresh. Are they still the bricks from the abandoned building, or have they been given a new lease

of life, now? Furthermore, to add to the story-telling element, Hennessey-Jones attemoted to engage all the senses in her piece, and incorporated scent into her work. This was something I had never seen before, and thought it was really creative. It got me thinking about whether I could incorporate smell, and I think, when physical exhibitions and gallery-spaces open up, I definitely will do! Smell is such an important sense, in terms of bringing back memories, associations and setting a mood. For example, when I smell my grandma's perfume, I am reminded of childhood, and playing in her house during my school holidays. If I worked this into my own art, it would be fascinating to see other people's interpretations of the smell. Hennessey-Jones attempted to recreate the scent of the earth after rainfall, but instead made a smell similar to that of beetroot. From this, she made a short film called "The Revenge of the Bricks on the Beetroot", which perfectly enraptured her playful approach to making art. It was quite a humorous video, showing someone with bricks strapped to their feet, walking over and subsequently crushing several beetroots. I liked this as it showed growth and development within her practise, and how she interlinks different pieces.