presentation 'script' (notes/pointers)

Presentation script

1)

-At the end of level 4 I stood up here and delivered a very honest presentation about all the difficulties I’d wrestled with throughout the year and how I was still unsure of where I was headed.

-Now, a whole year on, I’m going to do exactly the same thing.

- But now with a bit more confidence and lot more optimism

2)

- One of the main successes of my year has been that my practical work has developed a lot and I feel I am starting to channel a new found energy and confidence into my work. I’ve put a lot of effort into practical process this year, and feel that my ideas and abilities are finally starting to synchronise.

-The way I approach work has changed too, and 504 played an important role here. It was a very ambitious project, and even though I was pleased with my outcomes, I approached the entire process in a pretty relentless and reckless way, and stretched both my abilities and nerves to breaking point.

-Realised that my satisfaction with these four months of solid work had been dampened by how exhausted it left me.  

-Resolved to revise the way I approach my work. I knew I needed to find a way of working that was sustainable.

3)

-In the second half of the year I really tried to act on this realisation which led to what’s been the real breakthrough for me.

-For both 505 and the Cop practical element, I made the conscious decision to make less work, and this in turn has given me the time to make all my work joyfully, which in itself wields good results.

- I have also felt I now have time to make more carefully considered design decisions, and to push myself to use shape, space and colour in braver ways than I have before. Through this new approach I feel I have begun to establish a tone of voice within my work, and can now identify what it is that marks my practice as mine. This is something that I haven’t experienced until now.

4.)

- And the more I make work that I enjoy making, the more I’m starting to realise what the fundamentals of my practice are: emotional charge, human connection. I want to make work to fall in love with, to pause at.

-I think this newfound confidence in my own abilities to make concept and design decisions is in part due to another conscious choice I made this year, which was to actively avoid using contemporary illustration as a frame of reference.

5.)

-Compared with the wealth of visual culture in the world, illustration as we now know it is narrow discipline, and I think that such disciplines can tend toward navel gazing, or being too inward looking. Instead I have found other sources of inspiration.

-Maybe writing about the Artworld for CoP has made me more aware of visual culture as an expanse.

6)

-I have developed real interests in other things, such as the outsider art movement of Iran, textile artists, and graphic artists of the 40s 50s and 60s. Stuff that I personally find far more interesting and enriching than 99% of the stuff to be found on It’s Nice That or ELCAF. I’m also increasingly sceptical of how ‘trendy’ illustration can appear – as with being fashionable comes the inevitability of becoming unfashionable. Right now I’m very happy with finding other ways to feed my mind and eyes and practice, rather than falling into the hole of using what’s hot now as a means to measure myself and my work against the world.

-          This year I’ve done a lot of thinking about what illustration is, and I still haven’t reached an answer that I’m at peace with. But maybe this is a good thing? Just as it’s important to shape an individual definition of success, surely it should be equally important to shape an individual definition of what it is you do.

7.)

-The world is full of amazing, amazing stuff. Bother to look or it.

8)

Now I’m going to talk about the overarching struggle that I’ve had this year, which is with the professionalization of practice. I’m not ready to start thinking of myself, or marketing myself as a professional yet. I certainly think I take a professional approach to the practice I’m developing – I show up every day, I put the work in and I wrestle with my problems until I find solutions -, but I don’t want to present to the world as a professional yet. The feelings of positivity that I’m having right now toward my work have taken such a long time to arrive, and still feel so fresh and new, that I want to savour that for a while, I want to keep it as mine. Mine to develop, mine to expand, and mine to build a real relationship with. I’ve felt that a one-size-fits-all approach has been taken to professionalization that this year, and I’ve been very unhappy about it. It was made clear to us from the beginning that Level 5 would be shaped and driven forward by autonomy, and that we would have to be in control of our own work. But to me, commitment to practical autonomy, earns you the ability to be critically autonomous

Being actively involved with the development of your practice, working at it and thinking a lot about it, what it means, and where it sits in relation to the world allows you to be better spirited than to take a tutor at their word for everything.

- I’m not naïve, and I completely understand the importance of professionalization to, but that’s not where I’m at yet. When I’ve spent a bit longer getting to know the work I’m making, I’ll consider how to present that work to the world.

-          If you’re not going to do it with conviction and honesty then don’t do it. Don’t be passive.

9)

-          This isn’t to say that I’m not ready to start giving some thought to my future – I’m already seriously considering whether a Master’s programme would be a good route for me to follow after my degree, as I can identify that education works as a very good structural framework for me. 505 and Life’s a pitch have also helped me to identify publishing as an area of interested. 

-          I’m also really excited about CoP 3 – I do well with long timeframes, and being able to get utterly engrossed.

10)

 – The main thing I’m trying to carry forward into next year is this new sense of calm and perspective that I’ve found. Time will keep passing, if you keep working you will keep improving, and however overwhelming or all-consuming pressure can feel, compared to infinity all of this means less than nothing.

-          Keep having big feelings, and bigger ideas. Keep wondering at the world.

11)

-Thank you for listening. Does anyone have any questions?