The images above came from my thinking around transplant and exchange and I needed to manifest the thoughts I was having about the mutliple object that through a process forms more than one identity. It remeinded me as I played with the potaoes and made them kidneys for the sack of my thinking of a project nearly 20 years ago. So this is a small segment, an example from my auto biographical chapter. It is about potatoes but really about a material encounter.
In one session, a little girl from the class was presented with a sack of potatoes. I undid the top of the sack and poured the potatoes onto the floor. They rolled and clustered together but had formed a mound in the middle. They seemed beautiful in the space and I was aware of their noise as they had pounded the floor in front of the children. This young girl was severely autistic and I had never heard her speak in the sessions I had run with the class but she had always been busy and determined in her actions. She walked to the potato mound and sat in the middle of it, taking potatoes in her hand and she began to sing. She sang loudly and beautifully, with an operatic- like voice. The potatoes were hers, she suddenly owned them. She was powerful - as were the potatoes in the space. The potatoes afforded a space of clarity for this girl she as spoke/sang with them and through them. It was this action that remained so relevant to my practice as artist and teacher. There is a way of ‘critically looking’ that is discussed as a formed of intense interpretation by Heywood and Sandywell but I want to extend this into a embodied experiential action, where critical looking becomes critical materiality. Does what you have described above suggest any particular objects? Bowl of spaghetti before and after adding the sauce. Sticky and tangled yet when the sauce is added (ability to comprehend) then the understanding starts to clarify. It feels like the sauce (gaining comprehension) allows the spaghetti (knowledge) to be manageable with a fork and a spoon. What does the learning experience feel like in terms of a temperature -tone-feel-weight-noise? Temperature – Room temperature Tone – Burgundy Feel – tangled then freed up Weight – changes from marble slab to weightless and back again Noise – clattering of pots in pans in a cupboard Seem to relate learning to cooking for some reason, possibly because I take a kinetic approach to learning. The above is a description from earlier on in the year by one of my research group participants. I am currently making objects for each member of the group, based on their feedback prompted by my questions (see April Blog entries for downloads of their thoughts) and verbal discussions. As I continue to research about materiality and the physical exchange I become more aware of the lack of mess, the seepage and entanglements that physical engagements and emotional responses can generate. Everything feels tidied and packaged. My weighing of texts was a small nod towards this state where the physical becomes baggae and uncontrolled and the conceptual clarifies and cleanses. I am generalising but the digestion of thoughts served up through a potentially transformative experience are not tidy. We juggle ideas, we investigate ways in, we wrestle possiblities. i am conscious of how the objects I make require the sauce (to reference the particpants comments above), mud spaghetti, ice etc of materiality. I am not aiming to illustrate their comments but the enmeshments of materials and the oppositional positions they describe need to be inherent in the making and outcomes. The objects below have been made so that feel parched, this may seem at odds with the 'sauce' I mentioned before but i am playing with how the implied action of object is about digestion or consumption but unplatable. We are unable to swallow it. This way of making is a process by which I sift through materials and combinations that start to ringfence or surround the territory of what I need to communicate. it could be argued that this is what any artist would do, play with materials to reach intention, honing the making and conceptual to form the object but this object is not for me and is to communicate anothers thoughts, anothers intention. Their thoughts are my theme and I have to be conscious of myself and my part in the combinations and choices. I am of course more than participating in this material play, I am making but making with someone else in mind. When I was at Tate Britian recently I was struck by the signs apologising for the artwork not being operational at this time. This has stayed with me and whislt the signs referenced a piece of work that relyed on technology or mechansim I continued to think about the objects that were not operational for other reasons. 'I am sorry that you don;t understand this artwork', i am sorry that this artwork is outside of your cultural knowledge', I am sorry that this artwork references aspects of art history that you are not aware of'. It is interesting to think of the responsibilty of the artwork, in a recent supervison I was asked what is the responsiblity or affordance of my objects. They have work to do. Unless they are activated by others then the sign at Tate could apply to them. They are not operational - not because of glitches in technology but because of lack of encounter, of touch. The materials here are as follows;
tray for apples, salt lick for cattle, plastacine and matchsticks dentistry gums. These are the parched out objects that I have been forming as step one of the process towards spaghetti and sauce. The ingredients or materials used in the first object above all lead towards injestion. What I am intersted in is how the object that has no direct link to the mouth or eating becomes most jaw like even when sat next to the dentistry gums. Dried up wooden teeth, clenching like a venus flytrap. |
Kimberley FosterKimberley's practice as an artist is pedagogical, it doesn’t just reference learning, it plays with, embodies and encourages learning at its core. The objects consider ideas of collaboration and authorship, discussions about touch and encounter, and bring into active consideration issues of learning within social and participatory practices. Archives
October 2018
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