Part A: Reflective learning
My understanding of what constitutes “art” is probably a little more nuanced now. Building on Grayson Perry’s idea that quality in art is arrived at by a tribe, it might be fair to say that art itself is defined by a tribe. I find this helpful because it gets me away from having to rely so heavily on the creator’s intent: there are doubtless people involved in creating art who would never use that label just as there are people who are confident that their productions are art, even if they find no appreciative audience. It might be ideal if both creator and appreciative / judging audience could agree on the definition or value of work. Perhaps the best way to see this is as an ongoing creative conversation between artist and audience(s), recognizing the impacts that changes in time and place will inevitably have on both creating and interpreting.
Over the course of Part One I’ve been introduced to a number of artists who are new to me and have appreciated starting to exercise interpretive approaches. I’ve also had the chance to spend time looking at a wider range of art forms and media than I’ve been used to. Not surprisingly for a beginner, there are large gaps in my awareness—and understanding—of contemporary artists and art forms, particularly in the area of more conceptual art. This is an area where I’d like to deepen my knowledge. I’d also like to develop a richer vocabulary to describe what I’m seeing.
As I look through my learning log I can see that I lean fairly heavily on words and photographs but have incorporated few or no sketches or scans of notes / brochures. Still, I usually have a camera or smartphone with me so it is natural for me to reach for those tools to document what I see. This reflects my areas of interest, but I think I could probably push myself a little harder—I’m not comfortable with my sketching ability, but it could only improve with practice. All told, I think the one area that would give the greatest improvement would simply be to post entries more often. I could probably do this if I relied a little less on text and more on images—not a bad thing to do as I work through a course of studies that is largely about appreciation of visual culture.
Part B: Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave
Essay submitted to tutor in MS Word.