Blog 2 Danni McGrath 14862524
Just a quick introduction to my project for those of you playing at home...
I’m doing a creative production honours project, in the area of fine arts printmaking. I have been approaching printmaking (specifically screen printing) as a tool for exploring concepts of labour, mass production and distribution. In the creative production component of my honours research I have been developing a one-artist printing service, using fine art printing techniques to produce a range of printed matter for fellow artists.
When I started reflecting on the work I’ve completed since the last blog entry, I felt not so good. There are a number of things I’ve failed at in this time. In addition to the ‘fails’ in the above images my marks are not great, I’ve missed so many deadlines, and have hardly read anything related to my research. A few weeks ago I saw a friend I’d not seen in a while:
Me: Woah, hi!
Him: Hi!
Me: How’s life after the move?
Him: Good, going good.
Me: Great!
Him: How’s uni?
Me: Hahahaha, who knows? *crazy eyes*
So what have I been doing?
So far this year I have produced 30 four colour posters for a friend’s album launch
80 glow in the dark souvenir posters for members of another friend’s club night
50 copies of an artists book for a yet another friend’s exhibition
1000 business cards for each of the 34 artists in the upcoming Hatched National Graduate Exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts.
And my shoulders really hurt.
Despite these completed tasks, the overwhelming feeling I have in relation to my Honours project is failure. I’ve started unpacking this issue and here are some thoughts I’ve had in relation to it:
Failure is an important part of my art practice,
Acknowledgement of failure contributes to the ‘tone’ of my work
the ‘tone’ I’m interested in cultivating in my practice is not yet something I’ve clearly defined, but some important keywords include honesty, pragmatism, labour intensive, humour, slippages, fails to meet an established benchmark (this is a phrase that has come up in discussions with supervisors and fellow students)
Failure is not as the intent of my work but something that happens along the way, despite all attempts for perfection.
If failure was the intention, there resulting work would look real bad and would be no point in making the work I’m making
Lisa Le Feuvre has written extensively on the concept of failure in contemporary art. In her essay, If at First You Don’t succeed, Celebrate (2010), she includes a quote by Peter Fischli, of the artistic duo Fischli and Weiss, in relation to their photographic series Equilibres/Quiet Afternoon (1984):
“ For us, while we were making the piece, it was funnier when it failed, when it didn’t work. When it worked, that was more about satisfaction.”
I feel that this relates to the tone I’m intending to cultivate in my practice; the humour, pragmatism and honesty that comes out of acknowledging a failure or mistake. Le Feuvre also suggests that while “perfection is satisfying, ... failure is engaging, driving into the unknown” (2010). I have experienced both of these feelings in relation to my art production methods; the immense satisfaction when a screen print layer is perfectly registered and the image emerges, as well as the compulsion to not fuck up the next one when a layer is misaligned or the ink bleeds on the page. I’ve also felt a strange sense of loss when printing the final layer of a project. Perhaps perfection is a false goal and I’d actually be quite underwhelmed if it was achieved.
Le Feuvre also talks about the “ gaps between intention, expectation and realisation” (2010), in artistic practice - perhaps it is in these gaps where the “failure” occurs. Reading this, I realised that these gaps are an important part of my honours project. I might intend to provide a printing service that, following business “logic”, could compete with the service provided by Officeworks or Vistaprint, and expect to produce quality printed material that meets my client’s expectations, but in reality this isn’t possible. However, I’m still pursuing this goal, perhaps in order to see what happens when the gaps inevitably occur.
I feel that these considerations of failure in relation to my art practice relate to much of what Dr Thea Costantino and Dr Leah Mercer spoke about in their presentations on practice based research. Both spoke of allowing yourself time and space to make creative work, separate from the academic research (which makes me feel somewhat better about not having read enough yet!). Dr Mercer also spoke about 7 characteristics of practice based research that she and her fellow researchers have established, one of which seems particularly relevant to this discussion of failure; that research "methods evolve through failure and generosity" (Haseman, 2007). I feel like I've made some significant realisations about the nature of my art practice in considering the role of failure within it, and that this will help me to define the work I do in the future. Dr Mercer also mentioned Brad Haseman's 5 protocols of practice-based research, the first of which resonated with me:
“That there is a clearly established [research] problem which drives the study”, either through “a ‘research question’ or an ‘enthusiasm of practice’”
To consider one's "enthusiasm of practice" as a legitimate research method was quite comforting - this is essentially the crux of my Honours project. That is, to produce a range of printed matter using fine art printing techniques (my existing practice, which I'm very enthusiastic about) in order to explore the value of the artistic labour… and some other things too that I'm not sure about. I feel like I just got close to defining my research question.
Images 1-8: Danni McGrath, process documentation, 2014
Le Feuvre, Lisa. 2010. If at First You Don’t succeed, Celebrate. Goldsmiths Research Online. http://research.gold.ac.uk/2920/1/02.Feuvre_Failure%5B1%5D.pdf
Haseman, Brad. 2007. Tightrope Writing: Creative Writing Programs in the RQF Environment. In N. Krauth & J. Webb (Eds), TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses 11.1 (2007): n. pag. Griffith University. Web. 20 July 2011from http://www.textjournal.com.au/april07/haseman.htm
Gray, Carole. “Inquiry through Practice: Developing Appropriate Research Strategies.” No Guru, No Method? Helsinki: UIAH,1996. Web. http://carolegray.net/Papers%20PDFs/ngnm.pdf
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