On the 30th October, David Clegg was the speaker for our Gravity lecture. I found him to be a good speaker and his work was very interesting.
He told us how from a young age he was very interested in repetition, whether it was the pattern on his family homes' kitchen worktop or the music of a band called 'Suicide'. Clegg also got into art from a young age, and his school held an exhibition of his dinosaur paintings. He recalled thinking that being an artist would be great because "artists draw dinosaurs". And although there was no more references to dinosaurs in his work, painting is what Clegg did for many years, until at university he decided he didn't want to do that anymore because he didn't feel like a painter - he wanted to make sculptures.
One of my favourite things that Clegg told us about was a story of when he got angry at his sculptures, and decided to burn them. Looking at the ash, he found it interesting that the sculptures were still there, and they were everything that they were before. But now they were so different. Clegg decided to start working with the ash, which resulted in complaints that the ash was getting everywhere. But he loved that, his art was a contaminant. And bits of his sculptures were spread throughout his university building.
After university, Clegg started working with people with Alzheimer's and dementia, making arts and crafts with them. He found it interesting that their memory's weren't necessarily lost but fragmented or rearranged. And he found himself confronted with the repetition that he loved. The people he worked with repeated themselves a lot, and so Clegg started to study the things he was being told. Looking for the slight differences each time round, trying to piece together the truths of the stories.
Clegg sees his work as a "social sculpture", he is pushing the boundaries of what can be considered a sculpture. His works are the "finished" stories of the people he works with, and these have been used by professionals in the fields of dementia, Alzheimer's and language etc. to try and further research. They are also shared with the public though, through the internet and they have been read on Radio 4.
We were shown some things that the people Clegg worked with had said to him, initially it looks like nonsense but then if you look at it a little closer, it is just very metaphorical. Eg. "It's all under black towels", seemed to mean in the context that it couldn't be seen anymore. Clegg appears to see them as puzzles to work out, and his passion was wonderful.
A current(?) project Clegg is working on is called the Room 21 Project - "I've been in this room before..." and explores dementia and the perception of space, how people with dementia are influenced by the space they are in, the room, the view from the window, the routine etc. For example, during the project, Clegg has worked with many people in Room 21, and at some point they all mentioned that there was a river flowing under the floorboards.
At the end of the lecture, during question time, a point about the ethics of the work was raised. How can these people, with dementia, consent to having their stories shared as they are? It was even suggested that Clegg is taking advantage of the people that he works with, however I think I have to disagree with that point. I feel like if I had the oppertunity for someone to help me properly understand my memories, and take as much interest in helping get them orderly as Clegg does with the people he works with, then I would take it and be quite grateful. I do feel that Clegg is helping the people he works with, but I am unsure how I feel about the stories being broadcasted to the public. I feel that for each story I would have a different opinion to this due to the level of dementia the person has, and therefore their ability to give consent, and the contents of the story itself. However, ultimately, I don't feel I can completely comment on the ethics of Clegg's work as there wasn't enough chance for him to discuss the issue at length with us, letting us know completely how he himself feels on the matter and what system he has in place to work it out.
All in all, I found everything that Clegg had to say to be extremely interesting, and I plan to look out for his future projects.
