MFA in Fine Art: a reflection

“We think place is about space, but in fact it is really about time.”[1]

Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby.

In developing my body of work “Seven Stations” ( “Saith Gorsaf”) over the last year or more, my initial line of enquiry was first informed by Tim Ingold’s anthropological eye for the interrelationship of the human and natural worlds. He inspired me to think about the way art can function as not just a process of making, but also of thinking. He encouraged me to experience, to experiment and to explore, a mantra I took with me to Anglesey. Later, I was also much influenced by Robert Smithson’s mysterious and enigmatic approach to the exploration of landscapes and by his site/non-site duality. I was excited to contrast the disused railway line (site) with a contemporary art exhibition (non-site).

Of course, this was all disrupted by the Covid-19 lockdown. For me, the “site” was suddenly both conceptually and physically closed off to me. (I was not able to return to Anglesey until mid-July, an interval of over four months).

Without access to site/subject, workshops, space and even some materials, I found myself reflecting in my small Oxford studio on what appeared to be a significant impediment. I no longer felt that I could authentically engage in the way that I had planned with the land, the railway line, and the people I had met. (e.g. Lein Amlwch, the volunteer group seeking to restore the line to use - they too had suspended all work on the line.) But, in time, this just became an opportunity to encounter the railway line in a different way. The cultivation of flexibility and resilience is time well spent for any artist, so, I turned to my own memories, records and research. Thus, the very themes of memory, remembering, and the often vanishingly thin line between remembering and forgetting (and restoration and loss) became more prevalent themes.

Memory became another key component of my conceptual approach, alongside place and time as described by Solnit:  my own memories, too, as well the social, historical and industrial memory I found on Anglesey; of which the railway line is such a potent emblem.

And also …. making and unmaking: several of my works seek to explore and occupy that liminal and ambivalent point. I have found many such juxtapositions arising out of my exploration of an industrial artefact that is, to a very great extent, dead or moribund, and yet I was fascinated to experience the way it became something more complex, nuanced and still, yet, very vital. It has suited that part of my practice in which I gather a selection of themes, ideas components and “clusters” of work and experiment with their combination, dissolution and recombination (e.g. Much Is Forgotten. (But Not All.)”)

I have come to understand the railway line as a sort of “drawing upon the landscape”. It engaged my fascination with drawing (in multiple forms, including writing) but also inspired me to go beyond it. So, a line became a shape (especially through the drawn pieces); and in turn it became a form, an experience, a sound, or a reflection, through wider applications.  In the end, I find my destination in this body of work has grown from the interplay between these different elements.

My work has been described as operating “between the systematic and the poetic”, a phrase I have found revelatory. Systematic or diagrammatic qualities associated with the construction and operation of railway lines, and the associated (and often marginal or arcane) information that comes with them, can be highly attractive for “railway enthusiasts” and historians of all stripes, and for those, like me, who are interested in the narrow delineation between remembering and forgetting of marginal things. But they also carry a wonderful potential to transform into something altogether more poetic, connected with time and memory, and with our industrial and social heritage; all of which is richly apparent in the landscape of Anglesey.

My work has also become a combination of something linear and finite (relating to a line - a journey delineated by a beginning and an end, just like a railway) with something cyclical and repetitive (implying a cycle of creation, decay and renewal, with the potential to repeat and return - an implication of return or repeated journeys). This is a more uncertain, and I think more poetic, space to occupy, and this ambivalence made my journey much richer and more interesting.

My subject has, in this way, taught me to place these and so many other dualities alongside each other and to facilitate dialogue between the two. There is value in presenting/revealing without the need to be authorial, or to force an interpretation or solution. This is particularly important learning where a subject has political and social overtones. (Railways, I have learnt, are very political things, having to do with economics, land and who gets to connect with whom.) The last thing the people of Anglesey need or want is to be told by an artist from Oxfordshire what to do or think about the railway line and its different potential futures. We see landscape and history through our own eyes, and make our own meaning from it, but must always be conscious that what we see is only our one view. There is always more, and so much is unseen yet hiding in plain sight.

On Anglesey, I found my practice and the path to explore it further beyond my MFA. I have found myself following not a journey to the death of a railway but, in fact, a journey to a transformation; perhaps even to a rebirth, linking back to my choice of title. This transformation also applies to me and my art practice, something I am overjoyed to discover in myself at a relatively late stage in my life. So much in life is about exploration and discovery and I am very much looking forward to continuing this journey.

[1] Solnit R, (2014), The Faraway Nearby. London, Granta.

Rhoddion stone. July 2020. Copyright: Mark Clay

Thoughts On Binding

The following is a documentation of some of the thinking and reflection that occurred during a new phase of making, as I continue to build a body of work on the theme of the (disused) Amlwch railway line, on Anglesey. It centres on my use of copper thread as a binding material.

What is binding about?

I think of acts of care, preservation (e.g. Egyptian mummification), of recording and remembrance. A way to “re-member”, as in to put something back together again. At the same time, I think of natural binding: of bindweed and ivy that slowly entwines the Amlwch railway line in a slow, relentless act of reclamation and transformation.

So there is tension here, between:

1. The binding of care and preservation, the human intention to create, to preserve and to restore, to bring dead things back to life, and;

2. The binding of capture, control, the natural intention to change, replace, evolve.  New life growing out of the death of the old.

Is it even possible to reconcile the two in a piece of work, to place them alongside each other as I think is happening on the railway? As Tim Ingold might say, perhaps the making will show me how, might show me how to think by making….

So I take a piece of old sleeper slice and turn it in my hands, The cut edges are ostensibly smooth but I can feel the lines in the surface, both radial and circumferential. There are cracks in the body and at the edges of the wood, some from the time of the growing, and some from the time of the dying (rotting). I continue to turn the wood block over and over and a way of making comes to me from this.

Taking up fine copper thread, I combine it with the process of turning over and over. I follow the edges and contours of the piece of wood until I have bound it, but not obscured it. It seems to me, as I work, that the act of binding expresses a desire to protect and to support this old wood. To stop it coming apart. To “re-member” it:

The process flows on and so my ideas flow on with it. I keep going, taking this further and do something similar for all the remaining fragments from this “end of the sleeper” slice. The copper thread seems also to imply a spirit of reconnection, or restoration, of the wood, to the point before time, decay, and my intervention split it apart.

This end piece of wood brings me in mind of my idea of a piece called “Terminus”. The end. I had previously imagined doing it with a much larger piece of old rotted sleeper, but the coronavirus lockdown prevents me searching for one on the Amlwch railway line itself.

I am not done with this. This idea keeps me, and perhaps by extension this decaying railway, in the present tense. I take up another sleeper slice. What if I worked more closely with the grain and the lines of the wood? Is this a way, even, to bind those two halves of my thoughts on binding together. (Pun absolutely intended.)

It changes the way I do the binding. Not a relatively random reflex as in the previous pieces, but a more considered, exploratory, mindful approach. I too am progressively bound up by the idea and the process. The thread encloses the wood and it encloses me. too, in this repetitive act of making and thinking.

One hour later:

It feels like a mapping (back to my starting point – the OS map of Anglesey), an exploration, a re-discovery even, of the nature of these materials. Not an exact one, but a halting, partial, cautious and even risky one (the thread breaks several times as it catches and stretches). As I wind around the edges, notches and grooves the tightened thread makes tiny, metallic “plink” sounds like the plucking of a harp string at the top of its range.  (I must record these.)

There. There it is. The idea of the “sounding of the line.”

I am so aware, by now, of the reflective and thoughtful nature of what I am now doing. It is slower, and more careful, too.  Perhaps even ritualistic: as in Ancient Egypt, with the mummification of dead pharaohs and their belongings, the act of binding (mummification) is an act of remembering and preserving things that are precious.

I think this railway is precious. And my acts of binding have enabled me to make that tangible.

Creating space for creativity

In the course of a busy few weeks, both creatively and in other aspects of my life, I’ve been thinking hard about how to make the most of my time. How do I create the best conditions, for me, to enable and nurture my creativity at a time when I really need it?

Set out below is a non-exhaustive, non-definitive set of points. Of course, I’m thinking in terms of my life as an artist, but I think these could well apply elsewhere too:

1. Being part of a team of creative people is just about the best thing you can do to enable your own creativity. And by creative I think I mean, more broadly, a collaborate spirit, a generous approach to sharing and building ideas and projects, and a willingness to laugh and to fail as part of the process.

2. And yet, to counter that, I also see very clearly that I need solitude and time out to reflect and think. I think this is critical too. There are times when you want to "do" and experiment, and other times when you want to reflect, to sit with ideas and let them bubble away on their own. Good things come from that quiet.

3. Following on from that, you can't really "do" creativity. It's like trying to force yourself to go to sleep. You have to allow space for creativity to arise, in my experience, in its own time and its own way. That frequently means finding a balance with all the other things in life. So, often, for me the trick is to notice, record (see below), and then return to those ideas when the time is right.

4. Writing and recording is paramount to my work as an artist, and I am sure that it always will be. Not just so I can remember ideas and/or return to them when I’m ready to move forward, but also as a key part of actively thinking through and around ideas. As an artist this most typically comes about through drafting and sketchbooks, of course, but also blogging, or conversations with trusted friends. As some cleverer soul than me wrote, "writing is a way of thinking and discovering things".

5. At the moment I'm even writing poetry as a way of reflecting and developing ideas. I only do this once in a blue moon and yet I am finding it very valuable. Be open to new ways of thinking and doing and experimenting.

6. Ideas come at weird times and I try to be open to that. Some of my most exciting thoughts have come from dreams or 3am "sitting up in bed" moments. My wife finds this both exasperating and fascinating. One morning she found that I had scribbled "chicken trampoline" on a piece of paper in the dead of night. I still love that drawing.

7. Artists talk a lot about "pushing their practice" which is really just another way of saying "don't accept your first thoughts as your best thoughts". Sometimes they are; and often, they aren't. Being creative sometimes feels like knowing when to push an idea and when to stop, and being comfortable with both modes of working.

8. There are no wrong ideas. Just ideas that haven't yet reached full expression. Some ideas never get that far, and that is OK.

9. The number of ideas that you realised in the past, and which you will continue to look back on with 100% satisfaction in the future, is very small. That is OK too.

10. And of course, there will always be those times when you feel stuck, and short of ideas. I recently read an excellent book by Robert Shore called "Beg, Borrow And Steal: Artists Against Originality". It's a cracking read. The pressure to be original can be an impediment to starting, let alone finishing anything creative. I thoroughly recommend it as a possible way to help you get out of those periods of “stuckness”.

Do let me know if you recognise any of these; or if there are others that are important for your creativity!