Assessment Results

I've received my November assessment results for both Body of Work and Contextual Studies. For BoW my mark was 70% which was lower than I expected by some way; but I'm pleased with the result. For Contextual Studies my mark was 72% which ironically was a higher mark than I was expecting and it took me by surprise that I would receive a higher mark for this module than BoW.

With the switch around of the marks it brings my average for the two courses into line with what I was expecting so I can't complain and it feels good to be moving onto my final module. The blog address for SYP is below:

https://targetpracticesyp.blogspot.com

Thinking about Assessment

Sept 13th:

I'm using this earlier post from July to update on my assessment plans so far.  With just a few weeks before the November submission deadline I am pretty much on track to be ready. I chose a black portfolio box for my 16x12 Body of Work prints that I feel displays my photographs in a professional manner; on top of those I devised a card pull-out in order to display my magazine and small Target Practice exhibition hand-out. By the time I'd done all this I realised that I'd forgotten to include my methodology and artist's statement. These are already included in the bound assignment 5 folder but I think they should also be read and interpreted as part of the BoW presentation. I think I will try to find a black A4 envelope and include it on the pull-out tray, maybe underneath the magazine.

This means of presentation will provide a number of ways to approach the body of work in line with the notion of the polysemous photograph. The BoW images could be viewed in a self-contained context, without external reference to other texts; with the artist's statement, indicating my intent when making the work and my creative influences; with the small exhibition hand-out card, that includes the relay-texts that accompany each image thereby creating a resonance between the images and the words to add another level of meaning; with the magazine, that provides additional research garnered and analysed during the development stage of the BoW; or with the methodological diagram, that describes my artist's process from the research stage to the making of props and working through the creative/developmental stages to final outcome.

So to summarise the assessment submission for Body of Work will include the five bound assignment folders with tutor reports, my essay notes, supplied images and sketchbook drawings and plans for each assignment. A bound learning log, the portfolio box as detailed above, and the online learning log (blog).

Here is a short video I made of the submission:


Body of Work presentation submission from ammoniteM on Vimeo.


July 15th:

For November assessment I need to think about how to show my body of work to best advantage. I'd initially decided on producing a set of large prints in a portfolio box; included would be a small handout card that contains my artist's statement and some background reading on Josef Kohout.

A second booklet containing the numbered text that accompanies my images is at present unfinished. I'm not sure how to produce this one. This 'text' booklet has a single piece of numbered text for each image and consists of a number of pages. It could be incorporated into the handout card in some way but that would bulk out and destroy its simplicity. It is designed to look like a Christmas card and references the postcard sent by Josef to his lover, Fred, that condemned him to four years in a concentration camp.

Handout card

After my final feedback session with my tutor, Keith we discussed the possibility of clarifying my artistic process for the assessment examiner. As Keith pointed out a lot of time and research goes into my process with regards to making props and thinking about how they will work and what I'm trying to say in my images. It is a shame if this process is lost or not clearly understood in the final portfolio. Keith has sent me a methodological diagram that will help me to design something similar that will show my process in visual form and can be included with the body of work. I think this is a really good idea as I very much enjoy looking other's artist's creative processes when I see workbooks at exhibitions.

At the same time I'd sent off and received a sample pack of different format paper magazines from an online company. I was thinking that I would like to produce my body of work in a magazine format and could include the discussed methodological diagram and maybe even the 'text' booklet as well. By producing the body of work in an additional paper format I can disseminate the important hidden history information without feeling uncomfortable about putting Holocaust work into a fancy handmade book which wouldn't feel ethical to me.

Sample pack

My next step is to start designing the magazine format so I can see how well it works and what to include.

Target Practice magazine handout

With all the additional material garnered during the research phase of my body of work I thought it would be a good idea to put selected pieces of research into a magazine. This was done not only for assessment but with an eye to a future exhibition. Personally, I love looking through handouts and bits and pieces created by the artist to take away after the event.

Here is a short video I made of the Target Practice magazine:

Target Practice magazine from ammoniteM on Vimeo.

'I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual'

This biography of the concentration camp experience by Pierre Seel has been a useful adjunct to the book 'The Men With The Pink Triangle'. The section of the book I have found most useful is where Seel details life after the camps where the treatment of homosexuals in his native France was still a matter of living in secrecy for many. Seel details the anguish he undergoes as he cannot explain to his family why he has never applied for reparations for his incarceration by the Nazis; The reason being that homosexuals were not eligible. Discovering this fact during my research and being aware of how this impacted on their daily lives has been illuminating. The degree to which homosexuals affected by the Nazis were still being punished after the liberation is appalling. Seel also details the gradual rise of gay liberation and attempts to set their own historical narrative during the early 1970s. Sadly, Seel laments that this change in fortunes will improve the lives of younger men but he feels separated from these changes; The internal homophobia and pain inflicted upon gay men by others was sadly carried with them through their entire lives.

Seel does eventually move himself to speak and with growing confidence 'Outs' himself; his biography is the result; it is forthright and confirms a number of similar experiences that occur to Heinz Heger in the 'Pink Triangle' book. Seel also begins to fight for reparations although the French authorities, for whatever reason, appear to be obstructive to say the least. Finally Seel details the disgusting treatment of gay groups that attempt to take part in the official memorials to the deported mainly during the 1980s and 1990s.
   

Physical Learning Log Scan

Physical Learning Log Scan

Egon Schiele and Francesca Woodman - Life in Motion, Tate Liverpool

Francesca Woodman

The pairing of these two artists work at Tate Liverpool provided some interesting comparisons to be made between the works and artist's intent. Firstly, having seen and admired Woodman's work before I was concerned that the small scale of the images (mostly 5x5 inches) would be overpowered by Schiele's paintings. Thankfully the works were separated by sections of wall space and Woodman's photographs were mounted with large white borders that doubled their size. I thought the exhibition was hung extremely well and the works flowed through the gallery space divided into chronological sections that showed the phases of both artists development.

Woodman is an early photographic inspiration for me and her interest in props and experimental use of space has influenced my own work. This exhibition is far superior to an earlier curated exhibit in London a few years ago which used the daft concept of the 'zig-zag' as a conceptual device to curate her show. In Woodman's work she explores her own gender identity and body; her use of cellotape to bind her legs, mirrors, and the contorting of her body into a display case shows an extensive visual repertoire in which to examine the society in which she found herself in the mid to late 1970s. Woodman is extremely visually inventive.

Schiele's painting is fairly new to me not having taken much notice of the artist before. A figurative painter of the early twentieth century Schiele was influenced by Gustav Klimt but soon developed his own style. Schiele's work appears to mostly explore female sexuality and some of the images are quite explicit. They appear to sit within the artistic style and timeframe of Gustav Klimt and similar painters that were openly exploring the nature of sexual desire. I found many of the works expressive and well made.

A number of comparisons can be made between the two artist's. The both died young; Schiele of Spanish Flu in 1918 and Woodman of suicide in 1981. Their artistic careers were cut short leaving behind a body of work to be speculated on, manipulated and curated free of input from the artist (thinking about those zig-zags). They both made extensive studies of the human body. Schiele painted women, often in explicit poses, and this can be problematic and viewed as misogynistic as the painter is working through the lens of the male gaze and woman as sexual object. There is a power play between the artist and sitter, male and female, that is difficult to overcome. Woodman explores her own gender and through the use of her own body circumvents many of the negative aspects that Schiele can be accused of. Woodman's exploration of sexuality is more complex and has more depth than in the Schiele paintings and shows a young woman asking questions about where her place is in the world and the potential possibilities open to her. Both artist's work has a fluidity to it with Woodman's time-lapse work providing ghost-like spectres as she moves through the frame or stands perfectly still, her hand making blurred gestures; The movement in Schiele's work is in the free paint strokes often belied by the languid poses.  

Egon Schiele

This exhibition was thought provoking for me and confirmed my respect for Woodman's work. I enjoyed looking at the Schiele paintings although some of the most explicit paintings seemed to me to overly objectify women from a male point of view. I suppose it is not so much the paintings themselves but the intent with which they were made. Would a woman photographer making the same work be considered acceptable? The intent could be considered a critique of the politics surrounding the representation of female nudity and have quite different connotations. Female nudity is such a tricky subject matter in the light of unequal treatment of women in a male dominated patriarchy. It is a question that is hard to have any clear answer on.