10/01/2022; 2022, semester 2, & Review

Now that we are into 2022 and the second semester, I feel that it is time for me to do some really solid reflecting, in order to move forward with the previous work involving multiple strains of thought/working, consolidated into a focused lens.

This comes of the back of the semester 1 feedback which was received at the end of last week. From this, I pulled a few key points for myself to consider and work on/with over the next 12 weeks:

1. Bringing multiple strands of working into focus, with the view of a fixed point – exhibition.

2. Considering resisting ‘the seductive power of the image’ to utilise my working practice to connect issues and convey intent.

3. To, at times, slow the rate of physical working, and take time to reflect upon the work. This will allow more time to focus and select works to move forward with.

With points 1 & 2 being fairly similar, and with the project continuing to progress, the work should naturally become more focused. Bringing in the 3rd point of taking moments of pause to reflect upon the work should then also help the process of focussing and narrowing the breadth of the work. I think this will be the only part I may struggle with/have to continually remind myself to do – it has been in my nature and way of working within my practice for the last few years to keep going and keep going with work, making decisions about resolved work nearer the end. This means that it will be good practice and exercise for me to start making decisions and visualising exhibited work earlier.

Over the time between submitting the work for feedback in semester 1 and now, I had began to focus in on ideas of the wandering womb, using it as an interpretation of the treatment of the female body in the contemporary – mystical, misdiagnosed, misunderstood.

With the wandering womb theory, there was also the hysteria diagnosis. The word hysteria coming from the Greek ‘hystera’ meaning womb, it is linguistically linked strongly to the female body, merging and messing all the connotations of both together. It reminds me of the linguistic intrigue of the ‘uncanny’; in German, ‘Unheimliche’ which the verbatim translation is ‘unhomely’. The hysterical is uncanny = the womb is unhomely.

Wanting to take this line of thought further, I needed more information on that of hysteria in the contemporary and in that of art history and so read a few texts, but notably Hysterical methodologies in the arts, edited by Johanna Braun. This book contained a range of essays discussing the use of and place for the hysterical diagnosis in contemporary art. From Cindy Shermans photographs as a hysterical out of body performance to the L’arc de cercle (the hysterical arch), hysteria was shown to be a display of emotion by a feminine body that became weaponised- whether by the displayer or by the audience.

While I wasn’t enthralled by the whole book – I felt that one artists performance as a psychoanalytic patient described, was distasteful, I was interested in how the hysterical body can be presented and conveyed through artwork, thinking about how this can be brought into my own practice.

What I have began working on from this, is taking my abstracted ovary/womb sculptures and planning works that form an arch:

I think focussing on this work in detail; the construction, what it is saying, etc. Will help me with bringing the work into a streamlined focus, and to continuously be meeting the expectations of myself set out by the outlined points taken from the semester 1 feedback.

I will no doubt have some other work happening simultaneously – I am even now planning a womb mask, but I can see how having a few (rather than many) things happening at once, can come together for a body of work, perhaps even becoming an installation together. This just means that I am once again coming back to the outlined points, and continually thinking about the fixed point of exhibiting the work, after all it is my aim for it to be seen.