PART ONE Project 1 AUDIT OF PRACTICE

EXERCISE 1.1: Audit your practice

My immediate thoughts go to the financial auditing process in a business: I was part of a family business, and auditing was once a year when our appointed auditing company would visit the factory for at least a week and conduct a rigorous financial inspection of accounts and stock in the factory. Their financial review was crucial to verify our accounts and all financial records.  The final management review (our financial results) indicated good record keeping and profitability of the business. It suggested where to improve and the importance of maintenance and good bookkeeping.  But then, this exercise is about my artmaking, and I can find myself in a space I enjoy and feel at home.

I start by ‘re’-looking at the image, a work of Philip Guston, Untitled, 1979, in the study material, which shows his studio. This work makes me consider the physical space where artists like Guston here, and the famous work of Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, 1911, work and think in their studios.  My favourite work of Philip Guston is the work shown below in Fig. 3.   I found great inspiration to appropriate and use props during the Studio Practice course.  The work of Matisse (fig. 1. I almost see it as an inventory (audit?) of what is inside his studio – to me, this talks about what happened, with what did it happen and where it happened.  In the first image, one sees an installation view of The Red Studio, 1911, as it is hanging in MOMA  (most recent exhibition (2022) and the second is a photo of the real studio, also taken in 1911.  Recently a local artist, Shany van den Berg, posted an image on Instagram, where she speaks to reflecting and observation within the studio. To me speaks to how I write about my making in my blogs.  Shany uses words such as “observing what the flow was with my inner landscape….where my thoughts and energy did the dance with the rhythm of my hands and brushes..”  See the image below (Fig. 4). I know she likes working alone in her studio, and most of her work is a comment on her own experiences.

I have many works in drawers, folders, rolled up on shelves or hanging or standing against walls. I tend to keep some lying flat on the floor or on the extra easels I have as if I am still conversing with them.

Reflecting on Key Work I have done up to now

I recently read about having or identifying a ‘hero piece’ ( Lorna Crane, fibre arts artist on IG). I am aware that I have begun a conversation with my work, after considering which work to use for the assessment of Studio Practice for Level 2 of my studies. I intended to look at how material influenced my making in the last year and how I find (look for) relationships between different works which inform me of the learning that took place.  I also feel the work became a commentary (documentation?) on ideas of collaboration, symbiosis, the other, connectedness, nature, decay and death. During this making process, I came to look at Fungi as showing me my own fears (the bad part of fungi?), such as that things can fall apart, how to deal with fragility, insecurity and or when things go wrong. How to care for (my work and material) and an idea that this can be an undermining process (too overwhelming ?) that happens from within came to sit with me. My work with fungi up until now has convinced me of the importance of understanding and looking at potential solutions in my own collaboration with nature and other artists, or my community. My work which focuses on the Fungal Kingdom is experimental. It is not always a place of control as the material leads me and I accept that outcomes can not be guaranteed.

My current practice:

The body of work I created for Studio Practice was informed by my research and experimentation with gestural mark-making, materiality, and the agency of the non-living, as well as visual images of the Fungal Kingdom and current artists working with the same subject. I live in a rural area, on a farm, and walking in nature is a regular embodied practice which complemented my interest in the Fungal Kingdom. On a farm, one’s life (flow or rhythms) is generally indicated by time (day and night), the seasons, the lifecycles and health of the plants and animals being farmed with, and the weather. When one starts to look deeper into a connection with the landscape, I am always amazed at the quietness (stillness) of this place, compared to a visit to a town or a city, as well as the difference of importance placed on water and temperature (rainfall and snowfall) during our rainy season, which is winter. From foraging mushrooms and looking at lichen, I became more connected to looking at place as:

• traces of temporality,
• the surface where things happen, namely the soil and its health,
• the difference in shapes and forms of the studied object,
• the adaptability to change
• a becoming, it is dynamic,
• how weather as a phenomenon plays a huge role.

Why am I connecting these to happenings? I think I am looking for alliances and kinship in happenings around me, to confirm how histories of place comes with an already story of care, involvement or connectedness.  I also think there are smaller and quieter works, which I have almost forgotten of, but think they have potential.  I can review the actions, processes and practices, questions, ideas, thinking references and theories that have become pivotal to my work thus far. I do think of each work I did as a stepping stone pathway on my way to doing work which is authentically me.

A fellow student, after sharing thoughts on care in a group session when we talked about our work, suggested an article I should read. It is a commentary /book review by Sonja Jerak-Zuiderent about the book Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) This article was published in Science & Technology Studies 31 (2) May 2018. The article opened ideas to consider care not a resource but implied – involvement. To be something we are already always part of, it already is there, even if we want it or not. It is by looking at the double meaning of care, literally. It becomes a “matter-ialised” involvement according to de la Bellacasa when we realize neglected possibilities and obligations. I managed to obtain a pdf of the book and have started reading it (26/09/2022)

In my current making, I grow mushrooms for me to harvest the spores for creating 3d objects or use them as material. Mushroom growing is a global movement with many local actualizations; I follow a few groups on social media and interact mainly concerning learning about cultivation. In a recent student meeting where Anette and I shared our collaborative work, the idea of care was considered regarding how I maintain my material for making. My work with fungi has many unseen activities and routines where I need to ensure the moist level or temperature level, or light/dark is in order. The image below was taken as a form of documentation of my daily routine tasks to ensure my growing medium stays moist and the mushrooms grow. Here I have used a piece of black paper to ‘catch’ spores from the growing oyster mushroom, two days ago, and now covered it, and moved the mushroom to a different space on the paper. I was concerned that the spores could be washed away by the moist, or get contaminated. These mushrooms can be harvested within the next few days, and the growth material will be placed in the growth chamber, a black box until the mycelium starts showing a second flush of mushrooms.

A while ago we went camping, and I had to ask a friend to ‘babysit’ my mushrooms which had started to grow out of the medium I had prepared and inoculated. The work I do to grow these mushrooms is a daily routine, starting in the early morning when I check in my grow cabinet, dark black box for any new signs of mycelium wanting to push mushrooms to the front, to see if mycelium is not contaminated, to add moist/humidity. I must also work as sterile as possible – sanitise my hands in the working area or tools, like knives. I collect spores when possible. I have learned that I can close the growing medium with a see-through plastic cover, or glass dome, depending on the height or size, to ensure enough light is available and to keep moist inside this little ‘atrium-like’ space, whilst the mushroom is growing. I prepare and experiment with a growing medium which I can use for the next growth, and I need to take care to work sterile. I have worked mostly with shredded cardboard and paper, adding coffee grounds and wheat hay as the growing medium. Spores are captured and kept with a sugary water mixture and regularly turned, at least once a day, and checked for contamination.

I have by now come to understand that when I look at mushrooms as composters, I cannot only look at the yield it is giving, (my benefit?) as it is when the mushroom acts as a composter that my eyes were opened to this composting as a way of care, nurturing of the soil and for regrowth.  This knowledge has an impact on how crops are grown and eventually on our health and environment. I do like where the thinking about making is taking me.

Across this book, I have often seen the notion of involvement as a synonym for engagement, of committed relations and politics. Involvement acquires deeper temporal meaning thinking with Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers (2012; 2013), who speak of “involutionary momentum” to name the occasion for a new relational arrangement between species. The involutionary has a nonlinear temporal quality—not an evolutionary move, not co-evolution, but an intensification of involvements and mutual co-envelopments. Shared experiences and temporal tunings of relations of care with the living soil could hopefully be involutionary, intensifying attentiveness within already existing relations of interdependency and mutual
involvement, rather than setting ethical expectations on a teleological event that would shift species activity.

The ongoing work, Involution, which is placed outside, also asks for care. I need to ensure it stays close and protected – on windy and sunny days, the plastic sheet can lift or shift away from work and not act as a protective layer to ensure a process of mycelium growth will happen. For now, I need to keep it dark and moist and have to check the growth. This care is part of how my work can be created or come to being. I am reminded of the work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whom I researched in UVC 2 and revised her work, Manifesto, 1969.

She wrote Manifesto! Maintenance Art and a proposal for an exhibition titled Care in October 1969

I will share the following statements she wrote:

C Maintenance is a drag; it takes all the fucking time, literally; the mind boggles and chafes at the boredom; the culture confers lousy status and minimum wages on maintenance jobs; housewives = no pay.

D. Art: Everything I say is Art is Art. Everything I do is Art is Art. I am an artist. And later in section II (the exhibition proposal): I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. (Random order). I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also, (up to now separate) I“do” Art. Now, I will simply do these everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art.

In a comment on her work, I read the following: “Just as Ukeles understands her gendered role as a domestic labourer to be entrenched in structures of subjugation within a patriarchal system, she also understands that the potential for emancipatory agency can reside in the same site of working, or more appropriately in an autonomous approach to valorizing the productivity of the work itself while eliminating the necessity for selling one’s labor power via a hierarchical contract or lack thereof. ”

Her work as performances was documented by photographs which she would share with viewers as artworks. I consider myself lucky and privileged to be able to study and do art full-time but having considered the situation around me concerning labour. How politicised and racially divided tasks/jobs are, I see myself very much in the same position as Ukeles, a privileged white female compared to a person of colour working on the farm as a labourer, and can my work around maintaining and care of fungi make any difference to their lives? I feel the pressure of care how Ukeles shows it, brings thoughts about moral obligations and ethics to the foreground and confronts me with my own need to use my learning from art as a foundation for a community art project.

This morning, I shared my growing learning around CARE with our cleaning lady, who works in our home 3 times a week. She was taken by my thoughts and agreed that we inherited a sad legacy through Apartheid and that she just hoped her children and grandchildren would be afforded more opportunities. Her youngest daughter is only 12 years old and in primary school, and the thoughts of getting her into the mainstream and promising high school education feel overwhelming for her. (28 September 2022).

I look back at my discussion above and my research by reading and conclude that I was merely touching on ideas of consciousness and that my making is a form of taking care that the evidence of this process of understanding mushrooms as a material which I need in my making and research, is shown. Caring tasks are the ‘fabric’ that weaves it all together. It makes me ask questions as to if I should use dates as part of the text work documenting. (thinking about On Kawara’s lifelong work) I also need to consider the use of spore making – will I see it as imprints or could it be ‘ready-made’ imprints?

I am asking myself how I will share and evaluate the quality of outcomes through my BOF. I want the viewer to see (visually experience) how my ideas and thoughts developed through the exploration of different materials, techniques, and experimentation as a coherent presentation. It seems that as my work also includes working with a living organism, a form of documentation of my making and happening (outcomes not always controlled) became necessary. I have to write about my making in my learning blog, but my subject matter became denser and documenting became necessary. I used photography and videography as forms of documentation and shared this process on social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, as well as Padlet and in Zoom meetings) with other students and in group work sessions. I look at this process as one way how my work expanded the boundaries of painting to include a reliable recording of the making, anticipation and sometimes unintentional observations with living material. I want to use time-lapse in further explorations. I am unsure if I can claim that my documenting work is objective. Research of the fungi was mostly done by looking at visual images and physical species, as well as reading about the type with regards to identifying form and appearance. I use an App to identify species of fungi and lichen. I cannot help but feel reminded of what Susan Sontag (UVC 1 and 2 reading/learning) wrote about a photograph as being the opposite of understanding and that it can be layered with meaning, it is mute – “which starts from not accepting the world as it looks”….”understanding is based on how it functions. …functioning takes place in time, and must be explained in time.” I would prefer to see my documenting work as a form of optical language that happened in a creative experimental space between me as the artist and my materials.

I consider how I extend my work and note that I am reading new work, such as the book I finished yesterday by which in a way took me to consider it as a sort of provocation. I also find inspiration from a local group of artists who work mainly with fibre and printmaking. I visited the opening of their exhibition the previous weekend and keep in contact with them regarding their search for inspiration and making thoughts and processes. My interaction with the OCA Eu group and being a member of the core group (organising and mostly doing social media communication) stays a great place of inspiration.

RESEARCPOINT: Describing the reflective practice

In Studio Practice, my tutor and I discussed the importance of curiosity of mind and that I should nurture the side of my thinking. I think about my reasons for committing to my studies and then my sense of awe when I explore nature and my connections. I am not too uncomfortable with uncertainty and feel curious about the unknown. I desire to create and look for ideas and learning within my practice. I enjoy observing things and try to bring this into my work. I want to develop a critical way of thinking concerning reflecting on my practice. It is becoming vital to think about how I position myself as an artist within my work.  I have recently listened to a conversation around the work of   —-and the idea of being reflective of my work and seeing myself as an agent stuck with me.

For this research point, I started with a Jam board to view the main ideas and processes of the work of John Dewey, Donald Schon, Graham Gibbs and David A Kolb.

I will surely take note of the words of John Dewey, which are shared in the course notes. (p15)
The wisest of the Greeks used to say that wonder is the mother of all science. An inert mind waits, as it were, for experiences to be imperiously forced upon it.

The curious mind is constantly alert and exploring, seeking material for thought, as a vigorous and healthy body is on the qui vive for nutriment.

Eagerness for experience, for new and varied contacts, is found where wonder is found. Such curiosity is the only sure guarantee of the acquisition of the primary facts upon which inference must base itself

Exercise 1.2: Diagram as a model of reflective practice

Exercise 1.3: Writing a reflective commentary

For me, reflection brings a perspective that there is not only ‘one’ answer’ and helps one to think independently about ideas. It is primarily a process that moved away from knowing ‘that…’ to knowing ‘how…’ In my experience, I do use a blog or diary to consider reflection. Still, I have also experienced that being in a small group discussion or looking at other artists’ work as a case study makes me more reflective. There is a lot of value in silent crit opportunities within our studies as a way to look and think reflectively.

I recently had an excellent practical experience with my young grandson, 6 years old. I helped him with homework when I suggested we look at what he has been learning about our national symbols and make a short speech about it. He had to write at least 4 sentences reflecting what he understands about a national symbol and how the protea became part of this. I happened to have a fresh King Protea flower and suggested he paint it and then tell me about the plant,  what he sees when he paints, how to make pink, how to get lighter shades of green, think the sugar bird that pollinates on it, where it grows… The result was that he looked closer (observed?), became more inquisitive, and found one of our coins, which also has the Giant Suger Bird as a symbol; he used a reference book on endemic plants and could use the painting as part of his speech.

I realize that reflection helps with structure (becoming clear about and finding the meaning in the chaos). I cannot help but think about my first discussion with the tutor, Lydia Halcrow, at the beginning of this course; when she referred to the structure of the course and my use of terminologies, she suggested treating this with ‘care’, suggested I ‘park’ it a little bit. I want to think that I can use materials as a place where I can reflect and think through my making. I will revisit Tim Ingold again and again to consider what I am doing when I am making. My field of study is working through and exploring mixed media. I also want to touch on rhythm as I become more aware of time and space with my making. I think seasons play a role in my making; I need to be wary of the growing season (winter/summer/spring/autumn) and rainy season to understand the conditions which are good for the growth of mushrooms when to forage, and how this can impact on my own ‘farming’, which is inside in a more controlled space, where daylight and night as well as temperatures, and moist could play a more prominent role. The making will look at growth and decay, all rhythms I see that can be layered. This is where documentation with a photo or video material would come into my practice.

Again this brings questions about how I negotiate in these spaces, which is also temporal. (where mushrooms and lichen grow in nature)

Is there a way to listen to this space and show them as beings in their own right in my art? I need to show respect and care for this ecology and place. Again the idea of listening carefully and acknowledging the slow pace (the flow?) I find myself when I am with fungi. I walk slowly when I forage; I stop, touch, sit down, and look. This gives me an enhanced sense of place and time as that moment feels so much more alive. It is important to remark that lichen and mushrooms are also found in faster spaces (adaptability) – I have not just encountered them in nature or at the coast, but around urban spaces, sometimes the neglected spaces (drains, old buildings, on or next to the tarmac) but to me, they bring the opportunity to breathe or halt for a moment – the encounter with. I also think I can look at the soundscape of space as a rhythm. In Studio Practice, I wrote about the Pygmy women who sing when they forage mushrooms. I think the sensory and bodily involvement is part of my art experience with the Fungal Kingdom – working with living materials, like spores, as a routine in my practice made me more aware of the sensual and aesthetic of my subject.

I recently made a short video to share with my tutors for a meeting. I did not have much time to reflect on how and what, but I went with my gut feeling of creating a visual space where I could share my current thinking, which informs my making. Thinking about the learning after I shared the video:

• Maybe I was in too much of a hurry,
• I am never comfortable around a camera,
• I am self-conscious as English is not my first language,
• Did the ideas come across clearly,
• how did I come across……
• is it too long,
• too many mannerisms I should try and get rid of.

I would not say it was good work, and changes can be made. I also think the feedback I will get from the tutors will be a great learning experience. I do like the use of this app and will learn how to make more effective use of its tools. I have to say there is potential, and this form of communication can be used to document my work and share it with tutors and viewers.

List of Images

Fig. 1. Matisse, Henry 1911. The Red Studio [photograph of work displayed at MOMO, June 2022] At: https://washingtonpost.com/art-entertainment/2022/06/22/matisse-red-studio-moma-shchukin/  (Viewed online on 5/10/2022).

Fig. 2

Fig. 3  Van den Berg, Shany, (2022) Walking my mind [screenshot photo image] At: Instagram post of the artist

Fig. 4 Van den Berg, Shany, (2022) IG Post [screenshot] At: Instagram post of the artist

2. A photo of the interior of Matisse’s studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, in 1911. (Private collection/Archives Henri Matisse/Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/letter-to-a-wound-by-w-h-auden/id1505102170?i=1000470168398