the erratic nature of research

The difficulty for me about keeping this blog is the erratic nature of research. Previously, I have allowed projects to develop before presenting a single work derived from the chaos of my findings at the end. This creates the impression of a coherent, linear research and development process where artworks emerge fully formed and complete. From an art career perspective this is preferable because it conforms to all sorts of beliefs about the artist's vision - and it hides errors, imperfect tangents and the like. From my perspective as a researcher, this is a nonsense camouflage and actually does insult to the very thing I love about these projects: the complications, the false turns and dead ends.

So here it all is, laid out for scrutiny and comment. It is frightening and thrilling to be contravening all the lessons I was taught about protecting your brand as an artist. Perhaps it signifies my final farewell to the illusion that one day I will 'straighten up and fly right', produce stand alone artworks that can sit proudly in a gallery with a price tag! Instead I'm enjoying Bill Brown's discussion of 'Thingness' in his article on Virginia Woolf's short story, "Solid Objects", published in 1920. There is a proposition that the misuse of an object can allow us to experience it in its specificity or can allow us to appreciate its individual features anew. This is a happy echo of the misuse of wooden finials I have been working on with my father. [Brown, B. (1999) The Secret Life of Things (Virginia Woolf and the Matter of Modernism), Modernism/Modernity 6.2, pp.1-28]