Summer Project

Back in July I was sent an email from Edinburgh College that gave instructions to complete a project in preparation for starting the Contemporary Art Practice HND Course on August 24th.

Part 1 of the project was to research a handful of contemporary art galleries and specific pieces dotted around Edinburgh, to then express either positive or negative reactions to the pieces of work.

Part 2 required us to actually create 2 pieces of work based on our research and development taken down in Part 1. These 2 art works were to be produced in response to 2 of the following titles:

• Here & Now
• For Sale
• This Land is Our Land

The instructions included details of how we were expected to create our actual art works. We were asked to produce our final responses in two distinct media with at least one of the pieces in a media we are less familiar with.

Having been used to critically evaluating different art works from the BTEC course and why I like them and why I don't, I felt I was able to easily slip back into that mindset when I visited the Modern Gallery recently on Belford Road in Edinburgh.

Since receiving the email I have made a conscious effort to visit Edinburgh and take down my thoughts in note form regarding different art works and how they made me feel, why they made me feel that way etc.

(I will post these above mentioned reflective notes in a separate blog post)

Since I have became familiar with working with video and audio in the past year I chose to create 1 piece using said media. As for the second I have the material and development but have yet to choose an 'unfamiliar' media to work with.

I have just under a week to complete the project and hand it in on my first day. It has been great to get into the swing of things again since finishing at Borders College in June!

Working at Lyle & Scott this summer has given me the opportunity to think a lot about what I want to achieve through my artwork. 'Time' and how us humans experience time has consumed a lot of my thinking this summer and has ended up being the theme of one piece of this project under the title 'Here & Now'.

I am planning on posting about this project at the weekend once I am completely finished.

Blogger, it's been 2 months since my last confession...

Since I last posted on here I attended my interview at Edinburgh College! It was a great experience, I was able to mingle with fellow hopeful students and get to know a bit about each other before we were taken in individually for our 10 minute interviews.

I was asked questions like;

1. Why do you want to do this course?
2. What was the last exhibition you saw?
3. What do you think the strongest piece in your portfolio is?

My lecturer had helped me the week leading up to the interview with the portfolio itself, mounting photographs, drawings, prints etc. I had explanations at the ready for each board of work but was only able to convey these through my answers to their questions.

It was great to see their facilities and where I will hopefully be studying for the next 2 years. I was able to ask them a few questions of my own at the end of the interview. I enquired about how much freedom and flexibility we will have as students when it comes to projects, also I was eager to find out about life drawing classes and how regular they would be.

The interview panel told me they really enjoyed looking through my work and especially watching the video pieces I included on a disc for them to view with the portfolio.

I was told we would here back from them later in May. So until then the pressure is on regarding our current units: Papermaking (due in this Wednesday), Surface Pattern (due the Tuesday after) and Info Graphics and Final Major Project sometime around that time too! I still have bits and pieces to get together and sketchbook work to polish off but apart from that everything is on schedule!