Work in progress seminar

I went to see my old ceramics tutor from college to have a chat to him about my MA project. In a way, my MA project is a continuation of the work I did for the final project of my foundation course. During my final major project I explored the notion of using the sense of touch to experience ceramics and I looked at ways of adding texture to a ceramic object so that surface texture was just as important to the overall design of the finished piece as other aspects such as form, concept, glazing, material etc.

We talked about looking into the socio-political history of women and embroidery since I am looking to incorporate embroidery into my MA work. We also touched on 'what is art now?' Is a concept on its own enough or is a piece of work without a concept enough? We talked about Grayson Perry's attitude to contemporary art - that Duchamps started 'conceptual art' almost 100 years ago with his 'fountain sculpture' in 1917 and that Perry believes this idea to be out-dated now. In my opinion, I think that there has to be a concept behind a piece of work for it to be art. But for me, a concept isn't enough. I like to see a well produced and skillfully produced piece of art, whether it be a ceramic piece, a painting, a photograph, or a textile piece. I like to be able to admire the workmanship and skill that has gone into producing the work, as well as to appreciate the ideas and the concepts behind it.

I looked at a few videos on youtube about Richard Slee and Jeff Koons. Of particular note was the video of Grayson Perry interviewing Slee about his ceramic piece 'Sausage'. In it, Slee talks about the piece and what the concepts are behind it. He talked about it being a parody of the male maker and the death of the male DIYer.

I had my work in progress seminar in which I explained a little about what I had been doing up until now and I talked about what I had been doing so far for my MA. My fellow students seemed to like the two woven pieces that I showed them and the idea of using sense of touch to explore the pieces seemed to be greeted positively. They appreciated the tactility of the pieces and so I was pleased with that as this was my aim.

I got some interesting feedback - that my pieces were reminiscent of natural structures - wasps nests and birds nests, the fragility of birds eggs. The idea of wrapping around different objects such as parts of the body was also mentioned. The tutor Kerry mentioned how important the sense of touch was when designing ancient Egyptian art -  'haptic' meaning 'touch'. Irena also made the point that my pieces were very fragile and if someone used their sense of touch alone to experience them, they may not survive since the 'viewer' would have no concept of how fragile they were. I think that this was a fair point to make and one worth bearing in mind for future work.

Vanda also made the point that the coloured metallic oxides that I had used on the first piece added nothing to the end result as the matt porcelain was beautiful on its own and the use of colour only distracted the eye from the pureness of the porcelain.

I think it is important to get feedback on work from your peergroup as it can help to get fresh ideas for future work and it helps to see whether the work is getting the reaction that you wanted it to have. Does it fulfill the requirements or is it slightly off the mark?