Rethink 2
During my MA Photography course we had a module called ‘Rethink’ – which forced us to change something about our practice. Three years later, I feel its time for ‘Rethink 2’.
I want to explore an art practice that balances conceptualism with a more intuitive approach to image making. I want to escape the prescriptive ideas that I rely on as a commercial art director. My Zen walking mediation practice and interest in the writing of Carl Jung on the ‘primordial mind’, and D.H. Lawrence’s philosophy of ‘Blood consciousness also feed into this.
Three experiences coincided with this a solo artist retreat in the Nevada wilderness at the Montello Foundation, a portfolio review with the curator Zelda Cheatle and a stay at Ghost Ranch, where Georgia O'Keeffe started her work anew after leaving New York.
Below is a short text on my experience at the Montello Artists Residency in Nevada, USA.
At Montello
Driving back from the cabin, I got out of the car to move a rock from the track. An eagle swooped past me in the clear Nevadan air. I was hit by a wave of emotion. This was not soft-mindedness: my head had cleared in the preceding weeks spent free from social media, email, and people. I responded spontaneously to the encounter without a self-conscious screen: a mark of my experience at the residency.
My time at Montello passed slowly, with the days lingering long and spacious like a childhood summer. I would take off on the bike to follow a track just to see where it went, or walk through the sagebrush at 5 am when the stillness felt palpable. My residency felt like a long meditation, in which I would release the shutter of my camera at certain times, trying to drill down into the moment. I grew more familiar with the comings and goings of my mind and the comings of the nature around me. I felt a series of ‘openings’ through which I could feel a visceral connection to the wild community around me and the silence that underpins everything.
Making art through an unmediated experience of the non-human is becoming central to my art practice. In this sense, the residency came at the right time for me, and I am grateful for the experience. I was able to devote time to my practice, to research in the wonderful library, and to experience the American wilderness for the first time. I took the opportunity to read Walden, and Carl Jung’s ‘The Earth Has a Soul’, which are on my shelves at home but I had never found the time to read.
I will carry this with me and allow it to shape my work.