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Document and reflect on this final stage of your ambitious project presentation.
My journey to create a body of work which I judged as being good enough has been more difficult than I imagined when I started this process back at the beginning of level 3. By good enough I don’t just mean as a body of work up to the standards of my degree and of getting a good mark. No, I mean in terms of a suitable memorial for my daughter. I have experienced the creative process as a struggle which might be likened as a tug-of-war between the logic of my expanding knowledge of my chosen subject area, the creative impulse to build something which speaks to my inner voice and yet at the same time which fits with my sense of the audience and which does not compromise my own understanding of loss as I struggled to make sense of the death of my daughter.
As part of my process, I wondered how many artists set upon a similar precipice trying to create a sense of balance. Using the experiences of other artists and even of peers involved in their own struggles has helped me. It doesn’t always make things easier but I have awareness that I am not alone and when I lie awake at night thinking. I have a realisation that others struggle with very similar questions as I do in my work. My creative work in level 3 involved a series of test pieces, an exploration of techniques, presentation and extensive use of feedback. In the comfortable environment of university life, I can make such explorations without fear of rejection and in the knowledge that I will be supported. As I move towards the end of my studies a harsher reality awaits me where feedback might not be as cosy. I experienced a taste of this during my residency in July. Interestingly, I have experienced some health scares since then, being tested for cancer and for breathing issues and with a flare-up of my diabetes which has impacted my eyesight. I experienced a flash of fear with a visit to my doctor and wondered about my major project and how my daughter experienced her illness. Were there things which I hadn’t thought of and which I might have missed as I was too self-absorbed in my project? Such thoughts of a harsher reality in the real world after OCA are things many of us will have to find coping mechanisms and our own ways to deal with. There are thoughts of new threads and opportunities for new works, research and exploration. I also wonder what to do with the skills I have learned. Do I continue my studies perhaps investigating using my skills in different fields? I have wondered, for example, of learning about Art Therapy as a way to put my experiences to practical use. Do I continue my journey in art, creating new works and looking for opportunities for new residencies, competitions, sales and more?
My working title for my exhibition for some time has been “Epitaph” although as I write this I am leaning towards a different choice, “Art at the Edge of Death”. Does one say any more than the next? Part of me would like to make no choice but it is an expectation that my exhibition will have a name.
My creative tests have slowly started to refine my choices and narrow my narrative and flow. Aside from the choice of artwork, of titles for my work and an introduction for the project, my recent choices have been over the size of my printed work, how this fits with gallery space and the mounting of my work. I have been working on a newspaper zine to accompany my exhibition. This gives me more space to place a selection of my work and some additional text.
Develop your plans for the final steps in your promotional strategy for your final major project. Include written material such as an artist statement / project statement.
My promotion for my major project feels fairly straightforward and is based on what I have observed of other exhibitions and on what feels, to me, to be logical. I will make use of the gallery in Leith who will publicise my exhibition through their website and on social media. Their posts provide a sense of a countdown to what is coming next in their gallery and continues as the exhibition is in progress. My own promotion starts with consideration of the context of my work and I have asked myself who might have a specific interest in a project which focuses on loss. With that in mind, I have sent a description of my work to staff I know at the hospice where Rebecca died and at the hospice which she raised funds for. I have decided that a promotional zine will include the charity logo and description. I have also sent details on my exhibition to my contacts at Pfizer who I worked with as part of a cancer Insights Panel, I will post updates on my personal website, via social media posts with images to highlight the gallery and my own work. To these basic steps, I will invite family, friends and fellow students to visit my exhibition. Thinking of those who don’t live nearby, I will make a video of my exhibition and will post a link to this video for those unable to attend in person. I have also designed a poster to display in the gallery window. This forms the back page of the zine which I have designed to accompany my exhibited work.
I show images of a template of the zine. Am at an early stage of draft in using this medium.
Lastly, I want to make the wider OCA community aware of my work so will put up a forum post. I have also joined Visual Arts Scotland group and will publicise my exhibition to that community. That group also acts as a showcase for Scottish graduates so will be a nice platform to celebrate my work with other Scottish graduates in the visual arts. A similar forum exists within the OCA and while these are not directly part of my promotion for my major project they show my next steps after my degree closes.
My Artist Statement
My inspiration stems from my struggle to understand and cope with loss following the death of my daughter. I use art to try and understand grief, how the photograph fits with the spaces close to death, to convey a sense of loss and to unravel memory close to the universal constant at the end of life. I consider the photograph as a contrary and liminal object which is often used as a tool to try and freeze memory and fix our sense of loss but which, ultimately will fail in this purpose. I use my research and the creation of my art to surf the wave of our fear of death, to try and capture the sense between stillness and movement, truth and omission, rage and acceptance. In this, I am not always successful. My work uses photography, video, found album images from the past and objects and installations I associate with loss.
My Project Statement
Art at the Edge of Death by Richard Dalgleish is a deeply personal and emotional exploration of the spaces between life and death. Inspired by my daughter’s eighteen-month journey through cancer to her death and by my own parallel journey as I watched her die and was compelled to embark on a period of learning and self-reflection in an attempt to comprehend loss. The richness of my memory of my daughter, my engagement with her death and my gradual acceptance and understanding of grief means that my work is emotionally charged but with a palette which has relevance for the wider society. My daughter Rebecca does not feature directly in this exhibition but her being runs like a thread through this project.
Develop your final major project presentation with the context and audience for which it is intended.
Considering the context and audience for my work is a very interesting exercise. It forces me to ask who might be interested in my work and why. At the same time, I need to have a strong belief in my ideas and project delivery so that I am not swayed and my message isn’t corrupted by too much concern over who might be offended or upset with my work. While this submission at Project 9 is a final draft there are things I am still working on. The last few minor tweaks will not delay my exhibition. I suspect most projects which go to exhibition feature last-minute changes and fluctuations necessary to fit in with the practicalities of showing work. The particular items which I have been working on include reshooting a video of falling ash. My original piece used an old dust sheet as a backdrop. After feedback, I looked at using a black cloth but trying to isolate the ash. Often the backdrop seems to intrude and come to the fore so producing this work in a way which satisfies me has not been easy. Ultimately it is a choice between how aesthetically pleasing I want this idea to be and whether flaws in the delivery of this particular piece are acceptable to me.
My current and new video selection can be seen at the following links:
Initial video of falling ash – https://youtu.be/SW8WO7f0Jzk
Latest version – https://youtu.be/qoIV9Q1k8qk
One piece of work which has taken up a huge amount of time has been the see-saw which I want to form a centre piece in my exhibition. This child’s plaything represents the balance between life and death. After many months of negotiation and prompting, I have received the pivot for my see-saw. This is a huge lump of over-engineered steel which weighs 37kg. I know this as I paid for postage although the pivot was gifted for free. The wooden scaffold board which will act as the top of the see-saw bolts to the pivot. The pivot needs some work before it is ready to exhibit. The base is not square so the pivot does not balance easily. I have drawn up a design for a socket and steel plate with the pivot will fit into. This means that the see-saw will be in 3 parts; the pivot, the socket and base and the wooden top. Splitting this into three parts which I assemble on site will make transporting it to the exhibition and carrying it up the stairs easier. I need to pass my design to a metal fabricator to complete this work. When the see-saw is ready I want to photograph it as this will feature in zine I am having printed for the exhibition.
I have been working on what size my prints should be and also how these should be mounted. Some images need to be larger to pick out fine detail such as the baby on top of the cliff while some can be smaller. As regards mounting, I will surface mount my images so no frame or border is required. This minimalist approach will permit my audience to focus on my work without distraction. When I first thought about the material on which the photographs sit. I looked at aluminium, wood, MDF, Perspex, acrylic, foamboard, card, composite and clay. My experimentation has led me to the conclusion that I was adding needless choice and complexity which does not add to my project. My images will all use the same type of mount so as to build a sense that the works in my exhibition are part of a whole. I have taken some photographs of the gallery and digitally placed some of my work on the wall which starts to offer me a sense of how my work will look and feel at certain sizes. Along with my choice of the order of my creative work, the titles I will assign to each image and how the introductory text sits within my exhibition are things I have spent a lot of time on over the past few months. I will forward a document with this detail to my tutor rather than post this in my blog.
A blog post detailing my exploration of materials and sizes of my work can be seen at the following link:
https://richarddalgleish.net/late-work-and-choices-for-exhibition/
One important aspect which I need to resolve is my image of a child on the cliff top. I used a found photograph of this which shows the Cliffs of Mohr in County Clare in Ireland. This was a royalty-free image that I edited to suit my needs. I might shoot my own photograph of a cliff instead of using a stock photo.
I have produced a short zine in the form of a tabloid news sheet as a record of the exhibition and as a concrete artefact which will exist long after the exhibition been taken down. This is shown below: