After our Research Design zoom call with Fiona some members of the MVA group, Lindsey, Hugo, Sophie, Sam, Jalesa and myself had a crackdown over our contexts, our methods and methodologies.
An insight, I think Hugo and Sophie shared with about my practice was the relationship between work and leisure in my practice that I failed to recognise.
A recap:
My methodology- composting- layering, archiving, no-dig method, small things in relationship with the big things, systems, relationship, interconnectivity, bringing nutrients of the past to the foreground, rather than "digging up the past", ecology
My methods-
- painting as a form of documenting, layering, archiving, collecting, figuring through its visual language, cultivating the field of the canvas with the compost of the many small 'things' (experiences, memories, observations, stories etc).
- watercolours- layering, multiple simple, separate ideas that are part of a whole. interconnectivity
- gardening- is it a literal methodology?
using a composting methodology to garden, I think about the interconnectivity a compost methodological approach to gardening will offer, as opposed to conventional gardening, will be renewable systems, regenerative thinking. akin to permaculture.
I wondered how interchanging roles of gardening and painting could help me with my research. Could gardening support the way I paint? and vice versa?
Saving seed is the most practical way to attain agency and I wonder what insights gardening can provide into my painting practice.
Hugo pointed out that the relationship between 'gardening as work' and 'art as leisure' was an interesting idea.
They asked me, why I have intrinsic guilt about making art and why I need to 'work' in order to feel satisfied with my degree?
Here are my thoughts:
The way the degree is structured, I am obliged to be working on my art 24/7 while we are stuck in a climate crisis caused mainly by capitalism. This is a problem to the survival of mosts species that exist on Earth.
As much as I want to enjoy myself, through this very life-giving process of creativity, I can't help but feel guilty. I don't want to feel guilty, and I don't want to fuel a purely political agenda with my practice. Rather, I want my art to be situated within a political context.
Does painting function as leisure as opposed to 'work'? If painting is non-productive as opposed to 'work', and the content of what I paint, non-linear as opposed to linear growth likened to a capitalist growth module- Could my 'non-productive painting be subverted to against 'work' against capitalist systems. Or is subversion perpetuating the same values I am trying to avoid?
I find that both gardening, and painting cross roles of leisure and work. (yet I feel guilty if I practice only one or either). It's like if I 'work' 24/7 I feel burnt out, but if I 'rest' 24/7, I feel the same. I find this strange inclination to 'balance' rest and work. Why do I need to segregate parts of my life? Could Painting and gardening be INTEGRATED in one practice, and seen holistically as a seamless combination of both work and rest?
Does work have to make a product/ have an outcome? does the outcome have to be a product? which is what makes work productive as opposed to non-work, which is not the outcome? can work ever be free from a capitalist agenda?
Perhaps languaging my relationship 'work' differently would result in an alternative agenda to say capitalism. Working with the garden as opposed to working on/ over the garden. Or working with paint, as opposed to working on a painting. Resting with the garden, resting with paint?
Could gardening/ painting practice play a collaborative role in my practice?
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