practice-based research project

Research Contexts

Art as actuality foregrounds my project’s thematic territories – seeking to DO and MAKE. This substantially arose from the Happenings of the 60s, and the artists behind them. The idea of an event ‘happening’ requires reality, these artists using art as revolution to extend performance into their surrounding world, and its politics. 

Happenings were performed in the public realm, taking spaces not typically used for performance. Whilst incorporating chance and spontaneity, given the unpredictability of performing site-specifically, they were generally scripted and specific. I wanted to incorporate scripted prompts into spontaneity, using this means of performance outside a gallery space to stage a socio-political desire. Yayoi Kusama’s political demonstrations used paint on bodies as a means of creating art with activist principles.

I was inspired by liminal spaces, in the ways art can be found along the way, in-between, in the unexpected. The majority of Happenings took place within New York City, requiring the metropolitan environment for their social impact to take shape. My decision to explore site-specific performance - in a quiet courtyard within a busy campus -became a means of finding nature, peace, and hope within the city. Finding intimacy in a detached world. 

Flowers as metaphors grounded my project – the meanings each flower provides, the contexts they are given in, and their growth cycles.

Early in the process, I read an article written by a woman working within a flower shop. Published in the New York Times’ Modern Love column, the piece is a reflection on how flowers connote love. But also, time.

She ponders flowers as gifts, celebrations, and condolences – tying in human mortality with that of the blooms. Ending on the idea of ‘how startlingly beautiful impermanence can be’[1], emphasising sacred meaning as established through a lack of time. Since reading this, fragility has fore-fronted my conceptual preoccupations. When time is fleeting, and chance scare –how can we capture and utilise its material power?

Fragile temporality led to my exploration of nature’s cycles – change being ever-present in allowing growth and shifting states, as plants transition from seed to bloom to death. Nature changes and adapts to the world around it, and so can we. Seeds are produced from existing flowers, showing new life blooming from established histories. 

In my personal world, change is unavoidable as my degree ends and new opportunities arise from these foundations. In a political dimension, change arises when questions of optimisation are asked, how can we do things differently? In a technological realm, digital connection has enabled change in making the private more publicly accessible. 

As a project concerned with change and its ignition, conversational medium provides a way for art to be actuality. Putting desire into action through verbal communication begins the processes of change. And installation via Instagram allows a changing relationship to the accessibility of art.

Flowers as artistic material root the Saatchi Gallery’s current exhibition. Opening about halfway through my research process, visiting the exhibition helped me explore the aesthetics that incorporate flowers, and thematic concerns the ‘art world’ currently holds within this theme. Despite the extensive selection hanging along the walls, my interest was drawn to the middle of the space – with a workshop teaching visitors how to make their own wire flowers. This fed into the form of my performance being a chance to learn a practical skill.

[1] Alisha Gorder, ‘One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, Please’ in New York Times, 12 November 2015