“The methodological choices leading to research methods should
(Hannula et al., 2014, preface xiii)
be as open and self-critical as the practice itself. Both can be under continuous development.”
MA show
For the MA show I made a work called Into the Weeds. It was in the centre of the large fifth floor room, with some floor pieces impinging on the walkway and some smaller pieces suspended from the ceiling around a disused goods crane. I made it from laminated bits of insulation foam covered in repair plaster, as well as bits of steel from the road, and builders’ line suspending parts of it from the ceiling. It came from destroying a previous faux-concrete sculpture, one of a series, and then rearranging the fragments.
Following my research around monuments, my sense of what constitutes the monumental has expanded. While it began in ideas around scale, weight and longevity of material, it now includes an a sense that the current moment calls for personal and fragmentary artistic responses, over a search for universal truths or a universal audience. Therefore, I wanted to create a work which was de-centralised and fragmented, so that the whole work could not be viewed at once when standing in the centre; also that the sense of a centre was itself disrupted by nonsensical health-and-safety-esque barrier lines, mirroring how I feel in public space. I was keen that the audience member should take a very small diversion and find themselves among these ruins, perhaps unknowingly, subtly becoming a participant focal point.
In the iterations which immediately preceded the show, the work had been installed in isolation. While there are elements of installation practice, there is something bounded about the final version which makes it more like an expanded sculpture that interacts with the building and institution.
In the show crit, the main sticking point was a suggestion that there was not much for the audience to identify with if they weren’t familiar with my previous work (words like ‘subtle’).[2] First during the setup I had used some playful elements (buttons, thread). However, I decided were from a different material language, and went instead to builders’ materials (polyethylene line, aluminium tape) in order to more literally construct meaning. One tutor said she missed these fun elements, because she didn’t have much left to identify with. Also hanging nearby was a bronze nose I had made, without a particular label, which they read as entirely separate.
The other tutor, on the other hand, felt that the nose was a crucial part, because it placed me in the work and gave reference to traditional sculptural craft and the human body. Rather, her issue was that it was bronze, feeling this material represented the (‘very British’) anxiety of the artist to demonstrate that the materials in this work were a conscious choice. While this tutor was open to contradictory impulses, she felt this should have been more of a throwaway element. I wrote bronze on the material list in pen by hand, then, to incorporate it. We felt overall the performative handmade-ness of this addition was sufficiently undermining to get it all working together.
I also prepared a short ‘script’ that I would speak nearby if someone wanted some artist interpretation to the work:
“The origin of this work is a question about what the changing social context of monuments and monumentality means for the next generation of artists
“It uses real construction materials to reference what is ‘constructed’ and ‘architectural’ while suggesting a rupture – like the ceiling or the road is collapsing. There is no central position to the wreckage – just wherever we are standing.
“Little touches, such as this steel, are found; most of it is studio; all of it is ‘real’ wreckage. Ultimately, it’s all social context.
“ps. not my nose.“
The fact that I wrote this memorisable script mirrors a performative aspect to the monument; similarly, we might recite the story of, say, London Stone[3] in order to re-create the myth when standing next to it. Unlike a nearby wall text, which would have been definitive, my work and my explanation are relational, linked to time and place, as well as tour guide-esque. The wreckage is genuinely the remains of a previous iteration which cannot be returned to, and is the trace of an action. However, it is also an act of faith and will to describe this as ‘real wreckage,’ which calls to mind Keith Arnatt’s Trouser-Word Piece (1972) in which the artist is photographed in a sandwich-board stating “I’M A REAL ARTIST”, accompanied by a text discussion of the word ‘real.’
In the show, my work was repeatedly booted, stepped on, twiddled. The deconstructed object was perhaps a little bit too successfully disappointing and overlook-able, too convincingly rubbish. This was particularly annoying during the setup. Once the audience was the art-going public, it was interesting to see who would stop and puzzle it out, or look for a text or artist nearby, while others were focused on making shortlists or looking for their mates’ paintings. However, it could also be viewed as a strength that the work does not address a universal message or universal audience, and is somewhat resistant to giving up its multiple references, while rewarding a forensic look; perhaps, like ruins, requiring context and interpretation.
The lesson here is that artwork which sits outside a conventional frame and does not demand to be looked at is risky, offering only a quiet chance to relate. But in fact, work only ever offers a chance to relate, and may relate differently on different days. In a later work, Patient, these considerations are returned to while being slightly more self-contained. We left the MA show crit with a puzzling question: “where am I [Owen] in the work?”
Afterwalls: of the Panopticon and its Ruins
Very soon afterwards, I successfully applied to be in Afterwalls: of The Panopticon and its Ruins, a show alongside a Millbank Tower summer residency, curated by Catherine Li. I proposed ‘a monument to residue and remains,’ hoping that by restaging my degree show gesture but with new materials in a new context, I might create a more confident iteration.
The resulting work, White Sugar, was a self-consciously temporary monument, made of found materials from near Millbank Tower. Interestingly, the curators didn’t have any issue adding in show elements, such as the curtain next to my ‘monument.’ This curtain accentuates the architectural and domestic connotations, speaking to privacy, surveillance, and Britain. In combination, they are distinctly Jesse Darling-ish.
Tucked in the corner is an apparently minor component; a lost (presumably) child’s drawing, found near the Tate Britain, which I stapled to a piece of timber. For me, the child’s drawing was suggestive of a sense of innocence; the stapling is a small, practical, violent gesture with the resonance of the loss of innocence, damage and repair. The three elements together evoke a scene, and the useful suggestion here is one of a character; who is here, what does he (I assume it’s a he) value, and believe? What has he lost?
Taking the components individually, I found the emotional resonance of the child’s drawing more compelling than the ‘monument’ I had constructed. I began to explore a return to my own childish creativity through drawing, to find out what personally resonated with me, rather than hammering away using the same visual vocabulary. Alongside, I was reading widely, exploring what I personally found rewarding in my practice, to sustain me through the summer and post-graduation.
Theory
Over the summer, I re-discovered the term autoethnography in Mika Hannula’s Artistic Research Methodology. Parsed briefly,[4] Hannula suggests a research practice whereby living one’s life is the research method, so long as elements of that life are made available for critique in a self-aware way. This seemed like a promising way to reintegrate my own artistic inclinations in an academic context; it also seemed to suggest how to explore our post-MA show question “where am I in the work?”
According to a talk I attended by M. J. Hunter Brueggemann,[5] practice-as-research postgraduate awards have their origins in the conservatoire, operating on the idea that it should be possible for a student to write a new opera, rather than about opera-writing, to demonstrate they understand how opera is written. Hannula’s method goes a little further, drawing on Heidegger’s concept of Mitsein, literally, being-with. Hannula suggests that it is by living contact with one’s own practice that one’s own life can become the research method. In his idea, nothing is inherently distinctly part or not-part of your practice, although you may choose to try to differentiate.[6]
Interestingly, this presents a positive, critical and existential mirror to Peter Bürger’s argument against “the sublation of art in the praxis of life”[7] in Whitechapel’s Participation (2006). Hannula’s mode is distinctively Heideggerian. According to Jean-Luc Nancy:
“… Heidegger’s work is interesting, because he was the first to think the existential condition, the being of the freedom through.”[8]
Devisch, I., 2000
Hannula further suggests that one’s bound-up-ness with the practice is inevitable, especially when performing qualitative research (such as in the humanities) rather than quantitative research (such as the sciences). Therefore, this act of making choices within the practice, in order to qualify as research (and not a ‘magic wishing-well,’)[9] must be pointed to, made accessible and available for critique. His method inflects his form as, for example, he publishes his interviews in the back of the book, including his somewhat laborious questioning.
By the way, to avoid any confusion, this autoethnographic method is distinct from autobiography;[10] oneself is not the object of the research. Life, including object relations, is the research method; and the object can be whatever one chooses. It’s also interesting to note that this side-steps a classical subject-object divide, as oneself would be a peculiar – near impossible – either subject or object of research in this method.
Theory practice method
I decided that I would be bound up with the practice, and for the method to inflect the form, including in this essay. Likewise, my research question which began as something like ‘what is the role of monumentality in sculpture today?’ has morphed to the apparently vaguer ‘what is moving?’
This must be partly because I have grown accustomed to being in an academic environment and sculptural faculty, so am now used to some of my research area being defined for me. Nevertheless, the question is also intended to be a provocation, the apparent reverse of the subject. To me the dual meaning of ‘moving’ is useful – asking both what is physically moving, and what is emotionally moving. The phrase is not particularly intended to resolve this binary, but rather argue positively for the inclusion of emotional movement as a monumental quality, alongside literal movement. The implications here are practice-based questions with myself as the artist-researcher: What is moving to me personally? What do I feel would be worth exploring in the studio? What do I sense has a chance to relate to at least one other person, when made public? As well as implying some bounds to the practice; the intended audience is human, in-person, somewhat sympathetic.
Hannula also makes a distinction between inside-in and outside-in forms of research. When we are working inside-in, the artist-as-researcher is delving into their field; so, for example, investigating the art school notion, reaching for a usable definition of sculpture, that sculpture is the art form that moves its audience around. When we are working outside-in, we might be operating with broader cultural ideas; for example, for most people most of the time, sculptures are thought of as being still.
Monuments, oddly, relate both to the specialist and the public at large, and thus are a compelling point of departure for one (me) who historically has spent time both inside and outside of academia. However, any research object can be approached from any field to some result; we might look at monuments with a historical, or an urban planning, or a metallurgists’ (etc.) lens. I am not coming from a second discipline, which would be equally valid, but less emphatically inside-in. What is crucial here is that I personally investigated monuments from within a sculpture faculty, using an informed artistic research method. In doing so, I discovered much more joy in the method than in the object that it was temporarily focused on. A sense of going-along-with, a sense of working-through, an alchemical sense of being-with and witness, is for me the real ground of the research.
Nevertheless, “what is moving?” is a material question, which suggests that some kind of answer can be found in material. This grounds the research in making as a key part of practice-as-research.
Patient
Patient is a faux-concrete form, from the same original modular sculpture-turned-series as Fugitive and Into the Weeds. It has a large, blue, central hollow, and some smaller, drippier hollows on its exterior. It incorporates a damaged steel medical trolley, and can be wheeled around while its steel bar legs dangle uselessly. It directly incorporates an altered found object, dented to create the performative illusion of weight, damage and collapse. The title is intended to evoke both patience and medical supervision.
This work is more self-contained than Into the Weeds, but retains the idea that there is a some kind of void at its centre. However, compared to Fugitive in the Easter term, the hollow is more visible and available. Where a hollow is a kind of pregnant waiting-to-relate, a hole would relate all the way through to incorporate the external surroundings. Pregnant – like a pregnant pause in music or conversation, but also because people say this reminds them of birth. This is emphasised by the near-clinical blue of its interior and leakages, and blue is also used euphemistically in adverts for menstrual and dental products. Reading myself into the work, turning the hollow upright seems to suggest that I felt confident enough to show some vulnerability; nevertheless the vulnerability here is contained in a resistant material and staged. My journal on 4th October says: “turn it many ways and finally it seems that it should be upright displaying its vulnerability as it is operated on … Alice makes a gynaecology joke.” It may also be relevant that a friend went into hospital nearby with a brain haemorrhage around this time, and that I finished around the time he came out.
Patient can be activated by performance, where by twirling one or more of its ‘legs’ I can produce a sustained sound. In the final crit, I did this in a plasterwork apron, which also has connotations of a doctor or butcher. I was told this simple costume evokes “a strong feeling of death like [it] suddenly die and fall into a random hospital frame (sic.)”[1] This suggests an anthropomorphic, as well as an architectural, collapse. The form is informed by my noticing that the ‘legs’ make noise when their position is moved. This time when carving I was deliberately pursuing a shape which was not purely visual, but also informed by the practical considerations of musical instruments.
Like with Into the Weeds, I am still nearby. However, in this instance, the performance and character aspects are more developed and visible actors in the work, and offer information which is as much confounding as interpretive. In a spring workshop, our functional definition of performativity was:
“performativity is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and create change.”
The ‘change’ can be pointed to by the comments “well, now I understand it less”[12] … “but I feel I have been freed from trying to decode it”[13] in the final crit. As well as the sound produced, there is a literal material change, as after the performance I leave one of the legs pointing up, likened to post-mortem priapism, the trace of my intervention.
In the crit, I also created a light-touch theatre, the dual meanings playing on the ideas of performing and operating theatres. This in turn was influenced by attending a clown show at the Pen Theatre, where the performer Ellen the Great would end each scene, thus collapsing the illusion, by directly addressing the audience in a stage whisper: “Theatre!”
Into Unresolve
The method I have devised, of constructing a monolith and then using the practice to push the outcomes to the point of destruction to survey and reconfigure the remains, combined with a performative interpretation, seems a significant discovery. I intend to continue to explore choreographic, architectural and mnemonic qualities in my practice.
Even so, my changing context out of academia (next, into residency at Bow Arts) suggests inevitable change. I hope that the method can be applied in a speculative way to the practice as a whole: where can it be pushed, where will it collapse, and what will remain?
This essay is a step towards a social and socially-engaged methodology, to accompany and structure the material practice. In writing it I became aware that autoethnography involves using the body – my body – as the site of a social and socially-engaged method; essays are one of the things this body can do, however imperfectly.
[1] Hannula, M., Suoranta, J., Vadén, T., Artistic Research Methodology (2014) Peter Lang: Oxford, preface. xiii
[2]. My decision to use conversational recall in this essay relates to autoethnography. I address this in more depth later; suffice for now that the choice is conscious.
[3]. London Stone: the remaining fragment is housed at 111 Cannon Street, London
[4] For a lengthier definition, see Adams et al. (2015) Qtd. in Poulous, C. N. (2021) Essentials of Autoethnography, American Psychological Association, introduction [ONLINE] available [https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/essentials-of-autoethnography]
[5] Intro to Research Degrees at UAL / CCI [online] Microsoft Teams, UAL [accessed 11.10.2024]
[6] Hannula, M., Suoranta, J., Vadén, T., Artistic Research Methodology (2014) Peter Lang: Oxford, pg. 62
[7] The Negation of the Autonomy of the Work of Art by the Avant-Garde, (2002) Bürger, P. printed in Participation, (2006) Ed. Bishop, C. Whitechapel & MIT (London & Massachusetts)
[8] Devisch, I., (2000) A Trembling Voice in the Desert: Jean-Luc Nancy’s Re-Thinking of the Space of the Political, Cultural Research Journal, Ghent [accessed 05.11.24]
[9] Hannula, M., Suoranta, J., Vadén, T., Artistic Research Methodology (2014) Peter Lang: Oxford, pg. 7
[10] “autoethnography does not mean autobiography, since my life is not the object of research but rather a way of understanding the research object” Valkeapää (2011) Qtd. in Hannula, M., Suoranta, J., Vadén, T., Artistic Research Methodology (2014) Peter Lang: Oxford, pg. 61
[11] https://www.owenherbert.co.uk/supporting-work-3 t=5m10s
[12] Ibid. t=6m44s
[13] Ibid. t=7m50s
Images: All images original photography the author. All rights reserved.
Citations:
Books:
Hannula, M., Suoranta, J., Vadén, T., Artistic Research Methodology (2014) Peter Lang: Oxford
Ed. Bishop, C., Participation(2006) Whitechapel: London
Online:
Essentials of Autoethnography, American Psychological Association, introduction [ONLINE] available [https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/essentials-of-autoethnography] [accessed 05.11.24]
Devisch, I., A Trembling Voice in the Desert: Jean-Luc Nancy’s Re-Thinking of the Space of the Political (2000), Cultural Research Journal, Ghent, ONLINE, available at: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14797580009367198] [accessed 05.11.24]
Bibliography:
Hannula, M., The Politics of Small Gestures: Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art (2006) Revolver: Instanbul
Post, T., Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression (2022) NYU Press: New York
Raymond Luczak Silence is a Four-Letter Word: On Art & Deafness (2002) Tactile Mind Press: Minnesota
Green D., Ewan, V., Actor Movement: Expression of the Physical Being (2014) Bloomsbury Methuen Drama: London
Ed. Holder, W., This Is Not New, Of Course (2012) de Appel: Amsterdam
About the author
Owen Herbert is a London and Manchester-based sculptor and facilitator.
He uses autoethnography as a social and socially-engaged method. He also produces object work which is informed by material process and working life. He co-ordinates Semillero, an informal artist talk series. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Bow Arts, Shaftesbury Avenue.
MA Fine Art: Sculpture, Camberwell 2023-4
web: www.owenherbert.co.uk
insta: @owenalherbert @semillero.io