Exploring my changing art practice visiting exhibitions, reflecting on experience and contemporary and historical artists and movements.
Screen grab: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/marina-abramovic Accessed: 9.30, 25/09/2023.
I visited the Abramović exhibition at the RAA on 22/09/2023. On a wall in the exhibition Abramović is quoted as saying: 'My body is my material'; in response I thought: 'my memory/lived experience is my material': at least for my current project '30 Oaks - 30 Silver'.
I became interested in her work some years ago - while studying art psychotherapy; we briefly re-staged 'Nightsea crossing' in front of 30 or more students and staff - as one of the two participants sitting at the table, I found it moving and strangely affecting - as someone who is profoundly uncomfortable participating in performance or public speaking, I found myself relax, and felt a deep stillness spread out from us across the crowded room of onlookers.
Early in 2023, I visited Abramović's 'Gates and Portals' at Modern Art Oxford [Abramović, M. (2022). Gates and Portals. [Mixed media] Exhibition: 24/09/22 - 05/03/23] and the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Again, I was unexpectedly moved, and discovered surprising links to my current project '30 Oaks - 30 Silver': as I create small assemblages from found
objects at the sites I visit, they become totems, evoking memory, experience and place, reminiscent of the objects that Abramović enaged with at Pitt Rivers, and her use of rocks and crystals in 'Gates and Portals'.
David Elliott 2023. 'Penmaenmar'.
Rock, dry plant, adhesive, paper label with string and ink. 13x10x6.5cm.
Abramović spent time visiting communities, exploring physical endurance, rites of passage and altered consciousness through shamanic practices. [Budd, A., Czechowski, D. and Harris, C. (2022). Marina Abramovic. Gates and Portals. Modern Art Oxford.] In recent exhibitions she invites the public to participate through direct contact with objects and exercises; she has created 'The Marina Abramović Method' as specialist workshops for performance artists and, presented a series of abreviated exercises, 'to gain a deeper understanding of time, space and themselves.' [Abramović, M. (2022). The Marina Abramović Method. Laurence King.] I have begun to follow these exercises to see what happens.
The artworks I'm developing at present, include processes I have created for myself both to 'process' memory, feeling, lived experience, and to externalise it - to share my lived experience with others, sometimes to share it with myself - moving things from unconscious to conscious. Unlike Abramović, I'm not trying to cause or trigger affect in others, or present my work to audiences through direct performance, but rather share my own experience through the works I make, which sometimes require a performative process. As an art therapist, I've found significance and value in helping people to externalise their internal experience, through physical process and material outcomes. I think this is becoming more embedded into my art practice.
Part of that experience, in both contexts is that sometimes I may create a piece of work, carry out physical actions, for which the meaning is initially unclear, but which emerges over time, through reflection, alteration of the object, or contemplation and revisiting the object. I'm currently working on a piece in my studio, which started as a playful, fun piece of work whilst listening to Dave Brubeck's 'Take Five'. As it's progressed, the work has slowed to a more contemplative pace, with several days between amendments, but it's there on the studio wall, I see it daily whether I work on it or not. The currently untitled, unfinished work feels to me, like it is becoming a visual expression of my written manifesto... though I can't quantify how or why; I can't point to specific parts and say, 'this shape means this, that line shows this sentiment.' And yet, it feels more and more strongly to be a visual representation of my manifesto. Perhaps that will change again and cease to connect to the manifesto at all. Perhaps I'm exploring ways to express/externalise the non-rational which therefore can't be contained in a linguistic form.
David Elliott 2023. Untitled [unfinished]. Acrylic, charcoal, graphite on paper. 150x180cm.
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