1-2-1 with Jonathan

initially i was pretty nervous for this, It’s my first conversation directly with jonathan since my interview for the course and knew that I wanted to discuss quite a lot.

the things I wanted to primarily discuss with him was the position that my practice is currently in, and that i was confused on what direction my practice will take.

the other things I wanted to bring up were;

- my automatic writing exercises - as well as the development of writing on my paintings.

- unit 1 - my study statement, what might that be?

- my practice in general? is my practice in a good spot?

- collaborative making/work with other university’s especially in the psychology field.

the conversation started by me telling jonathan about the experimentation i’ve been doing with automatic writing and the combination of this with my paintings. this was an extremely enjoyable conversation. i initially expressed to jonathan about how much i loved this idea, and how much joy it brought me seeing the end results of these experiments, i even went to express how it somewhat made me fall in love with my practice again. for some time now i haven’t really painted that much, or experimented with my paintings. we sat on that thought for a moment and then the conversation shifted to how jonathan understood how much this meant for me due to how excited i seemed talking about it. we went on to discuss how i perceive my work in this stance, and we moved to how for my practice cradles me, like a mother cradles her son. jonathan suggested some ways to think about the term of cradling, like what do you see when you think of the word cradling, my first response was imagining a crescent moon on it’s back, rocking back and forth. i’ll be honest the thought kinda stopped there and i personally felt it had no real relevance to my practice, but it was good to think so openly about my work like this again.

something that i felt is really important for my practice is for it to contain as much reflection and perspective as possible from other academics, to help contribute to this goal of my work to contribute in a meaningful way for us to gain more awareness and information on the links that contemporary art has with human behavior linked with psychotic disorders. but when i was discussing this with jonathan, i mentioned how i’m unsure how to approach this. i feel very selfish with my practice at the moment. the feeling that i got with my practice when i was experimenting of automatic writing is weird sense of euphoria, i just feel so complete, and in a selfish way, i want to sit with that for a moment.

jonathan really helped me work through this. we discussed how “this is the time that i can just allow my practice to just exist - that doesn’t mean that i’m not pushing the academic field in relation to psychosis and contemporary art”. i felt extremely respected and validated with this view. it was nice to feel like i could contribute a lot just by being myself and making art. i really felt like i was putting a lot of pressure on my self by attempting to uphold my practice to this objective morality i’ve made up in my head. jonathan also mentioned how from his experience, collaboration works really well when there’s a great amount of synergy in the group that’s working together. we both felt to some degree that i would be totally fine just exploring my practice through experimentation more.

“just make art - that will build the foundation for what comes”

with this as well i for a moment discussed how i was concerned that my practice was slightly shifting from what i expected it to be at the beginning. from the get go with this ma i really wanted to work on image representation and my practice, e.g. recording film of my work, taking film images of my work to represent itself in different way. we both agreed that is is totally fine and that, if i wanted to. i could always visit these ideas in the future if they still hold relevance in my practice. on the topic of things changing, i brought up unit 1, and how i was thinking about the study statement i might propose.

“I aim to allow my work to contribute further to the context and link contemporary has in the communication of psychosis and psychotic disorders.”

i was slightly concerned combined with previous conversations how my practice might take on this political approach, and that through this provoking practice, it might contain an agenda that i feel will need to be expressed to the world, but that I am also extremely nervous on confrontation. jonathan really help me through this but reemphasizing a previous point that he made, this is a josh practice, and that it’s completely fine for my practice to not contain this confrontation that comes with thought provoking ideas. maybe my practice takes this cradle-approach to everything whilst still delivering important messages to the viewer.

it’s slightly difficult for me to remember everything that was brought up, though i do feel like i’ve covered the majority of it. this conversation with jonathan was extremely important, and that i really do appreciate the time he gave to help me navigate through this step in my MA.