Critical reflection
This reflection begins in the studio, with materials that act in time. Resin cures and holds shallow depth. Clay dries and shrinks and records a fine line where air has drawn out moisture. Sand moves inside a pour and settles into channels. I learned to keep these actions visible so that the surface can be read like a shore. The chapters follow headings proposed in tutorials with Sarah and through feedback from peers and visiting tutors. They show how separate studies became one installation and how that installation clarified an ethic of care and repair at the heart of the work. I refer to earlier pieces when they help the argument, but the focus remains on the present body of work. My earlier work already traced water as presence and as trace. Layered inks and resin suggested hidden depth and a soft atmosphere that changed with the viewer’s movement. Those images taught rhythm and restraint. When I entered the course the questions moved from image into matter. I began simple tests with resin, sand, clay and pigment to see how each behaves over time. In Unit 2 I made the first families of relief tiles and thin resin skins. The work titled When the Water Left brought the language together for the first time. Translucent resin gathered light like shallow water. Clay and sand kept dry edges and fine lines like the memory of retreat. I still thought in single statements. Unit 3 taught me to think in fields and fragments. What began as a picture of water became a condition where matter remembers time.
Contexts that inform this position include Eva Hesse’s early room works, where drawing is literalised in space and material fragility is kept active (Temkin 2002); Duchamp’s Large Glass, whose accidental cracking was accepted as part of the work’s meaning rather than a fault to erase (Tomkins 1996); and Rachel Whiteread’s casts, which make absence and trace the content of sculpture (Dexter 2005). Full citations are provided in the bibliography at the end of this reflection.
Subheadings -
monayadav.com