Begin Again – Art Zine 

Aug 1, 2024

“Begin Again” is an exploration of the intersections between personal narrative and artistic practice, engaging with the contemporary framework of autotheory. This zine delves into the process of translating significant life events into visual form, using the medium of drawing and text to navigate the complexities of self-representation.

The zine primarily serves as a conceptual tool, allowing me to explore ideas that might inform my more formal ceramic works and as a reflexive tool on what I have been researching. Through this medium, I am able to interrogate how personal history can be integrated into my artistic practice, questioning the boundaries between my lived experience and creative expression.

“Begin Again” embodies the tension between the personal and the theoretical, offering a raw and honest exploration of what it means to think about and manifest “the self” in my artwork, and through my use of autofictional elements.

I have been drawing extensively over the last few months and I have now taken some ideas (generated in this art zine) and started to bring them onto my ceramics. I will post soon with some images of the ceramic / zine intersections soon .

BEGIN AGAIN – REFLECTION

My practice is evolving and this is a good thing, but the frameworks I once relied on (in both art and life) have dissolved and are no longer offering the stability they once did. There are changes occurring in my artistic direction as I move more into structured research and opening the door for new creative processes like un-selfing and autofiction. I’ve reintroduced my drawing back into my ceramic practice. These changes are a fundamental disruption to how I understand and navigate my creative process, the act of making and connecting to the materiality of clay is the only true anchor point left, grounding me in the midst of the changes I asked for.

A new body of work is in the very early stages. This new direction represents a significant departure from the abstracted ceramics I worked so hard on to develop over several years. Where these earlier pieces connected me to nature through my walking, firmly cementing my sense of place, or the architectural forms that embodied my physical and emotional experience of the built environment – these drawings are figurative, often marked by melancholy and introspection, and they are a deliberate pivot – an exploration of self-representation in a more immediate and tangible way.

Yet, while this shift feels necessary, there is an inherent uncertainty in all of it. I’m not sure I can sustain this approach, or if anything resembling a creative insight will surface, what I have produced so far is very unsatisfying. I don’t know if these changes represents anything like a good creative idea at all, and all of this s uncertainty feels a bit like a warning shot. The fluidity and impermanence I am exploring in this structured academic environment andhe move away from pure abstraction to semi realism, is not simply a stylistic choice, it’s a reflection of something I cannot put my finger on and I can’t not explore it. Maybe it’s just something I have to get out of the way before progressing forward again. 

I’m drawn to the concept of “unselfing” and in this context involves a deliberate move away from the ego, decentering the self to allow for broader, more universal concerns to emerge in the creative process. As I consider how this idea might inform my work, I see potential in using this decentering process with the figures I am drawing. Perhaps this will be by fragmenting their forms, abstracting their identities, or introducing ambiguity in their representation – a style that resists easy categorisation, where the figures no longer simply embody a singular narrative but instead represent multiple overlapping states of being.

I’m finding influence in the artwork of Adrian Piper and is significant in this shift in my practice. Piper’s approach to blending personal identity with broader philosophical and theoretical inquiry offers up a compelling model for how art can operate on multiple levels – personal, political, and intellectual. In the same way I’m inspired by Piper, I am drawn to the  work by ceramic artist Robert Lugo for his take on culture and identity, integrating elements of his own experiences into his work and his use of drawing in his work. Lugo has the ability to weave together social commentary with personal narrative in the ceramic medium traditionally seen as craft, and this elevates it to a platform for deeper discourse.

This move to incorporate drawing and painting in my ceramics is not a rejection of my previous work, it’ a way to explore new ideas, while remaining connected to the core themes that have always driven me in my work. Whether this shift lasts or volve into something else is uncertain, but that uncertainty is itself a source of creative energy, a space for potential rather than limitation.

As I navigate the broader art field of competitions, exhibitions and academic discourse, I find myself in a landscape that is as structured as it is alien. The hierarchies and unspoken rules of the art world are daunting, yet they also present opportunities to assert my voice to carve out a space for my practice within this complex ecosystem.  I’m not even sure this is at all a good idea knowing what I know about myself.

The introduction of new theories and methodologies into my work is not just an academic exercise, but a necessary evolution, a way to make sense of the shifting ground beneath my feet, but it still feels precarious. Auto theory with its blend of autobiography, critical theory and fiction offers a framework that aligns with my approach. It allows me to engage with the complexities of identity memory and my cultural heritage, not as fixed entities, but as fluid evolving concepts.  There is a tension developing between the personal and the theoretical and this is central to the work reflecting a broader struggle to reconcile my individual experience with the collective narratives that shape our understanding of the world.

In this process I am drawn to the idea of unselfing as articulated by writer and academic Alistair Rider -the deliberate dismantling of the self to create space for new possibilities. My work, whether through ceramics or 2D artworks (including zines) becomes a site of this unmaking, where the coherent stable self is fractured allowing for a multiplicity of interpretations and meanings. This approach resists the easy categorisation of identity, embracing instead the contradictions and complexities that define what it means to be human. Through this lens, the figures in my drawings may become less about singular, identifiable self and more about exploring the fluidity of identity, where the personal is not just one story, but many fragmented and overlapping stories.

My practice is a form of resistance, an attempt to reclaim the fragmented, the disjointed, the inarticulate aspects of life the refuse to fit into neat categories. Through the act of making, I explore the fluidity of identity, the tension between personal narrative and theoretical exploration, and the possibility of creating something that, if not fully comprehensible, is at least a true reflection of the pathway I am travelling.

Guthrie.