David – the start and end of your semester are intriguingly different points on the spectrum of your project. Without a doubt, it is good to see the video works arrive on the scene as part of your dialogue with(in) both the poetic and the absurd, the black humour of bleakness and (yes) a resolute optimism that is becoming finely balanced in your work. The tree is a great example of how a work presents this ‘double’ bind – and it was a lovely surprise to see it alongside the straight-out hilarity of the other two works. We think this is a good move at this time (and this will come as no surprise).
Your body of work also constitutes the set of drawings that you have been building for the ‘book project’. Of importance here is your willingness to shift sideways – while you determine how to proceed with a ‘print project’. You work consistently and determinedly on these drawings and initially you were focused on one particular outcome for them. This can be done – but is by no means the only option you have to consider for their circulation. My criticism is that, for some time, you were resistant/reluctant to try other possibilities – other means of making work that could be built into the language and idiosyncrasies of a broader project – and indeed, may suddenly reveal new possibilities for making work.
In this way, while the blog is to be considered another lynchpin in your work, it has not necessarily been a vehicle that broadens the terms and references of this project – actually, on these grounds, I think it is patchy, fairly thinly attended to. It is a lens of a sort, but can afford to become more acute, or else find other ways to collect, reflect on and present the information that is informing the project. It would also have been useful to present ‘version 1’ of the A4 drawings at this cusp. David and I are looking forward to how the project develops and in what directions…
Good call on the blog. It has been thinly attended to. I'll have to ramp it up next semester.
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