Applied to New Contemporaries. £25 investment in what would be an ideal way to develop Crystal Garden post uni. October 2026 to June 2027, an opportunity to exhibit is built in which would be great for my work, and there is mentoring. Fingers crossed!
I am also going to apply to PhMusuem’s Online Masterclasses similar dates to NC. There is a scholarship place, otherwise there is the possibility for arts council funding to pay the £1600 fee. I have relaised how much more perfect this kind of program would be than a master’s course in my immediate future. It is a tenth of the cost, easier to fit around full (ish) time work, involves a lot more industry exposure, and has built in opportunities for exhibitions that are not institutionally grounded. Seems too good to be true when you put it like that, and I wonder if higher education is ever going to offer as much in my lifetime as it has for those who’ve gone before me.
Need to choose between CURAE with Erik Kessels or IDEA with Charlie Engman. CURAE has typically had much better alumni projects, but I have admired Engman for a long time. Looking into both has made me reflect on what I think I need next to develop as an artist:
Counter to what I have been applying for funding for, I don’t know if going down a material route straight away is worthwhile- i.e. my proposal of buying materials, working with a specialist, and testing patination techniques. I have already done a decent job this year of knuckling down and being as materially focused, practical and time bound as possible. I’ve treated the year as a set period for developing the final exhibition, which it is, and avoided conceptual rabbit holes as much as possible. I wouldn’t do it any other way as it’s the only way to make the most of the two big exhibition opportunities at the end of it. But, it’s meant that I haven’t progressed much intellectually or conceptually. Even with the essay, which I treated as more of a careers based practice by trying to focus on something that could be publishable rather than expanding conceptually. And I wonder if the key to my development is not actually getting back into the intellectual/ conceptual side of things- both for my practice and for my ambitions as a curator.
What I need next is to be put out of my comfort zone, I want to be vulnerable and lost and theoretical again, now that I know I also have practical skills and organisation and can crack on and get stuff made. Life’s a cycle and I just need to keep it turning. I spent 1st year developing a lot in terms of artistic vision and technical skills, 2nd year focused on research and idea development, this year I’ve been doing post-image making material work and dissemination. What’s next is recognising that all of those things will need to be refreshed again, I’ll need to keep learning how to research, how to photograph, and of course how to develop those ideas materially, but the ‘work’ will always be a balance of its best and worst elements, so if I only develop on the material side of things the whole quality of the work wont improve.
Conceptual development for curation is also super important, so much so that it has gone unsaid and maybe there’s a risk in that. I’ve been trying to be as grounded as possible about it as my dream job, assuming that the ideas are a given, I’ll always have those, but the ability to know the contexts and constraints of what you do as a gallery are what will hold me back or get me into this world. But what if one day I got into a room and what held me back was my ability to rigorously defend or form a conceptual position? It would be a kicker, because that’s where my heart lies. So, I just have to make sure I do justice to that and stay as practical and commited about developing conceptually as I am about the rest of it.
This has not been my focus this year, it could not have been. But in light of that, I have a new plan for my practice to run alongside my career plan:
Arnolfini & Copeland = The completion of a cycle. Wrap it up, celebrate it, lap it up. Don’t do the work the disservice of leaving things in motion so you can better it. There is no replacement in terms of quality and efficiency than working to a final deadline.
Summer 2026 -> Summer 2027 = A year of using masterclasses, workshops and mentoring in order to re-up on my knowledge and research skills + develop towards exhibition oportunities next in the summer. There are generally going to be opportunities in summer if I look hard enough, even if neither thing I am looking at right now goes ahead.
After this point it’s not really worth planning. Basically I am very excited about having a summer to summer structure in mind where I develop theoretically, and create some practical output even just to test ideas and get the conceptual development that comes with that. With the ~30 hours of work in mind, I should be able to fit in the time for mastercalles and mentoring that either opportunity would involve!
Signing off here, I am excited for both strands of life and think these plans are pretty useful for me!