Semester 4

The first tutorial of the new semester began with the reunion of classmates old and the introduction to classmates new.  The latest intake included both fine art and design graduates and has helped to swell our numbers making for a lively and exciting Masters Show in September 2017. Introductions aside our principal tutor Dr Jon Pengally used the session to allow us to share with the new intake our experiences and reflections of the year past. His parting gift to us for doing so was the feedback for our research folio!

My folio in hand I retreated to the library to read then re-read 3 times more the observations and practical criticisms of my specialist tutor David Blyth. I was surprised to see arrow stick it notes throughout my documents at points he had considered noteworthy/interesting. In my feedback David included recommendations of authors and artists to research, I complied immediately and located volumes on Tony Cragg and Robert Callender.

It was with Robert Callender that I fell in love intensely with both his words and his work. Like myself he is a maker and a compulsive collector of objects washed ashore. What inspired and surprised me the most about his art was that although he collected found objects it did not mean he necessarily used them in the creation of his works. His objects provoking him to produce other works that included sculptures constructed out of paper pulp and cardboard: these sculptures giving the illusion that they had been collected from the shoreline. Callender's sculptures opened the door to me that said the sum of the parts I collected was more than!
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