false positives/ false conclusions

There was a big importance placed on resolved work for the Postgraduate Diploma assessment. At this time parts of my work were partially resolved - Oil on Cardboard was finished, TOUGHEN UP LIGHTEN UP in cardboard said 'TOUGH', CRUEL TO BE KIND was documented in photographs as it was in The Outbye Gallery, i had the sledgehammer and cubic zirconia pieces, flyswatter was hiding in the sculpture department for repairs, the bird whistles were sitting in the studio - there were lots of little conclusions.

I've spent the last two and a half weeks out of the studio, trying to rest, recover and find some clarity.

I had some big ideas: an anti-performance stage - a stage that would be unusable due to being too steep to physically stay on, or too flimsy to hold a performers weight. An untitled work that i toyed with calling WALK IT OFF (the title comes from being in the A&E department of Ninewells with a fracture in my spine that the doctors didn't find for 3 weeks and I was told to 'walk it off') although I also call it Smash Piece - is a work in which I smash handmade porcelain trophies with a sledgehammer.

I thought these ideas might be my Masters Show works, but now I realise that this is an artificial conclusion. In my last tutorial, Graham said that that I had to go back a couple of steps and resolve works that were unfinished, that I had stopped making so that I could start making something else. So, this week when I return to the studio, I will finish TOUGHEN UP LIGHTEN UP, which needs ENUPLIGHTENUP in order to conclude. Then I think I will turn my attention to making some of the objects that are in my paintings. I never work in sketchbooks, instead I make large-scale drawings or floor based drawings or large paintings, in order to work through ideas and document them. I have been wondering if I can make the objects in the paintings as sculptural objects - the pill bottle already exists in ceramic and the flyswatter grid is in the acrylic painting, as the oil rig legs - I imagine these to be similar to the legs of the stage pieces. Oil on Cardboard has the lightbulb and plug object and the triangular shapes that I imagined the stage to be shaped like. Both paintings have the black and white checkers and stripes that I wanted to paint the stage surfaces with...

So, tomorrow morning I need to get into the studio and hang the paintings, and start playing with the objects that are inside them. I need to collect the pill bottle from the sculpture department and drop off the trophies. I need to speak to the technicians about what i what to build. I need to move a painting into the new studio. I need to find a stack of cardboard boxes to finish the text pieces.

I need to get back into it.