Flying by the Seat of Your Pants: the process of making in a time-starved environment

Following a residency at Poimena Gallery in Launceston at the start of the year, my paper will address the symposium’s theme area of prior knowledge/new experience.  As part of the residency I was required to work with college age students from the Launceston Church Grammar School’s art department in order to ‘kick-start’ their thinking for the coming year and also produce a solo show during the time there.

My paper will outline the process of engagement by the students, running in conjunction with my own working methodologies, to produce a finished and resolved work in under two weeks.  Using the school grounds and Poimena Gallery as subjects for the project, my aim was to situate the work spatially in an environment familiar to the students so as to engage them in an understanding of their habitual movements.  By drawing mental maps of the school grounds that highlighted the spaces they spent most time, my work was planned to be a contour map of the use of the school’s environment.  The result of the project was a work containing three elements: an architectural intervention devised before the residency, a sculptural work made from my interpretation of the student’s mental maps and the students own work from the project.  My paper will conclude with an assessment of the successes and failures of working within a tight timeframe to produce an artwork incorporating data from a specific social group within their social environment.