What would you do differently if you had a second chance? It’s an interesting question to ask yourself about big or little decisions in life. It’s especially relevant to art projects. What could you have done differently to change the outcome of an artwork or art event?
This was a question we were asked regularly last year at the completion of each project for the Masters Arts and Place program. This week I was asked the same question of my final project - what might you have done differently?
For me this was an opportunity to look at what I chose to include in the group exhibition. I chose my thirteen minute film, Art of Place | Pottsville, the book that accompanied it and a brochure to lead people to my website which hosted the film, book and spoken poems.
What I didn’t include because I didn’t truely value them, were the artworks that I created during the project. To my thinking, these papers that I had drawn marks on were scrappy, torn and weren’t sufficiently ‘resolved’ to pack and send to the UK for the exhibition.
After the filming for the project was finished, I put the papers outside to dry out and then they lived on my studio floor for a month while I edited the film and created my website. I didn’t give them a second thought. Then I started cleaning up the studio, sweeping up the sand the atworks had left and realised I should spray fixative on them.
Once fixed they then got restacked and forgotton. On the week before I was to give my film showing locally, I pulled out the papers and thought I could stitch up the tears and hang the larger pieces somwhere.
I stitched up the tears and framed a couple. The larger piece I attached to a hanger (although this fell off the wall when I tried to hang it and I had to lie it flat on the table).
I realised in hindsight that these pieces had value. Perhaps I shouldn’t have stitched them up, perhaps they could have existed in some other way that retained the essence of dissolution. I undervalued their stories and therefore undervalued my part as their creator.
Is this a female centric attitude, to play down our achievements? Or an Australian one of not being a ‘tall poppy’? I’m not sure, but whatever it was I have learnt my lesson.
I answered that question ‘what might I have done differently’ with the answer - I would have exhibited my paper artworks.
And that is the lesson in hindsight - I need to value what I do more.
Another ‘in hindsight thought’, I liked the original Mangrove Marks drawing without all the stitching - maybe I could unstitch it...(or not).
The final stitched version of Mangrove Marks
The original Mangrove Marks drawing on torn paper