Thinking Through Art: A workshop, Facilitator: Emma Drye

4th of May 2019, The Tabernacle, Notting Hill, London

The objective of the workshop was to help distance learning students to:

• Gain a personal perspective on research as part of an artistic or creative practice

• Learn some strategies for research that can be implemented in our own studies

• Network with other OCA students

The workshop started with Emma asking us to ask ourselves what the word research meant to us and what the function of research was for art students. My first thought was - to get information and to get an insight into the work of artists who have already made the journey so I could use their experience to make informed decisions about my art.

She also asked us to think about why we signed up for the degree with the OCA: what we wanted at the beginning and what we wanted now. For me the answer to both questions was the same - to raise my artistic ability beyond reproduction of what I see, to incorporate my emotions into my subject matter and to find my voice as a contemporary artist.

Emma then explained what the OCA - QAA expected us to get from research, such as -

• Competent realisation of ideas

• Articulate reasoned arguments through reflection

• Synthesis of analysis and creative thinking

• A good range of research

• Development of intellectual understanding

• The use of other views to develop or enhance our work

• And identification of our own strengths and needs.

She outlined a few interesting techniques for making effective and efficient research and split us into groups of three with a different academic text for each group to analyse. The idea was to read the text quickly without worrying about not understanding every word and without getting into too much detail. If, however there was a paragraph or a sentence that caught our attention, we were to highlight it or make a note of it.

My group got the book Art and Theory, by Nicholas Davey, and after reading 4 or 5 pages of text we had a short discussion in our group and gave a short presentation about our findings and whether we agreed or disagreed with the text.

Although it was quite heavy academic writing and considering that English is not my native language, I was very surprise how much I got out of the text following the technique explained. I felt quite lucky because the subject really resonated with me as it concerned how theory enables practise to engage with, reflect upon and extend horizons - precisely the reason why I joined the OCA.

For the second part of the workshop we were given 15 minutes to write down ideas about our practise. Emma explained that we needed to keep writing without stopping, even if it didn’t make sense, and were then asked to classify what we had written into categories such as Visual, Material, Process and Ideas. As I chose to write about women’s self-portraiture my words were mainly ideas.

The final part of the workshop was for each of us to talk about the main project, and as the majority of the participants were in HE5 or HE6 it was really interesting to hear about their parallel projects and the ideas behind them, and after each student’s presentation we had a group discussion where we were able to ask questions, share ideas and give suggestions.

I was very pleased I attended this workshop; it was very useful and clarified for me how to approach my research and what was expected from me in this regard. The techniques explained were very interesting and I definitely will use them every time I do research.