tom johnson : artwork

The new year begins.. with the customary paperwork in the form of an essay relating to a topic of last semesters seminars. After initial fear and avoidance, its turning into an interesting and very engaging piece of research, although at least a little rushed with the deadline looming. The intention is to explore and try to better understand the nature, purpose or reasoning behind the desire to make… but this is all still somewhat unsteady ground.... so I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and will be interviewing a few of my fellow students with a view to more in depth research for my third year dissertation…. .. After a meeting on the fifth, work is really starting on the show in march, and now that there have been various jobs divided amongst the participants things are getting moving. i will be making an exhibition catalogue for the event… ‘locus’ a series of work by me and my fellow second years based on themes relating to the title. I am beginning to learn Adobe InDesign in for the...

the last week of this semester and the last stitch of the studio. studio

so the exhibition has been and gone, although thanks to illness i found the whole experience rather strenuous, it was thoroughly productive and generally positive and at least partially clarifying endeavor. wednesdays tutorial raised some rather crucial areas into which i shall be reading over the next month or so and fridays discussion group gave me a much needed outside perspective on my motives, presentation and theory etc. i will go into these aspects in more detail but for now i think some documentation of the end result will suffice..

By the end of the week, the idea is to have some kind of display of the various tangible products of my recent thought processes and time?.. I have found the whole concept of finished outcomes somewhat of a struggle for some time. the notion and conotations of my 'productivity' particularly of late, have troubled me, but i decided to book a space for exhibition for almost exclusively this reason. the need to explore the breadth of human ability is unquestionable but understanding why is also becoming a necessity lest this all culminate in some kind of perpetual time wasting exercise. so i am trying to produce a visual experise which which may in some way translate something of my understanding (or lack of) but more importantly, allows me the opportunity to explore a space and to contemplate my position as a maker. the space is shared with a fellow student -Matthew Hayes- and is ours for 5 days, with a viewing on thursday evening and a discussion friday. so this is progress afte...

well there goes almost the entire first semester, with the exclusion of the final week in which i will be moving my work into the exhibition space and trying to gauge some sort of understanding of it all.. this will be massively aided by a private view on thursday and a discussion group the next day. although ive been working on various bits and pieces, my attentions will be focus on my post christmas work.. in particular, my plans for a group show i am participating in at the end of february. although trying new processes and methods, i dont feel i have been exposed to much in the way of the genuinely challenging so i have decided to create a piece i have been contemplating facets of for several years now. i will attempt to produce a mechanised cityscape, this week i i spent a little time working out initial designs and constructed a maquette. another w.i.p. of the painting that has become known as 'whats that underneath though' another photo of the studio

i finally got round to capturing some progress on the geometric panel, it is living up to my hopes/intentions of this to be a vehicle of understanding, a space in which to loose myself and allow the process to become second nature.. at least to some extent. i am however looking forward to some messy painting very soon however, this will be a task for a later time though. ive also been contemplating and beginning to design a sort of caged city contraption for a group show at the end of february, it will be a complex undertaking, moving parts, lights and so forth but if it could be possible to directly inform the focal works of a solo show towards the end of the academic year. so there went another week... studio