ArtBlab Presentation
The body - medium of all perception
11 April, 2020
The artBLAB is a creative platform for art lectures founded by the tech and visual poet Michal Kamil Piotrowski and the independent curator and art historian Marta Grabowska. It is run as a series of Talks and events, where artists and art professionals from different disciplines come together to connect, share experience, and celebrate creativity. The platform presents both emerging and well-established artists who are invited to introduce their professional background and artistic practice, to meet with wider audience and exchange thoughts and curiosity in a dialogue. Previously taking place as a public initiative with regular sessions at The Poetry Café, it was recently moved Online in response to the social distancing safety measures enforced by the Government.
I was invited to take part in this project by Marta Grabowska /http://www.curatoress.com/ who impressed me with her sincere passion about art and her professional attitude. I met Michal later and found the collaboration with those two people an inspiring and rewarding experience. Michal was extremely responsive and supportive through the process of transferring the initially planned as a public Talk event into an online presentation. It resulted in a pre-recorded video presentation followed by a live Q & A session led by Michal in Instagram. The conversation was engaging and raised questions specifically directed to my work as well as such regarding the current social and cultural situation through the perspective of the art industry. The video Talk was broadcasted on the artBLAB web page and other social media channels where data from the previous events, with participation of wide diversity of art professionals working in different field, such as painting, photography, digital art, performance art, to name but a few, could be found. The following discussions will also take place online.
The presentation I pepared included an overview of my practice with a Power Point visualisation of my work. The main focus was on the Subject matter of my practice, through which I link my Painting and Performance work. I explain the different stages of development, which experienced various transformations, especially in my Performance practice and during time of the MFA Fine Art course at Wimbledon college of Arts. To record a video of my speech was not an easy task. Unlike the idea that any embarrassment from a life performance would be avoided, it appeared to be a serious challenge as self-examination and evaluation of the right amount and quality of information given, and the ability this information to be addressed effectively. An educating and constructive experience which helped me refine and reconsider the way I would like to introduce my ideas and practice to the audience.
University for the Creative Arts - UCA Canterbury
Between Image an Stage
18 February, 2020
During the UCA Open Days, students from Master of Fine Art courses were invited to share experience, information, and advices, giving a presentation on their practice and creative process to BA students from the Canterbury University. Hamish Pringle, Maia Ines, Zhuihu Zhang, Erica Smith, and myself volunteered to represent the MFA Fine Art Course, Wimbledon College of Arts, invited by our tutor, the artist Jessica Voorsanger - a course leader and tutor at the UCA, Canterbury as well.
Although I have led a few workshops before that, this was my first public presentation in the UK, which, after a few lectures and demonstrations on Presentation skills at Wimbledon, was a priceless opportunity to face the professional aspect of this part of the creative practice in real circumstances.
My participation included a Talk and a Visual Power Pont Presentation. I divided it in two parts :
Th first one - sharing part of my experience and practice, showing examples of my work during the progress and very transformative process I went through studying in the MFA Fine Art course, simultaneously referring to the development as an artist you go trough when you step into the professional Art world - what ti is to be a professional, how the MFA or MA guides the path to this level, and how to build confidence and resilience.
The second part was based on my curatorial experience after the recent opening of the exhibition Emergency, following the Immurement show before that, where I was also part of the curation team.
It was really rewarding to see the faces of the audience, the attention with which they were listening to, and the way they were making notes to collect advise and information. When you see that after a long way you have been through you can give something to the next generation with your mature experience and a slight hint of cinfidence, to inspire them, to encourage them, and lit the spark of creativity, makes the journey really worth it.
Creative workshop on Curation
UCA, Canterbury
Open days
The Talks at UCA, Canterbury were followed by tutorial and workshops led by the visiting Master students.
I prepared for them a workshop based on Creativity in Curation.
The main task was to provoke the participants to work collaboratively, create, and describe in details the organization of a potential exhibition as a team, following specific tasks and guidance. The purpose was to help them acknowledge how well the are aware of their personal skills and those of their colleagues, to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each other, use them in the most constructive way and improve where they see lack of confidence - an inevitable condition for a team to work successfully together!
And one more fruitful experience in my agenda! The students did a great job, they were very honest to each other, probably also being in a close circle together, but I was sincerely impressed and grateful for the chance given!
