I’ve reviewed my progress on creative and outreach goals and how the project is tracking against the budget. Midway reviews aren't the most engaging, but I'm committed to documentation so that I will keep the more compelling headlines. Financially, the project is on budget. There's something satisfying about a plan panning out as expected.

In terms of outreach, I've made quite a few updates to how I share my work on social media. I've been working with the wonderful Digital Culture Network, who have been invaluable in getting my socials to a professional standard. There's still a lot of work to do, but the groundwork is in place.

Outreach is also a physical thing, and I’m part of a two-handed exhibition with Maya at The Lordship Hub. Furthermore, we have secured a small grant from Haringey Unearthed to deliver two free workshops to Haringey residents to celebrate Disability Month as part of Haringey Borough of Culture. Whilst this has kept me busy with both admin and the preparation of materials, it comes at an opportune moment.

I packed up several samples, work in progress and pieces to show Heather Phillipson, who was, of course, spot on with her advice and understanding of where I was at. My forms need to get less polite and more exaggerated. Scale and repetition are one way, but I need to let loose with them somehow and make them more dramatic. This is relevant to my rewording of my artist’s statement; some of this will guide my work moving forward. Especially useful has been thinking about what I want my “viewers” (for want of a better word) to experience when they see my work. I will keep that to myself for a while, but let’s say this forms part of my creative goals, and identifying it has been satisfying.

I've been working almost compulsively on crocheted vessel forms. These started as containers for the conversations (which I still need to 3D print), but before I learnt to control the 3d form well in crochet, I made vases almost accidentally. After making more bowl-shaped forms, I realised I preferred the vases. I liked the idea that they could never hold water. I dipped them in plaster of Paris and painted them Franz West fleshy colour, then sanded them because the pink was not perfect. Then I made more. I made lumpy ones with nobbles—ones with ears and nipples.

Heather was reminded of Morandi, the repeat painter of vases. She asked me to think about what it was worth returning to about the form. I spoke about The Carrier Bag theory of fiction, and there’s definitely some honouring of the vessel. 

Researching Morandi, I discovered he painted vases because he was interested in abstraction rather than meaning. “I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see,” Morandi suggested that the physical world we perceive does not truly exist in the fixed, objective way we assume it does. He believed matter itself has no inherent meaning—our minds project meaning onto everyday things like a cup or a tree. He was defending his still lifes against the prevailing trends in abstract expressionist painting.

The vases then could be anything? A cup or a tree? Apparently, he meticulously cleaned and mattified the vases with paint and left them to gather dust. He stripped them of loud decoration to focus purely on form, light, colour, and space and would move them very slightly until he got the exact composition. 

I think the forms of vases are meaningful despite what he said. Vases and bottles not only contain and keep safe. The form is bodily. They have necks, shoulders, and mouths. 

This is how the string vases link back to my current investigations. They're surrogate bodies, and my investigations are about the body, especially the medicalised body. (The eye and the face are not distinct from the body in my conception.) 

Heather also signposted me to gravity as a material and the work of Jose Dávila. This helped me to think about how those vases could say something by how they're hung. They can pour and spill. The plaster-dipped ones are weighted and stretch their hangers. I have ambitions to work with even more elasticity and sagging. The frisson of danger in Dávila’s work, whose sculptures frequently feature counterbalanced objects, is perhaps a bit lost on an ex-circus person. I’m used to ratchet straps carrying live loads and counterbalancing people, but I enjoy the simplicity of his work, the grouping and the circle themes.

Heather’s final artist reference was Igshaan Adams. I saw this artist’s work at The Barbican some time ago and was spellbound. That’s not even an exaggeration. His work has a magical, otherworldly quality to it and, of course, is textile-based.

In the meantime, the apps (there are now a few experiments in progress) are a few iterations along, and Dylan (Dr Banarse) has given me several directions for improvement that I've not yet had time to implement. Once the workshops are finished, I can work on the apps and a walkthrough. I am using the app for the titles of my pieces, which allows me to dive back into the interviews. The Haptic Translator is a research tool at the moment, but I want a public-facing version as well, beyond the current Render-hosted iteration. This includes researching ways in which digital artworks can be displayed or documented. The digital remains relevant to the whole body of work, and whilst it is currently a bit less accessible than the physical objects, it should not be ignored. It could also be said that friction in art is tolerated and considered mysterious, so perhaps a degree of friction (and mystery) in the digital artworks could be considered a good thing.

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