Sophie Ashdown

As I approach the end of this MA, I must think about what happens once this amazing experience is complete.

I can see much more clearly now how both my work and my understanding of myself as an artist have changed over the past two years.  When I started the course, I think I was still searching for permission to call myself an artist.  I was making work intuitively and responding visually to pattern, colour and composition, but I didn’t fully understand what connected the work together or what I was really trying to explore.

Over time, the course has helped me recognise the themes that keep appearing throughout my practice.  I have become increasingly interested in systems, structure, mapping, repetition and data, particularly how these can be used to represent personal experiences, memories, relationships and behaviours.  

Constructivism has also been an ongoing important influence, not only visually through geometry and organisation, but also conceptually in how it represents the industrial age of the time. I am similarly exploring how to incorporate the information age we are in now.

One of the biggest shifts in my practice has been understanding that data does not have to be cold or purely informational.  I’m interested in how data can hold emotion, memory, and identity, and how these can be translated into something physical and visual.  

Moving forward, I would like to continue developing these ideas into larger and more immersive works.  I am especially interested in creating more tactile and sculptural pieces that people can physically move around or interact with.

The course has also taught me the value of reflection and documenting process.  Looking back through my blog, I can now see connections between projects that I didn’t fully recognise at the time.  For example the big foray into ink drawings eventually helped to create a cohesive piece for the interim show. 

Now I feel like I’m starting to produce more connected works as part of an ongoing venture into systems, personal data, and visual language. There is a wide open plain of opportunity there.

Overall I feel more confident in my practice now, but I don’t feel as though I have reached a final “answer.”  I still have doubts, but the MA has made me more comfortable with uncertainty and with allowing ideas to evolve through making, research and reflection.  I think that openness will continue to shape the way I work after the course finishes.

Early on, Jonathan told me that graduating students often feel frustrated once the MA finishes. At the time I thought that was very strange and surely that wouldn’t happen to me. Whilst I wouldn’t say that I feel frustrated exactly, I do feel that there is so much more to learn and explore.

My mind has been expanded so much from the course, the tutorials, the learning, and most importantly the people that have shaped and influenced me over the past two years. I think that any frustration I feel is largely because I don’t want the course to end!