vernacular/assemblage workshop with Leah Capaldi and Emily Woolley
This workshop followed a session in which we considered artistic vernaculars, identifying them in the work of others and ultimately our own. We came to this session with five images and five materials or objects that reflected what we had identified as our own vernacular. Using these materials, we embarked on a series of tasks that addressed the question: how can meaning be subverted and reconfigured?
In 20 minute sessions we would assemble our materials and objects in response to prompts such as ‘support’ or ‘conflict’. After this we discussed the wider concept of Assemblage – considering it as the generation of a unique whole “whose properties emerge from the interactions between parts” (DeLanda 2006, 5). After this discussion, we were given toothpicks and Blu Tack with the instructions to reconfigure something we had already made in the session into a kind of installation.
The linear structure of the workshop was therefore:
Identify materials and objects relevant to your practice
Investigate Assemblage by doing
Investigate Assemblage through learning about the theory behind it and looking at exemplary artworks and artists
Return to something you have made and – with this knowledge and through this lens – reconfigure it
The composition of this workshop was useful in demonstrating the relevance of the concept of Assemblage to our individual practices. Art theory can seem abstract or distanced from our studio practice. By using our own materials and first creating works with loose instruction but without agenda, this session drew out ways in which we might already (perhaps unknowingly) be engaging with Assemblage or ways in which it could be incorporated in the future.
It was particularly interesting for me as I am looking to work more with installation going forward in my practice. I was able to consider the ways in which I hierarchise the formal qualities of objects over their interactions and relationships with each other. This workshop preceded a workshop on Speculative realism, which further explored these ideas.
