GUIDE TO LIFE ARCHIVE GUIDE TO LIFE ⇒

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The title 'Autobiography' was selected because of its strategic suitability as a means of engaging with the conceptual basis of my work rather than because of a desire to produce a literal autobiography. I have focussed on three main areas of investigation. Firstly, ideas specifically of autobiography as it operates as an art practice, and how this practice relates to contemporary ideas of subjectivity, authorship and identity; secondly, autobiography as an investigation of the process of making art; and thirdly and interrogation of formal issues and how that relate to ideas of meaning and meaninglessness.

This year, even though producing work under the title of 'Autobiography', I wanted to have and ambiguous personal relationship to the work. I also wanted the work to have an ambiguous relationship to the 'truth'. Contemporary theories of subjectivity reject the idea of an essential, unchanging core - a 'true self' - hidden within each subject. Identity is recognized as arising from social construction, not from biological imperative, and as a result is in a constant state of flux. Within autobiography there is an expectation of a cathartic disclosure of personal truth by the artist and a vicarious access to this truth on the part of the viewer. I have deliberately subverted the viewers desire to find 'truth' in the work. The work establishes an appearance of 'autobiography' and of self-disclosure that on closer examination proves to be illusory. Meanings are established within an arbitrary symbolic language. The language is a closed circular system which denies all access. The work functions on a system of seduction and denial - any accessibility promised by the title 'Autobiography' is deliberately blocked and any promised meanings lapse into meaninglessness. The ‘speaking subject' within the work cannot be found. There is communication, but no understanding.

The title 'Autobiography' is a strategy which has allowed me an analytical engagement with the process of making art. I have been interested in questioning how my process is determined by the idea of the artist as an inspired individual expressing their unique subjectivity. I have tried to locate my practice outside an unreliable cycle of inspiration/fulfilment/disenchantment. This decision to work outside an inspired space has been taken both conceptually and as a practical strategy for the building of a sustainable art practice. The mechanisms established to block access to the work for the viewer have also been effective in defusing any cathartic relation ship I might have to the autobiographical material. The establishment of guiding systems for the repetitive performance of art-making tasks has further denied any transcendent fulfilment in the work.

Viewing the work 'Autobiography' becomes a constant process of searching of and finding meanings only to have these meanings disappear until ultimately the work becomes the search for meaning itself. The work perpetually moves between conceptual and formal. Readings are consistently thwarted until the conceptual faculty is disabled and the viewer is forced to engage with the work aesthetically. The viewer begins to ask questions about the forms themselves, the materials, construction and decoration and whether these elements can become meaningful. Questions I have been asking in the work are: What is the boundary between figuration and abstraction? How do objects communicate through material and construction? What meanings do different classes of objects carry - solids, geocentric solids, pierced forms, vessels? How con forms take on specific characteristics such as logical, discrete, communicative? What is the relationship between surface and form - when does decoration become 'decorative'? My assignment of rigid labelling to my forms has been in some sense a parody of my very real process of attempting to understand the forms I have been making.

In making the work 'Autobiography' I have deliberately tried to avoid reaching any conclusions. I have cultivated a space of contradiction where futility and purpose, cynicism and joy, and meaning and meaninglessness can coexist. I have held onto the idea of identity - whether personal identity or the identity of art itself - as a site of necessary trouble.

Lucy Harvey
ASA School of Art, Sculpture Year 4
November 1994