The Wednesday Lecture Wednesday 24th March 2021
The primary focus of this call was to inspire us as art students to create work and exhibit during this pandemic. My overall response to this is not a widely positive one, unlike previous guest lectures I didn't find this one as interesting. This may be because of the difference in the session’s layout, so I would say that I didn't enjoy it as much. However despite this I would say that the session was informative as it gave a more mature insight into the realities of working as an artist and creating work through the Covid Pandemic.
He began the session with presenting to us a resource he created a year ago towards the beginning of the situation, the document called “Pandemic Programme” worked to help art students better prepare themselves to work within lockdown. He revealed that many students found the resource helpful, enabling them to inspire them to adjust to this new way of working. Talking about how art has been abruptly hurled into a new space that has both its fair share of positives and negatives. Hunt related to us as students during this pandemic revealing his own experiences himself and with other students, implying that many found it painstakingly difficult to work within. Ranging from issues with accessibility, engaging with online content and just the overall reception. I can personally relate to this topic of the conversation as I too have found the time of my studies difficult, specifically the online content as I didn't have the resources to engage and receive the appropriate learning. So it was interesting to hear from a lecturer the issues faced by many during this lockdown, it was reassuring to hear others were working through the same circumstances and disadvantages. I thought the speaker presented well but just lacked enthusiasm to maintain my interest as it was quite repetitive going through different online platforms artists, and students online works, it was also quite a long session.
Regarding artworks that were presented to us, Kevin accessed a variety of online works to indicate the significance of adjusting to this new work space. Emphasizing that we can all work differently through this time, and that we could collectively experience the works as we were being shown them. Hunt described the lecture as one big gallery visit which I found quite amusing. What surprised me the most about this session was the variation of online resources available, for example we can access digital artworks, websites, online exhibitions and are able to individually interact with them and experience them as we would in a physical exhibition. What is most significant is our adjustment to change, making use of this alternative space, embracing the digital atmosphere to share and create our work within.
I can't exactly respond to the artists artwork as he presented various examples of different artists' pieces so I will just talk about one example. He presented to us a website from the University of Southampton, the archive was called the John Hansard Gallery and presented the work of Sam Laughlin, his piece “Falling wall, rising dust”. The focal point of presenting this to us is the importance of accessibility. Hunt strongly implied that accessibility needs to be our priority when considering combining our artwork with digital media, revealing that audience members of the work should want to want to engage with the online artistic portfolio and that there should be ease of access.
I think the ease of accessibility is what I have mostly taken from this lecture, it has emphasized to me the importance of working within the boundaries presented to us from the pandemic. I will definitely keep this in mind when it comes to presenting my own work as my course will require me to orchestrate the work I have produced online so that it can be engaged with. I am actually currently creating my own website for my online museum so the content of this lecture has been extremely important, so I will most definitely reference this Wednesday session when submitting my work online, and consider accessibility to my content.