Study group/tutorial day with Tutor, Sharon Boothroyd and other students

I was very pleased to have attended the Thames Valley Study Group for the first time yesterday. Apart from the the fact that it was really lovely to meet other students all at different stages and at various levels, it was of course also great to see such a variety of work.  Some very inspiring work - (and I'm afraid I can't remember the student's name but will insert it here as soon as I can find out) in particular there was a project which was a 'fictional hidden history' consisting of photographs with a narrative and objects that might be part of an accompanying installation.  This work was so interesting, distinctive and original; I was really amazed.   It was great to see because the possibilities for me as someone interested in performance, writing and photography suddenly seemed much greater - or at any rate less disparate and I can begin to see how I might draw in some or all my interests and work with them together to create something in the future, maybe.

Another project that I remembered (again, I have no name, apologies!!!) was one where a student had put together an album containing two sets of photographs; one some holiday snaps (well taken snaps!) of her own from Venice and the other snaps of the same places from taken from Flickr.  It was so weird to see how the exact same photographs had been taken by strangers.  I thought this asked really interesting questions about the nature of photography.

It was also great to see the level of work achieved by the students in Level 3.  The photography was of a very high standard and their knowledge was really impressive - mind you I'm always impressed by people who know the ins and outs of technical 'stuff'.

One of the other really positive things that came out of attending was that I became much more aware of Sharon Boothroyd who isn't my tutor but whom I drove to the tutorial day.  I felt it would be a little rude not to look at her work beforehand and I really enjoyed spending time on her site. What stood out for me just from a technical point of view was how clean Sharon's images are.  I've been thinking a lot recently about how I can sometimes over-process things and I was really struck by how that was very much the opposite in Sharon's work.  I also took on board how important the concepts behind the images are in her work and that the ideas, stories, narratives are really key - in fact it seems to me that what informs the work is crucial and is what separates work like hers from the plethora of images you might see on Flickr for instance, some of which are terribly impressive but often without context; that isn't to say there isn't any context to be had, it's just not focused on in that medium.  It was good to see the probable final collection of her prayer project "They all say please" and really useful to chat to Sharon during the day.  I was given some good ideas to work with at the tutorial and also some helpful work to look up in relation to ideas we were chatting about - thanks!!