A personal reflection on an expanded practice which includes the making and teaching of art.

1. The Artist as Creator and Mentor
Artist
Traditional
Creativity-Bringing into being of a product:
(e.g. Image/Object/Film/Song/Poem/Play/Novel)
Contemporary
All of the above +
Process/Event/Space: (thinking, exchange, social action)
Mentor
Nurturing
Enabling and empowering
Guiding and modelling
Fostering agency, independence, reflective and critical thinking

2. The Question
“So…are you an artist or a teacher?”
3 Responses:
1. “I’m an artist, but teaching pays the bills.”
2. “I studied art, but teaching is more fun.”
3. “I love them both. They’re complementary. Two sides of the same
coin. Each one nurtures the other. Why rank and choose?
I’m with no. 3!

3. Theory
Reality is complex, dynamic, and interconnected
Difference can complement and engender mutual enrichment
Labels are classifications that alternately help and hinder
One can be both artist and teacher
Sometimes one is more of one while trying to be more of the other
Why?

4. Practice
Having excellent role models and mentors as a student
My teachers were all practicing artists
They made and exhibited work and they taught
They embodied an expansive practice
I grew up with the idea that artists are people who make and teach.
Art and Teaching are Knowledge-Centred Activities, and they can be
optimised by their integration. I am still a mentee to my mentors and
a mentor to my mentees. Learning is ongoing and reciprocal.We keep
in touch.
It works!

5. Practice and Nurture
Fostering attentiveness, sensitivity, and empathy
Looking beyond the obvious: noticing and deconstructing that
which is “well-known, but not well-seen” (Jasper Johns) or vice
versa.
Patience, perseverance, willingness to take creative risks
Acquiring the ability to respond positively to the unexpected
Thinking Inside the Box: Identifying and analysing contexts and
goals and acquiring mastery during the process: becoming
conscious of “the box” and what one is doing within it
Thinking Outside the Box: Identifying, analysing and mastering
alternatives, followed by self-initiation via reconfiguration or original
conception

6. Learning to think beyond binaries and dichotomies
Embracing (apparent)contradiction; ambiguity; complexity; hybridity; (as well as
accuracy and precision)
Building capacities and spaces for Interpretation: not reductionist thinking or
didacticism
Developing an Integrated and Integrating mindset
(the individual art-work as an ecosystem; personal body of work as an eco-
system; art as an ecosystem inseparable from the rest of life)
Combining intention and accident
Building capacity for interaction and engagement (self and other, idea, medium,
process, context)
Art and Thinking

7. Key Learning Experiences
Dialogues and Definitions: 798 Space, 2004
Me: “I like this space. Can I have a show here?”
798: “Yes.”
Friend X: “Don’t Do it. It’s impossible. Professional suicide.”
Dean of School: “I think this could definitely raise the international p
of the institution. We’ll cover the cost.”
Me: “Yes!!!”
Me: “What now?”

16. Insights
Perception
Transformation in perception (MD and MKH- verified!)
“It works- even the “weak” parts are necessary within the whole!”
Definition
What is it? Who decides?
Power, Freedom, and Public Space
No signs, no definitions, no directions
Where am I? What can/should I do? Who am I?
Building and breaking assumptions
My response: accept, (attempt to) “fix”, further, new adjustment
Role of Artist
Facilitator, participant, creator of space for dialogue and interaction
Social Implications
Shift from passive consumer to active generator- via participation- of knowledge

17. Outcomes and Implications
Broke the ice: thanks to Xu Yong and Sun Ning!
Broke the mold: Local Heroes or Dead Famous Foreign Idols
First individual (one-person) show in the space
Exhibition was critically acclaimed and put me on the map, leading
to many, and regular, opportunities to exhibit, as well as other forms
of professional development
Public acknowledgement by Dr. Wang Chunchen, curator at CAFAM
and of Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale as “a Chinese artist”:
personally and historically significant!

18. CAFA: Project X (2008)
Dialectical Approach to Art and Learning
Art as Process/Event: de-emphasising “product”
Space: intervention and appropriation
Resources:“We’ll do it in the lift, if we have to.”
What does an artist need? How much can be
taken away?

21. “The Dematerialization of the Art Object” (Rosalind Krauss)
Camera as Finder: Cutting Out the Middleman
Documentation of ephemeral, site-specific works
(Documentation becoming the thing-in-itself): Why limit it to “art”?
Conceptual Art

22. Photography
This thing called life

24. Something was missing…
What is the Endgame? An essay? An equation? An unrealised thought?
Who’s left? A critic-curator?
Cut out the middleman (the Art and the Artist)…?
Over-rational, excessively analytical…
How did I feel, and what did I want to feel, when I visited an exhibition?
Flashback to being 17, stumbling into the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam:
Anselm Kiefer: If this is what art can do, this is what it must do…or, at
least, die trying.
Counter-Reaction

25. Drawing
Immediate, Origin, Starting Point, and (Yes! Can be) the thing-in-
itself (rather than the rehearsal)
Physicality: Drawing with the Body (I do it in the Spring!)
Unfolding Internal Logic (Thing-in-Itself)
Associative and organic
Ambiguity- Suggesting but denying definitive reading: desire not to
be pinned down to a single interpretation
Flux: multiple perspectives and interpretations
Interaction/Immersion in the creative process
Thought-mapping

26. Judgement is contingent: from one pole to another, then equilibrium
Resolution: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Integration within Ecosystem (Body/series of works)
“Because and in spite of me”
Insights

38. Bridging gap between drawing and photography
Image/Symbol: documentation and manipulation
Scanned Objects: “Democratic” Reading (+ Glitches)
Systematic, ongoing investigation. Iteration.
Digital Printmaking

50. Video
Simultaneous journeys: walking, thinking, feeling, remembering
Non-linear, associative, variation within cycles. Sampled moments
(Writing)

51. (Static and Held)
Made in collaboration with Jessica Lu

52. (Between States)
(A Collaboration with Jessica Lu and Dana Baddad)

53. Overlaps, Interplays and Integrations
Combining still and moving imagery: Still to Moving/Moving to Still
Mutability of “product”
Discrete Layers fused create most interesting results (immerse and
detach)
Dual Status: finished work (resolved) and perpetually in progress
(iteration)
Found + Made: Foundmade
Intent+external factors (“behaviour” of medium/influence of
context: studio/street/exhibition space)

54. Transfer Prints: from Digital to Analogue

56. Impact on Teaching: Priorities!
There are more ways to get it right than to get it wrong!
Goals generate criteria of judgement
Courage, patience, and tenacity are indispensable!
Embrace the unexpected! Crisis brings Opportunity ( )
The path is often non-linear, so…
Be multi-directional and multi-perspectival: spin, flip, tilt…
Think iteratively…

57. Both/And…and Either/Or… (Openness and Discernment)
Additive/Subtractive + Creative and Destructive)
Transformation is the constant: Befriend it!
The rational, conscious mind doesn’t always lead
Forget about perfection: Strive for excellence.
Transcend the ego: Art happens because and in spite of us.
Never discard anything and never give up!
Two criteria for success: 1. Is it good? 2. Which doors does it
open?
&

58. Web Sources
https://www.martinderbyshire.com/
https://martinderbyshire.zenfolio.com/
https://vimeo.com/martinderbyshire
https://independent.academia.edu/martinderbyshire
Instagram: derbyshire.martin
WeChat: MartinD9
THANK YOU!
Martin Derbyshire WAB LABS March 2019