This month’s artist is Alyson Minkley - Recently returned to her personal professional arts practice, Alyson Minkley had a solo show at The Art Cohort in October 2020. Her work has been exhibited in open shows at The Artist Pool, London, RWA Bristol 2019/20 & FAB Bath 2018/19/20. Last year she was an artist-in-residence at St Mary’s Wiltshire, Porthleven Prize residency winner in Cornwall & in 2018 she was commissioned for the River is the Venue project developed in partnership with the University of Bath. Her work Datafield was shortlisted for the Visions of Science ArtPrize in 2020.
As a social sculptor, she explores observations of human interactions with self, each other & environment, spanning multiple disciplines according to the intended theme, including 2D, 3D, time-based & site-specific artworks. After a 15 year career in community arts, Alyson has been working in art & design education for the past decade and has recently completed an MA in Fine Art at Bath Spa University.
Alyson in herself in “360 Haptic Traces 2020 Drawing Box”
Web/social
Could you explain your practice? And why you do what you do?
I can try, but I recognise that I work with visual and experiential art because there are many things that cannot be expressed in text. I am not a 9-5 artist beavering away building artworks. I dread being asked what I do because it is so awkward to explain that swinging in a hammock, deep in thought, or conversation, can be considered a hard day’s work, and I recognise my privilege when I do take time to do that. I don’t have a particular medium, nor an obsessive theme or a fixed approach to my work. It can be both abstract and figurative, conceptual and narrative – contradicting the definitions of so many genres, but perhaps best-fitting in relational aesthetics and the broadest definition of sculpture. I enjoy collaborating cross-discipline in the wider fields of social, data and computer sciences as well as with other visual and performing artists. Some of my projects are socially-engaged, like Datafield, a performance for film which was co-created with staff and students from both Bath universities. Others might be site-specific like Flood Flags commissioned for Forest of Imagination beside the River Avon or All at Sea sculptures and projection installation created during a residency in Porthleven, Cornwall. Most include topical social commentary and embodiment of both subjects and maker, perhaps best evidenced in the anthropological references of Cataloguing Anxiety and Body as Evidence, each exhibited at the Bristol RWA 2019/20.
I am fascinated by the experience of the individual within systems and societies, exploring social constructs and breaking down silo-thinking. I do draw from personal narrative and, after a very late-life diagnosis, I understand that my perceptions are inescapably through the lens of dyspraxia which obsessively connects even the most random of coincidences. Conversation is a critical method in my bricolage approach and has recently started to filter into my material repertoire as well. Though my ideas always lead a project, my relationship with materials is vital to process, not just in physical practice but through time to ruminate during production. In presenting my work, I often draw on hybrid aspects of museology and merchandising playing with preconceptions of value and validity.
Before and during lockdown I was working on a project exploring my relationship with space, as a dyspraxic person, considering social awkwardness and then social distance and the related isolation. Haptic Traces evolved into a collaboration, Higher, supported by the SWCTN Studio Recovery fund to experiment with connecting virtually through dance. The mix of intimate connectiveness with experimental technology is an exciting area to explore.
My newest project – working title, Talking Taboo - has been on hold waiting for relaxation of social-distancing to safely work with in-person social-engagement again, and will evolve through a slow process of co-creation. I am exploring physical manifestations of a conceptual cocooning process for human beings and particularly women as we experience “the change”. Our scientific understandings of both menstruation and menopause remain ruefully unresearched with more knowledge of the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths than the function of our own womb linings. I am embarking on a voyage to share stories, break taboos and increase our respect for the wise old crone in our society, most especially as I approach becoming one! Currently I am collaborating informally with a small group of cross-discipline peers and applying for funds to develop an interactive touring project to take this forward.
Image(s) of work, tittle/year – option 1: Datafield 2020 (film stills)
Is art relevant today?
Yes! I am writing these responses while on my holiday, sailing the south coast and reading about consciousness research and the breakdown between science and philosophy that leaves us with little clue how the subjective experience evolved from the ocean. As an artist, I love to collaborate with scientists and social scientists and, more often than not, I am the one asking the challenging questions. As a teacher (artists need portfolio careers!), I fight the corner for creativity in the curriculum, encouraging students to question the world around them, including the doctrine taught. Art remains one of the most powerful ways to question and challenge accepted norms, social constructs, politics, beliefs and even scientific understanding. Art might not often achieve direct change but it plants seeds that unfold minds in a process of reflective change.
What art don’t you like and which art influences you?
I have to be honest, despite recently undertaking an MA in Fine Art, most influences on my practice are not from other art. However, it is very interesting to be asked what I don’t like! I really struggle with impersonal art, not abstract art, but work that purposely eliminates any sense of narrative or embodiment tends to leave me cold. I don’t like to need to read a label before experiencing an artwork, although I love finding out more once I’ve become engrossed. My greatest influences are the people and conversations that surround me, their juxtapositions and coincidental encounters with events in my life, films or books I consume places visited, the research discovered, or gaps in knowledge noticed.
Artists whose work I love to experience and continue to surprise me, again and again, include Cornelia Parker for her wonderfully intelligent curation of ideas, Antony Gormley for so many ways to explore the space we occupy, Peter Randall-Page for an irresistible desire to touch, Bill Viola for videos that touch somewhere so deep inside me I can be captivated for hours, Wim Wender for exquisite narration, John Irving for the complexity of the story, Richard Long for simplicity in response to place, Nathan Yau for making data beautiful … I could go on and on!
If you could go back 10-20 years what would you tell your younger self?
20 Years would take me back to about the time I had to put the artist part of me into hibernation which was a very hard thing to do. The pressure to earn a secure income to sustain the upbringing of my three living, breathing, fully-animated sculptures was too much for my emerging artist status. Instead, I managed projects for others in community arts and eventually moved into teaching. So, I would like to remind my younger self that it was hibernation, not a permanent loss, and to let her know my practice would come back more easily than I thought at the time. So here I am again as a mature emerging artist.
If I could go back earlier still, would I tell myself not to have children because they would radically delay my career as an artist? I’m not sure I would. I have a richness of experience in life from the different paths I have taken that I’m not sure I would want to change significantly. Back earlier still … if I’d hung out more with the right crowd, would I be a YBA? Again, I don’t think so, because I moved into socially engaged art at the start of the 90s and that desire to forge connections is what drives me, not a need for success or recognition, those are bonuses.
Image(s) of work, tittle/year – option 2: Body As Evidence 2019 (ceramic & acrylic)
If you could go forward 10-20 years what do you hope to have done or not done?
This is much harder! I hope whatever happens that I never become arrogant or disrespectful of people or the planet. If I’ve done well, I hope I help others do so along the way. I’ve often wondered why the art world is not like the music business, promoting emerging artists as support acts at every major exhibition? I would love to make this common practice to create a more supportive and sustainable community in the arts economy.
I currently teach in further education, which I enjoy, but in the next decade, I would like to move into lecturing in higher education. I want to tour my Datafield project, to reinvent the work on a larger scale with 100 students participating and filmed outdoors, from above, with a drone. I look forward to seeing different iterations in new places and how the idea evolves with each set of co-creators.
My next project – working title, Talking Taboo – is being designed to evolve through touring social engagement. I hope to be successful in raising funding so that in 10 years I can look back at something that has grown bigger than I can currently imagine with so many contributors over the years, that the first participants return to engage with something new.
20 years feels almost too long, the speed the world is changing … I hope I will be glad to still be here and that we will have learned to slow down, listen better and live more symbiotically with our planet and each other. If I contribute in a small way to making that happen, I will be proud.
More details of what Alyson is up to can be found on her blog - https://alysonminkley.co.uk/blog