To begin the arrivals task I started thinking about any place I remember arriving at that had a certain significance to me in some way. I thought about holidays and different countries I had been too over the years along with journeys I make on a much more regular basis.
The particular day that the arrivals task was set I had travelled to university on the train and for some reason probably because it was a warm bright morning with blue sky’s I paid more attention to the arrival into Oxford Road Station, Manchester itself and my surroundings on the train than normal.
Most probably because it was my last journey I had made before the task was set and the fact it was still fresh in my mind, helped me to make the quick decision that the mornings journey of arrival into Manchester was the one I was going to choose to share with others and help me to make a start on the unit x project. To recap the morning and record all my initial ideas I started with a mind map recording as much of the journey and arriving at Oxford Road as I could remember.
I tried to record some imagery from memory to show my journey of arrival, I did this in the form of quick minute line drawings as when moving so fast on the train it’s hard to capture or focus on anything in great detail. However, as it’s a journey I make on a regular basis and I tend to spend the majority of the time looking out of the window on the train I did find it quite easy to visualize some of the sites I see along the way.
Once off the train and having arrived in Manchester whether I’m in a rush or not I tend to follow the momentum of everyone else leaving the station and walking with a sense of urgency not taking much notice of my surroundings and usually texting on my phone. I decided to go back to the station and much more rigorously view the place I arrive at on a weekly basis.
When returning to the station and photographing the path I take on my arrival to Oxford Road I kept in mind the advice of David Haslam. Although his talk was mainly on bands and clubs that started out small in Manchester it had this underlying message through out of being different and looking at the margins.
I tried to apply this to the images I took and instead of taking eye level images of what people see when they arrive in Manchester by taking photos of things that caught my attention such as the grimy steps everyone walks up and down, empty coffee cups left on a graffiti wall and the rusty spiral stairs no body uses any more. In my opinion I think these turned out much more visually pleasing and interesting.
I decided to work from the photographs taken using water colour paying attention to colour as so far into the project/task that is what I feel is lacking in my body of work but also it’s a very important aspect of any art and especially textiles.
When it came down to visual research and ideas I had come to a holt and didn’t really know what I wanted to do next... I went back to the initial unit x brief and thought about the suggestion of exploring the history of the art school and Manchester. I considered researching in depth and significant detail the history of Oxford Road and the Station however, although it would be relevant for my arrivals task I didn’t see how it would provide me with a lot of new influential information that I would want to work with through out the rest of the unit as away from the arrivals task I had been considering ideas for unit x’s main brief.
Overall I feel the task set was a great starting point, it got you thinking and working from the memory at points. It can be a hard thing to do but I think it makes everyone’s work unique, we could have all choose to share the arrival of the same place yet working from memory would show what aspects of the journey and arrival people found of interest yet they would all be very different.
It was a learning curve I think will be very useful for unit x as when working with history, some of the visual evidence is no longer there for you to see yourself its sometimes hard not to copy photography taken by other people or drawings created by other artists.
This task has helped me to understand why it’s sometimes a good thing to use your imagination and memory more when it comes to drawing especially. Instead of doing more literal representative pieces that look constrained and lack fluidity my quick line drawings have much more energy about them and I’d like to hope I can continue this throughout.
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