Automaking: A reflexive nomenclature of practice-based research

Drawing from the outcomes of practice-based research, I have developed a new and reflexive diagrammatic nomenclature termed ‘automaking’. We read ‘autobiography’ as an account of a person’s life as written by that person and autoethnography as connecting the personal with wider cultural contexts. We regard ‘autofiction’ as a novel or short story whose narrator is understood to be the author, using the devices of fiction. The emergent ‘autotheory’ includes theory and philosophy within autobiography, therefore, I propose automaking as an account of a person’s life made material through the processes and outcomes of art making. My position asserts that artists, irrespective of conceptual, theoretical or cultural foci, make in response to, and are informed by, their personal histories, the macro-, meso-, and micro- aspects of life. Therefore, this automaking nomenclature in the form of a colour-coded painting is a reflexive close reading of how I, as an artist, worked with multiple approaches; for example, painting, sculpture, bronze, and porcelain casting in the production of seven core exhibitions. These are contextualised by internal and external life encounters, from childhood to the impact of grief, of being a female artist, to material improvisation and collaboration. In a series of essays this thesis provides an honest, at times deeply personal, account of the events and decisions taken in the making of the seven exhibitions’ artworks. This is not a visual autobiography, but as an artist working with abstraction in ways in which the materials themselves are foregrounded and offered for consideration on their own terms. However, (and unsurprisingly) the manner in which I work with these materials, the methods and processes, has an unspoken correlation with my life experiences. This doctoral project sits at the intersection of an imaginary Venn diagram of art practice and life, the relationship and tensions between the seen artworks and the unseen circumstances, such as my education, cultural background and life events. Deriving directly from those experiences and through material enquiries, the information these exhibitions and contexts hold is then interpreted through writing to share this knowledge that contributes profound new insights into contemporary art. Taking the form of a collection of essays, the thesis is a reflexive narrative which is contextualised throughout, with insights and perspectives from the fields of art theory, philosophy and writing. This contextual process can happen consciously during the making of an artwork but very often it occurs much later when time creates distance from the work and changes how it is read. The texts further draw from artists’ commentaries, creative writing, poetry and music. The thesis arc opens with a Prologue which is followed by Automaking: A Reflexive Nomenclature of Practice-Based Research before entering Stock Street – A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Woman. This is a type of literaryscape, an account of early significant artistic moments, told through the mechanism of familial pilgrimage. The Seven Exhibitions: Practice + Context modulates into the exhibition essays, which are intended as individual pieces of writing rather than as a section of a conventional chapter. Essentially, they echo the exhibitions through images of the artworks as encountered during their public presentation which are then followed by an accompanying text. The essays clearly reference their own contextual influences, in response to each exhibition, instead of the inclusion of a more conventional literature review relegated to one chapter. Practice + Writing then segues into Coda: Artefacts of Practice by way of a conclusion, referencing the speculative, predominantly unseen, unsung, artefacts of the studio.