Wednesday Visitor - Matthew Merrick

Matthew Merrick

Interested in sound and performance art Merrick took me by surprise as these two categories of art least connect to my practise. Usually I am not fond of performances due to it being more dance based and sound art not being visual usually effects how I connect with the piece as a stand alone work of art. However, his methods of working were very similar to my own whereby he gathers inspiration from documentaries, books and social media. This for me is the most accessible way, especially in our technological age, to gather important research inspirations that doesn't mean us travelling to all four corners of the world to see another culture's form of art. Documentaries give an even wider range of information as it provides visual and academic findings that can further your topic of influence to another section of the art world that previously you may not have thought to have explored. I see it as being a brain like way of research because one piece can spark another to find more about a new range of information. Another connection I had to his practise was the efficient use of his travel time. For example most days he would be doing three to four hours of travel on trains to and from university which accounted for a lot of wasted time. To vitalise this he used this unconventional space as his studio space and for him this allowed him to produce multiple times the amount of work he was doing beforehand. He carried this use of his empty time after university in his job at a gallery in Leeds that enabled him to read several  books a week during his time on duty. This clever use of time has encouraged me to do the same whereby I have started to use my trains home, Usually two hours, as a means of getting work done too. This has been a very effective method as all I bring is my sketchbook and laptop which has kept me on top of my research and new experiments. However sometimes too much time on practise can lead to poor quality and an overload. This happened to Merrick though his quality of work dropping due to the sheer amount of pieces he was producing, whereas for me I have had an overload of research this semester as we have been free to experiment with our practise. Thus my mind and research cant link and keep up with all the inspiration and ideas I've been having through social media, books, documentaries and travel. This in someways has constricted my practise as I am not used to the freedom, however from this lecture I understood that I can set myself tasks and topics for my work like I am used to, all my ideas do link in someway, but forcing this can lead to going a step backwards. In the last few sections of his presentation he explained how his new work is now based off the production value and the visual impact rather than fighting for a political message. This excludes the meaning of the work which is something I am interested in doing within my practise as set design and props have more of a purpose than a meaning, it is more interesting to me the process and overall appearance and feeling of the audience rather than a meaningful message that they can read from the subject.