This is as far as I’ve got with my current manhandling project:

Scope

My artwork and research share an interest in the ex-centric whole: things or events which, simultaneous to the point of their completeness, exclude their own centre of activity. This theoretical trajectory in turn exposes a plane on which these concerns are rehearsed and developed in a sentimental/emotional vocabulary of human alienation from the superstructures of representation.

Methodology and Form

Themes identified in my practice provide the prism through which to revisit my research, and to build relationships with the ideas and forms I have found in my research. By applying my practice (both methodologically and thematically) to my research I hope to create a new narrative combing-through of my own critical context which exists not prior to but as a result of my intervention.

Accordingly the form of my critical commentary will be a thickly referential (footnoted) written narrative which develops thematic strands sympathetic to those present in my own artwork.

Because of my practice-led approach to the commentary, I feel it is methodologically appropriate to reflect the non-thetic way I produce artwork, which bears the influence of deconstructivist critiques of logocentrism. As such the text will offer a self-conscious event rather than an argument.

This methodology is thematically reflected in both my artwork and in my research and as such is, I feel, intrinsic to my project as a whole. In this respect, though the commentary will not be ‘performative’, its form and methodology will reflect its thematic and critical concerns.

The commentary will stand alone, without reference to my portfolio of work. For  assessment the commentary may be presented on a par with the portfolio work, identified as the commentary but with its authority modulated by careful positioning in the diagrammatic schema of work.