500 word review:
The begging of my project was quite exciting. I was interested in how I could explore my love of running in an art project. I had a feeling at the start that photography would be what I felt most comfortable using to document this. I was also a little unsure and apprehensive as I wasn’t sure how I could make an interesting art piece about running. However, I thought that that feeling is good, and it means I was pushing my boundaries; something I need to do more. I started by just experimenting as many ways as I could, without really think of an end point. I was documenting my runs and thinking about what could make an interesting focus for the project. I decided to photograph all things I have that represent running. I chose things like my shoes, running number, clothes, medals. I then began to think about a narrative; what did I want to portray, what feeling.
I did begin to think about using writing as a part of the art. Maybe writing some creative prose about how I feel about running or documenting in a straightforward and statistical way. I started the exploration of text by writing on some of the photos and next to them like a sort of caption. I explored lots of different options: handwriting, using electronic typing, photoshop, different fonts/colours and alternative positioning of text. I was quite happy with the project at this point, I just needed to do more work. I was quite ill then for a couple of weeks, so that stunted my progress a bit. I did quite a lot of writing and thinking about ideas, but I didn’t do much practical work and I couldn’t run. The main problem I had at this point is that the work looked a bit disjointed and incomplete. I needed to pick something to go with. I did a couple of interesting research pieces about artists that had looked at running and walking as art; that helped to spur me on.
I realised that I wanted to make a work/works of art that are very honest and diaristic in nature and that are not traditionally artistic but are more about my experience as art. I did consider an audience quite a lot. My aim was to show what it is like to be an athlete and how I see the world. I think that thinking about the intentions and aims helped me to make more relevant work. I still didn’t like the look of the work, so I decided to just pick a style to be consistent. The style I went with was digital text, situated next to an image and the image is of where I was at the time of the text. Therefore, you are reading my thoughts while looking at where I was. I then arranged these images in a series, hypothetically, in a book and on a wall. I am quite pleased with what my ‘final’ pieces look like. The composition and aesthetics are good, whether the text is interesting is subjective. I wouldn’t have done a lot differently; I just would have done more work and experiments.