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I think in terms of selecting work for a portfolio it is never easy. Put too much in and it could
be confusing, and too little in and it doesn’t give you a clear sense of the portfolio. What
we really want to see though is development, we want to see you’ve put enough in to show
that you’ve tried things out, and some of them may not have worked very well, but they’ve
led on to something.
I didn’t get very good feedback from this work unfortunately.
It’s obvious that a lot came out of this project. A lot went in and a lot came out,
even if the overall feedback might not have been a great start.
Very often candidates are presenting 40 pieces of oil painting, and the advice would be,
try a different way of working. Clearly you’re very good at oil painting – why not work
with mixed media, so you can work in a way that is outside your comfort zone. That’s
where the breakthroughs occur.
If you’ve done a life drawing class, you would have hundreds of images from life drawing.
Pick ten. And make sure that those ten reflect different skills. They may be wet media, they
may be charcoal, it may be something you’ve worked on for a long time, it may be a five-minute
sketch.
It should definitely show that you have tried several different techniques, and if you’ve
got something particularly interesting, you should do more. Also the portfolio should
show the design process, the way you’re thinking. This is what the interviewer will
be interested in.
I wanted to show the flowing during the design process…
The flowing through during the design process. I see that’s interesting…
And this is the final piece…
I prepared this really amazing book where everything was polished, where every page
was laid out really nicely, with a short explanation. During my interview what the interviewer really
liked seeing was the sketchbooks that I kept whilst travelling, the sketchbooks that I
did doing the process, you know the messy stuff, the stuff that I was embarrassed to
show. I would be like let’s look here, then look at this and don’t look at that. And
he would be like ‘no no let’s look at what you did I want to see.’
We ask students not only to present work that is skill based, but also to think about a
visual journal, a diary, a notebook, a sketchbook, that explores things that are more unique
to them.
I mean I’ve got a sketchbook that is so messy, and so full of nonsense, but it was
part of the process…
And it’s fascinating because I can really see the way you’ve labored over your ideas
and that you’re tying to visualize what’s in your mind.
We’re human and everyone makes mistakes and sometimes things don’t work out but
I think that it’s very important to show if something doesn’t work out how you would
go about to resolve it and make it work out.
The outcome was these fallen 20 blackbirds… and my final piece is this. Now I don’t
feel like this has worked the way I imagined it in my head.
How did you envision it?
I just envisioned it a lot more bright, a lot more bold, with a lot more textiles…
Be selective in the sense that you do take some time to think about your work, and how
you want to structure and order it, that is a very important process that I need to recognize
from an applicant, because I can see that they are being professional.
I explored a different thing before, and then I went into crime…
Think about it telling a story, when you open it, what is the person looking at your portfolio
going to see first?
So nice strong opening page, do you want to tell me about what these little ghost birds
are here?
Well it was just like relaxing stuff.
That first page is really important, a lot of students will tend to put the work that
they have done in the chronological order that they have done it, say at school, and
quite often the piece that’s the oldest will be the weakest. So always start with
a strong piece of work, a strong beginning, a strong ending, and then the journey in the
middle is where you can put work that you didn’t finish, and work that veered off
in a way that you weren’t wrote expecting, but that is what makes it interesting.
And I found with the classic this worked quite well with this, into the smaller samples…
One life experience can be the reason that you want to film or whatever, you know, whatever
you’re trying to do. And I think experienced one of those just a year after I got my Baccalaureate
and I was wondering what I wanted to do, and it was all about a trip I made down the country
to see a singer, and the experience I had to face throughout that journey, I think it
was the moment that I thought ‘ah that should be made into film.'
It might be that you started off a project from a single photograph, a random photograph
that you took when you were out shopping, and then that might develop into something
else and we would like to see a bit of research and a few sketches and how that developed
into your final piece.
It’s really hard to say I want to make film about myself but that is with everything, the artist always
have to put himself in it.
So if you were to look at your portfolio where do you feel is your strongest work?
[pointing] The strongest one is that one…
It’s really important that students understand there is a certain amount of research and
writing that is key to the development of their work.
So you decided a new look for the New Look company, you think about it did they say we
want a certain look, a certain color, a fabric, a material?
With the materials we had the freedom to choose which ones we thought would work. You had
as bit of freedom to play around but they were quite specific with what they wanted.
Bu then again that was good practice for me because everything beforehand I had the
complete freedom to do whatever I wanted, whereas here it was working to a really tight
brief.
Having a really good base knowledge of the area and specific knowledge of the people
that you respect and processes that they adopt, will really help you to form your own opinion.
I think that this body of work started mainly with this image, which is Meret Oppenheim,
the surrealist…
What we try and do with a student when we get them on to the foundation is break down
the conception is that they are being guided all the time. And my advice would be to make
sure that within all the technical work, there beautiful drawings that have taken them weeks
to do, I would also like to see some creative work which is maybe more montage or dealing
with found objects.
You see I don’t dislike the fact that you’ve got a fairly sort of indivudal way of approaching
how you develop.
When you’re in the initial stages of applying for a degree or something I think people,
especially tutors, like to see your progression from the idea to the finish piece or whether
it hasn’t been involved, I think that story is really important.
Don’t be embarrassed to show that sketchbook you think no one wants to see, ort even if
it’s in a book that you’ve been writing lots and you’ve got a random line drawing
or a doodle, include that because it is often the essence of you, it’s you thinking.
What helped you to decide what to put into your portfolio?
Well first of all, I wanted to show some basic drawing skills that I do have…
And obviously to show the passion because it is very much about the extension of their
personality, so don’t submit what you think we want to see, submit what you want us to
see.
I tried to show my passion for this page, it’s clothing really, something to do with
character.
Obviously you want to show off your best pieces and if you’ve got loads of stuff that you
really like it is going to be difficult, but you have just got to think about it pragmatically,
looking at all of your work, what work is necessary to be in there.
I studied an artist called Margie Gillings whose work is mainly photography, but whose
work is incorporated with knitting, crotchet, stitching…
Just think about if you’re having an interview, what you could say about that piece of work.
If there’s something that you really like but you can’t really say much about it then
it’s probably best not to put that in.
As you can see I sort of started with young to old, so if an old person sort of misses
their youth and wants to make themselves young again I was sort of comparing the two.
The advice I would give is that it must be a sense of story unfolding. And that the end
of the portfolio what I really like to see is the evidence that given the chance and
the opportunities, the space, the time, that a lot of new ideas will emerge. So I want
to see the evidence of really good potential at the end. That’s not about weak works
or strong works, but the sense that it can continue. It’s the continuity. Part of a
beginning of a story which can go on.