some questions to think about …
how do we extend our art practice – towards what? extension as outward movement – an expansion of ideas, skills and knowledge. extension as an inwards movement – a honing, narrowing, compression or focus of ideas, skills and knowledge. how?: gaining knowledge of our work in context – socially, politically, historically and contemporary through research, reading. articulating what you want to say or question through some kind of language. identifying who your audience is and the best way to reach that audience – by putting it there. how?: through experimentation, commitment to process or idea, through taking risks into new untested territory, by testing and a process of elimination. why – towards what end?: to better understand, to better articulate, to better question, to better provoke
how are we curious materially? by moving between media and processes with a medium, by questioning and being curious about material’s properties and possibilities, by looking at how other artists use these materials and processes, by inverting materials meaning or taking material out of context in a new context, by doing random things to material, by being illogical with materials, by being open to surprise.
purposeful play: as above – by being curious within an overriding framework or concern, question, purpose – a focus that comes in and out of focus through the process of making. by naming and marking the framework, territory and boundaries we work within and recognising when we stay within it or move beyond it.
preoccupying ideas and concerns: my relationship with landscape in terms of body and gender. my relationship of different media within my practice.
going forward: continue to explore the idea of perfect/imperfect real/idealised landscape and body in an irish context/landscape. continue to explore these through movement, lens based work and physical image making. possibly look to landscape and body as material. look at the role that language plays in terms of expressions of landscape and gender.
finding out more: experiment with how body movement and video capture can be part of still image making and print, experiment with how print/image and video could relate as installation work or print and body movement relate. i think i like the idea of mixing still and moving media as a way of exploring gender and maybe part of binary / non binary questioning. research wise – i might look into the gendering of landscape through language – grammatical gendering in the irish language in relation to landscape.
current references: feminist geographers and the history of a gendered landscape – Rose, McDowell, Bhreathnach-Lynch etc.
elaine crowe 
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