Lecture in Progress is a work I have conceived for The University of Brighton degree show ‘Made It’. Below are details of Fine Art Critical Practice’s input to the event.

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At a time when students transform their studio space into a gallery, Fine Art Critical Practice have suspended this transition, and now occupy a gallery / studio hybrid.

Here is a liminal space where the shape and purpose are in a constant state of flux. To be in the space is to activate it as an artist, curator, spectator, actor, author, consumer, player, voyeur, listener, speaker, object or muse. Arriving into the room engages a person as a part of what the show produces. Process, product and participants are reciprocal and interdependent.

Lecture in Progress will take place twice a day between 5th & 14th June, the duration of the degree show. The work will explore issues of communication and language in through the subversion of academic conventions.

As part of a conference entitled ‘The Practice of (In)visibility’ run by the Critical Studies Research Group- Untitled Video Work Revisited will make a critical reassessment of my work Untitled Video Work through a lecture performance.

I will critically examine the visual and linguistic techniques at play, as well as my intentions and motivations in making the work. By re framing the work within a lecture I wonder if I can draw out the undercurrent of political commentary without stopping it in its tracks.

Look here for more information: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/techne/techne-events/apr-2015/call-for-papers-the-practice-of-invisibility

The event will take place on 25th & 26th June.

As part of a ‘three step work programme’ run by the Community Arts Centre Brighton I will be working alongside two other artists Jon Carrit and Dan Palmer, around the muse of Manet’s painting ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’. The date for this is not yet set.

For each day of a week I produced a piece of writing in the canteen area of the Grand Parade Building and left a number of copies on the tables with my email address, and a request for feedback.

A man tells me power relations are amorphous and art should reflect that.

Very kind. He gives me feedback on my writing.

I am stood with my back pack on its seams pulling apart silently behind me- and he says, maybe you should write about the men behind the clicking heels.

The workforce is being feminised.

I take notes in my phone, careful to underscore his observations with my own. That patriarchy does not feel amorphous. Patriarchy does not depart when the women arrive. It builds new reinforcements.

I am outside and it is quite cool, a welcome prickle on my cheeks after being inside the university all day.

And I am thinking- be careful. Be careful not to say too much, be careful not to be didactic, be careful not to forget that there are some things that are better implied.

I can’t hear what the people removing their tea bags from their throw away cups are saying- they aren’t far away. There are some low hand gestures.

This seems boring.

There is a hazy window above the coffee counter and there is a man I recognise moving things around in some kind of storage room.

He swings a pack of orange juices up into his arms and carries it behind; there is a small mound of stock against the counter that’s being moved in. Moved in to be put out in rows on racks.

People telling stories. People’s voices I recognise.

Nothing I don’t recognise and not time to notice anything new.

I’d like to spend some time and think about this a bit more but…

“That guy’s got fantastic hair.”

As part of my campaign for the position of Vice President Welfare and Campaigns in the Students Union, I held a talk which I organised over Facebook.

‘This event is a bit of an experimental bringing-together of people from different circles within the university- students and staff- to explore what is means to be a student now.

There will be 4 speakers, only talking for around 5-10 minutes each. I’m interested in opening up discussion and debate around the relationship between mental health/wellbeing and the commodification of education or the idea of students as customers.

Here are the speakers and the subjects they will be briefly looking at:

-Tilly Sleven and Molly Maher (me) on the politics of symposiums…

-Chris Cocking on the potentially positive psychological effects of political collectives….

-Tom Pickford on ‘the ways in which the marketization of higher education refigures the student…for instance the discourse in which the student becomes an investor in, and entrepreneur of him/herself raises the pressure on him/her to succeed, while making this narrow, high-stakes “success” the point of education rather than learning.’

Untitled Video Work is a mute video-work lasting 5 minutes. The work montages footage of Fine Art Critical Practice (FACP) interim presentations, footage filmed on campus at the University of Brighton and a sequence of subtitles.

It was screened in Brighton University canteen, Grand Parade building, Faculty of Arts on 14^th January 2015 for my own interim assessment. It is an examination of the Grand Parade building and an exploration of the student experience.

The work was played as part of a university marketing material sequence, displayed on a flat screen monitor in the canteen area of the building. There are a number of these screens around the building, featuring promotional slides for talks and events in The Sallis Benney Theatre and University Gallery, as well as information about courses being run.

I organised with staff to have the video inserted into the schedule of promotional slides for the time of my assessment; it played on-loop for half an hour and was screened sporadically over the following weeks.

There was nothing in place during its exhibition to contextualise or put my name to the work.

“You are definitely questioning something. I need to watch it again…” 

David Bailey, media centre staff member

“The work made me feel really emotional; I think it is tapping into a collective condition”

Lizzie How, Fine Art Critical Practice student

The ‘Protest and the University of Brighton’ symposium, facilitated by the Critical Studies Research group bought together  humanities students and lectures, arts students and tutors as well as PHD students. More details of the event can be found here: (http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/cappe/conferences/conferences/protest-and-the-university-of-brighton)

Working collaboratively with my peers, tutors and other members of staff; we went about investigating the origins of Fine Art Critical Practice and the protest history of The University of Brighton. Through visiting The Keep archives in Sussex to look through scans of local newspaper The Argus, working with The Design Archives within the university and tapping into the Fine Art Critical Practice archive we gathered together pieces of a history from which our own education took root.

The way in which we -Naomi Salaman, Sue Gollifer, Lois McKendrick, Phoebe Hill, Tilly Sleven and Lizzie How- presented on the occasion of the symposium felt reflective of an approach to pedagogy as a collaborative exchange, and mindful of this idea of one another as archives. We acknowledged that we all collectively were involved in ‘making sense’ of the situation of art education now and occupied different positions and perspectives; and with our generational differences that we could perhaps surface a wide-reaching portrait of a political journey. Sue was a student at the time of the occupation.

Naomi introduced the presentation with some background information about Hornsey College of Arts, following this we introduced some of our resources and explained the research we had done in quite an informal way; we went on to ask Sue Golliver questions about her experience and understanding of what occurred in Brighton, asking

-Unrest or revolution? Can you say something about the atmosphere of the time?

-How did students communicate? Did it feel organised?

And prompting consideration of how events (organised resistance and protest) be considered an important part of the history of Brighton School of Art, and arguably one that had lasting consequences.

Flat Time House (http://flattimeho.org.uk/) is a unique art space in Peckham which was once the home of Barbara Steveni and John Latham of the Artist Placement Group. Having been invited as a class to take residency in the space, my peers and I approached the invitation with the ethos of APG in mind; the idea of an ‘open brief’ which the group promoted, entailed relaxing or abandoning expectations of material or object-based outcomes.

The house come gallery takes on an identity which doesn’t fit neatly into any single understanding of domesticity or art practice; much like Latham’s theories which traversed languages from different modulated discourses (science, art etc.) the space itself slips into something strange. It seems to insist on dissolving conventions of  education, art and theory.

Taking on this loosened sense of education and art we decided that we would use the space in  flexible way, to collectively accommodate and facilitate anything we felt inclined to.We invited artists and other students to come and talk, eat and play with us- the student group The Common from Middlesex University visited and we shared discussions about the conditions of the art world. Tim Hazar came by to (http://timhuzar.me/) deliver a seminar on Ranciere and ‘The Ignorant School Master’. I held a guided meditation session.

Throughout our time at Flat Time House we documented snippets of activity on a Twitter account, which you can see here https://twitter.com/15facp.

I will refer to this work as ‘the mezzanine shelf’ (as I have come to call it); however it is an untitled piece and was unlabeled for the duration of its exhibition.

I exhibited this work as part of ‘Parade’, a show of 2^nd year student’s work from Fine Art Critical Practice (FACP), Printmaking, Painting and Performance and Visual Arts in the University of Brighton.

I decided to make an MDF display shelf with the help of Sina Krauss (FACP technician), and to affix it to a banister on the mezzanine level inside the building. The intermediate floor forms a balcony from which to look down into the gallery space, through a squat divider and sound insulator between the gallery and a corridor which runs along its upper limit.

Over the course of ‘Parade’ I spent my time in and around the gallery space, observing and recording anything of interest to me. I tended to write about people’s behavior, their conversations and the way that the environment and atmosphere of the gallery altered over the course of the exhibition. I developed a text each day and exhibited it on the shelf the following day, so in this sense the work had a live and durational element.

In 2014 I undertook a 10 week artist placement in the Student Services department of The University of Brighton; Camilla Hartley, working in Curriculum Development for Student Wellbeing as part of the Counselling and Wellbeing team at the time, offered to work with me.

The placement, facilitated by my tutor Susan Diab, was informed by the legacy of The Artist Placement Group (APG). As an artist- run initiative, inserting artists into commercial and industrial organisations in the 1960’s; the group were concerned with the role of the artist in society, and the possibility of their involvement with wider affairs having positive influence.

My host had this to say:

“Molly was a joy to work with. She is clearly passionate about student wellbe
ing and the student experience. Our time together was stimulating and informative for both of us. It was useful to understand her experience of our wellbeing workshops through the ‘eyes’ of a student, and as an art student. For example, she challenged the ‘dry’ teaching method via PowerPoint (uncommon in the less digitalised art courses, and ‘informal’ teaching and learning culture and studio spaces in Grand Parade); she noted a window-less classroom as an unhealthy learning space to deliver wellbeing workshops in; we explored pros and cons of the heavy employability agenda of Universities; the lack of safe spaces to ‘be’ at University and how this could be developed.

Molly brought colour and vigour, a fresh energy and passion to all our meetings and her creativity and non-linear ‘artist’ style/way of doing things was refreshing to work with.

I conclude with a quote from Molly herself in her ‘thank you’ to me for her time at Student Services on placement:

“I have been incredibly empowered and inspired… I have learnt so much in what feels like a short time! Your generosity and openness have allowed me a fascinating insight into Student Services and Counselling and Wellbeing, and all the energy and warmth that is put into supporting students….Thank you…. I’ve found the placement interesting, eye-opening, challenging, exciting and so enjoyable!””