Reviewing a Fellow Student's Crit/Presentation

Reviewing Gemma-Lees Crit/Presentation 27.2.19

• Talking too fast, rushing through it because she wants it to be over with sooner, not showing us slides for long enough.
• Said the word "artsy", a term I would recommend an artist never use, its unprofessional, it's never used in the realms of fine art, it doesn't really mean anything and its cringeworthy.
• She likes the idea of observing fabric wrapped around the body but removing the body, so the fabric echoes the shape but there is an absence of human.
• Tried watercolour and wasn't happy with the result, so she said she just wanted to try something else instead. I would usually suggest not giving up on a medium straight away after not liking the results immediately because things take time to learn, and you usually only start to enjoy the medium once you have mastered it somewhat.
• She started off her project making work that was more illustratory, then started to become more experimental with the process, which is good, shows progression and movement away from safe and predictable areas into genuine experimentation.
• One of her pieces was a long sheet of fabric that had images sewn onto it detailing parts of her life, and situated in a way to show the geographical locations of the UK and South Africa, two places she has lived. I thought since she is interested in fabric and origins, perhaps she could use a traditional fabric that comes from a certain region.
• Seems to use buzzwords like "tension" and "texture" to make certain decisions she was making in her process sound more involved and thought about then they really were, as if she was saying she made a change to a piece to give it more tension or texture, when we could clearly see why she had made a change, and it was for a practical reason.
• I thought about how she could make her interest in fabric more sculptural, and keep going with this idea of exploring the human body without it being there, and just using fabric, she could drape cloth around a body shape then stiffen it somehow, then remove it the body so it left a negative space.
• All in all wasn't a bad presentation, she was well prepared, had lots of slides, lots of things to say, some of her ideas were interesting, she volunteered to go first, she has done more work than a lot of students in the year.
• Only suggestions would be to not rush so much, not use buzzwords or words like 'artsy', and be honest in describing her decision making process, instead of trying to convince us certain decisions held more importance than they did.