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Curation blog Unit 3 Assessment

  • siladan010
  • May 25
  • 19 min read

Updated: Jun 1

Learning outcomes:

  1. Present evidence of a body of work that demonstrates a systematic enhancement of your knowledge and understanding. (AC Realisation)


I believe this image is very representative of my journey on this MA, portraying the physical movement of my recent travels to CSM, and also my psychological and emotional transition. The multiple exposures create a sense of layered time, days that is echoing the multi-sided nature of my lived experience during the MA. Each figure becomes a trace on the camera sensor, suggesting repetition, persistence, and the accumulation of effort.


The staircase becomes a metaphor for a space of transit. Light comes down from the outside above, illuminating this space of transit. Is it inviting me to wonder? What lies beyond? What is to be learned and found outside?


The directionality of the figures, going up towards the source of the light, represents my curiosity to move towards discovery and knowledge.


The vantage point, set at the bottom of the stairs, slightly back, emphasises intent to approach and climb, to move forwards and upwards. The image portrays a space that holds within a tension between what is present and absence.


The photograph is of the stairs I use to go out of Kings Cross station on each visit I make to CSM.



At the beginning of the MA, much of my thinking about making was frequently shaped by negative thinking. My work was rigid, my approach was rigid and lacked freedom either, that was the work on the Thames.  Or I was reflecting and questioning my role as a photographer. It seems to me now that I was grappling to find a means of changing the way I was thinking in regards to making, as I started to learn how to reflect. I was seeing the photography medium as a replication apparatus as I was trying to explore new ways of using photography. I made a series of images while in Cornwall, experimenting with post-processing. This has led to experimenting more and created a series of images of the rooftops as seen from high viewpoints, such as car parks or garden roofs, playing with concepts of dissolving impermanence. Further leading back on the Thames, making these photos of the waterman stairs as the tide was low. This work moved into something else when I layered the Polaroids made on the Thames eroded by the water collected from the River, with the stairs. One of the images was selected to be exhibited as part of the Beat Ealing Art Trail. I was trying to develop a better practice of sequencing imagery, so I was playing with either old projects, such as "non-places" or snaps or during my walks either commuting or out and about, or when I visisted my parents in Romnia As part of my research on learning the sequential language in image sequencing, I was looking at Mark Power I have few of his book because I love the way he sequences his work, and of course big influence are Robert Frank, Walkers Evans, Irvin Penn, Magnum Contact Sheets, Heln Levitt, Sleeping by the Missisippu Alec Soth just to name a few. I have their books on my shelf,s and I like to use them when I struggle to understand how to move forward with a project.

The project Non Places (later it became Nowhere) was big part of learning sequencing. Also playing with my Polaroids here and hereand here led to making the dummy book, which is still a work in progress, but I use it often as material in my teaching practice. Sequencing was also a big part in making the chemigrams book,. The book initially was made just of the chemigrams, and later I added curated photographs inherited from my grandfather. I embraced the blank pages as described by Keith Smith as moments of pause and space for breathing. The book transformed when I introduced the archival images, which were curated in a sequence that could work on its own, but also in relation to my chemigrams. One should lead and feed into the other. This is when I started rebuilding my practice as it was broken in small fragments by the end of Unit 1, as I was feeling lost but feeling good.


Etchings are a new way for me to engage with art alongside chemigrams, photography and book making. Recently, I started engaging with learning printmaking. I trace my curiosity back to the Woolwich Art Fair oct-nov 2023, as Karen offered me free tickets. She had work exhibited there. The detail of certain prints captivated me. I kept asking myself, how did the artist make these marks? etching holds a sense of alchemy that I find obsessive. The acid biting into zinc plates, the playful preparation of materials like sugar lift and soap ground. The repetintve hand movemnet in inking th eplate. Using a handmade solution allows me to study a variety of textures, giving the process an experimental and tactile dimension. I noticed the shift in the way I was questioning the way I was approaching making work while learning etching. I was interested in what would happen if I tried this? What happen if I do the opposite I was instructed or I read in this book? I was feeling naughty and that felt good. I started playing with these so called mistakes and accidents, and they became part of my work. (quote from my 5 min video transcript)


A particularly difficult period was when my wife was seriously unwell last year. To cope, I began making cameraless photography such as solar prints  rayograms, chemigrams, chemigrams2  and watergrams. I was attracted to the unpredictability of the process. I became interested in the condition that formed this process, light, water, chemistry, time and chance. I was enjoying this process and I was being fascinated by the outcomes.

Some of these chem developed into a handmade book, an exploration of flow, impermanence, and layered experience. As the project evolved, I began to ask, what will happen if I included photographs taken by my grandfather into this book? This decision created a temporal overlap with the work, allowing the past and the present to merge through process and form a new work. It transformed the book into a personal vessel of both inherited and experimental imagery, allowing space for my virtual collaboration with my grandfather Am who passed away when I was 3 years old. The world became an intersection of memory, loss, and material exploration. (quote from my 5 min video transcript)

 

I still engage with my old photography project along the river Thames. But I’m turning my camera towards the river bed, exposed by the tide going down. Creating these images is technically demanding and ritualistic itself. Also as I use film to make these images I need to process these film and scan them.

 

Looking back, I can see a clear shift in how I think and make. At the start, I was over-questioning everything in a negative way, and my work felt stiff, like I was holding too ttight the ideas of what my work should be. This opened many situations of being blocked. But over time, through conversation with Jonatan and the feedback received from unit 1 and unit 2, through class group discussions, I started experimenting with different processes, like layering Polaroids with river water, making chemigrams, working with inherited photos, and now getting into etching. I was learning by doing, asking what if? and following my curiosity instead of just trying to get things ‘right’. Sequencing became a way to make sense of it all. I think all this shows how I’ve built a body of work that connects through process and experimentation, and how my understanding has grown.



Links to blog that support the learning outcome:



















Links to Portfolios:


  • Photography-based portfolios:




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Synthesise and critically reflect coherently on your process whilst providing evidence of an active, independent and/or collaborative practice. (AC Process)




Reflection on Process


"Lets suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and you would naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure, you see, and after several nights you would say, well that was pretty great, but now lets have a surprise, lets have a dream which isn't under control. Well something is going to happen to me that I don't know what it's gonna be. Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now."

“If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death, (or shall I say death implies life?), you can feel yourself - not as a stranger in the world - not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived by fluke - but you can begin to feel you own existence as absolutely fundamental.”


- Alan Watts



At the beginning of the MA, much of my thinking about making was frequently shaped by a ruminative approach. Over time, this process shifted and I began to move towards learning a Socratic mode of inquiry, one centered around the question, what and how. In Walter Benjamin text, the destructive character, he writes, “what exists, he reduces to rubble, not for the sake of the rubble, but for that of the way leading through it.” This transition required an internal dismantling, a breaking down of expectations, habits, and preconditions. In the process, I got lost, not knowing exactly where I was within my practice. But this cleared the space for something less defined yet more honest to grow.



I can see this shift in how I started engaging with making chemigrams, etching, and bookmaking, where I learned to let myself experiment without needing answers first. I became interested in the condition that formed this process, light, water, chemistry, time and chance. I was enjoying this process and I was being fascinated by the outcomes. Some of these chemigrams ended up in a book which was presented in Unit 2 as part of the 3minutes video presentation. After my tutorial with Jonathn, I decided to integrate archival images from my grandfather Emil into this book, changing its meaning. His photographs from 1960s–1980s Romania merged with my experimental chemigrams to create a narrative exploring memory, loss, and material traces. This handmade book made of epxerimetaal images and inheritated archival photos became a personal conversation and  virtual collaboration with my grandfather who passed away when I was 3 years old.  The work became an intersection of memory, loss, and material exploration. The book format gave me space to explore rhythm and narrative without needing to resolve things. Keith Smith sees arists’ book as a time-based experience in the Structure of the Visual Book. As I was developing the book, I began thinking about the blank pages in between images, the feel of turning pages, and the performative feel of turning pages, which I also incorporated in the videos I made. The feedback receibed on both 3minutes video and 5 minutes video encouraged me that my voice over the video of moving the pages added another layer. I now see this as perhaps a new route in making art where gentle perofmace and play with th edousn of my onw voice could be paart of what I make. Jonathan’s suggestion during the tutorial to explore storytelling through presenting the book physically and perhaps recording that process is something I’m still considering for the Degree Show and future exhibitions.



At the same time, I got totally obsessed with etching. It started to take over my life. I am in the printing studio at CSM 2-3 days per week. I am almost neglecting my job, which I love (even though I face many challenges there). This pace of working is not sustainable, and I didn't intend to be. Not yet, anyway. But I wanted to make the most of the last few months of my time at CSM.  The etching’s tactile process and its similarity to darkroom photography printing, is very addictive to me. I set myself the challenge to make ten etching plates as a way of learning the process. It worked really well. I am a great believer in “learning by doing.” The process involved me learning how to make and use sugar lift, soap ground, and how to use hard ground, soft ground, aquatint, spit bite, open bite, and inking a plate. Running a print through the press gives me a schild like experience. It also offered a way to cope to mental health challenges I faced recently as the process pools me in becoming a space of meditation. Each print became a new step in experimentation rather than a product of conceptual planning. This way of working rebellious and embracing of the mistakes made made me feel naughty at times. “What happens if I try this?”—became central to my approach. I recogniced th epowerof this way of thibking and I will be using it as a core way of thinking going forward. Still so much to discover and learn and play with.



Throughout this period, I’ve drawn inspiration from artists whose work merges material process with emotional or conceptual reflection. The abstract storytelling used by Broomberg & Chanarin has helped me think about improvisation and unpredictability in both photography and printmaking. I’ve also returned frequently to Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, particularly his idea of the "punctum" the elements in an image that affect us in personal ways. These ideas resonate with how I approached the inherited images and how I respond emotionally to the marks made by accident or chance. Walter Benjamin’s concept of the "aura" in photographic and printed images also informed my thinking about the uniqueness and presence of handmade work.



During the past 20 months I noticed a consistent return to the River Thames. The reason I dont really undertand yet but perhaps is acting as an emotional and conceptual catalyst. Previously, I photographed the waterman stairs being washed by the water, or the stairs during low tide, using the digital process to overlay multiple offset images and the emulsion from the Polaroids made on the Thames. I have now begun photographing the riverbed at low tide using a 5x4 large-format camera with B&W film, exploring the stories and material in what the river reveals and hides. This slow, technically demanding process helps me connect with the images I make. These are layered with movement and residue. The work is almost forensic and archaeological. I am drawn to the Thames not just as a place but as a metaphor for memory, for the passing of time, and for the way art holds fragments together. Peter Ackroyd’s writing on the Thames as an archive of power, history, and memory has deeply influenced the way I perceive and frame my relationship with the river.



Collaborative practice has also shaped my development. Being part of the Seven International collective has offered mutual support and shared exhibitions (in Belfast, upcoming in London, and another upcoming in Ireland), and a space for critical constructive dialogue. From cooking together to writing a group apology letter and asking one of our group members to deliver it through improvised dance ( so (not) sorry George) our collaboration has been both humorous and meaningful. Helping Karen cook her amazing coconut toffee curie, which led to looking at her amazing work, chatting late into the night, visiting food places, pubs, art galleries and museums in Belfast, and enjoying the successful private view of our Elegiac Rezidue exhibition, confirmed how important this group really is. Since we started, we’ve focused our time together on supporting our individual and group development through discussions that were always positive and supportive. We tried to meet weekly on Zoom.

I have also integrated my new way of thinking and all the accumulated learnings into my teaching practice. From guiding my own students in bookmaking, sequencing, and layout, to teaching them how to use photographic cameras, or how to print using an inkjet printer, or showing them the process of screen printing, to lecturing on the academic modules I teach, I realised further how teaching is reciprocal. My role as educator and my identity as an artist began to merge, creating a dynamic where making, teaching, and learning feed into each other. This is something I will continue to develop, perhaps through transforming my PG Cert PAP into an MA in Education, and later prepare to start a PhD.



The past nearly two years have been intense, marked by illness in my family, own mental health challenges, and recently physical exhaustion. Some days, I felt completely wrecked. I don’t spend enough time with my wife and daughter, as I am so absorbed by the course as I try to embed the benefits it has on my interdisciplinary practice. The anxiety, the burnout, it feels like I'm on the edge some days. There were many days that things didn't work out, and also many days that I felt ready to give up. I had twice drafted an email requesting to defer as the life challenges and the course were at the edge of this is too much. But there were also moments of deep satisfaction. Driven by the love for etching printing, I recently purchased my own etching press and retransformed by shed into a printing studio. I will be building a sustainable rhythm for working. I will be beginning to soften the highs and lows of my engagement, as Jonathan advised, and to embrace rest as part of the process as soon as the Graduation Show is over.



This last period of making has helped me let go of needing full control. It helped me understand and acknowledge that not knowing and admitting is not shameful, but a road to gaining more knowledge and understanding. My hands were guiding the process more than my my mind and that felt good, more honest, but also it created an envoirment for ,my inner negative thoughts to quite donwn. Whether I work with charcoal drawing, etching, photography, or making books, I see my practice as a form of questioning, in a Socratic way, just by messing things up, trying again, staying curious, and rebellious and naughty for just seeing what happens.

Looking ahead to the degree show, I need to find a way to link the selection of etchings , the chemigrams book and the new work on Thames together. The degree show feels like an ending of this journey, in contrast with what Jonathan is encouraging us to try and believe. But that is ok. I keep thinking about something Alan Watts said: life and death imply each other. That feels true for me, on how I see the completion of this MA journey which perhaps wouldn't be as powerful if there hadn’t been an end.


Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. Thames: Sacred River. London: Chatto & Windus, 2007.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. London: Vintage, 2000.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008.

Smith, Keith A. Structure of the Visual Book. Rochester, NY: Keith Smith Books, 2003.

Watts, Alan. https://alanwatts.org




Links to blog that support the learning outcome:
















































Recent exhibitions:


University of West London Doctoral Symposium 2024


Solo exhibition and th eLondon Museum of Water and Steam 2024


Sevent Int group exhibition Ellegiac Residue Belfast 2025



Upcoming exhibitions


London Festival of Architecure 20 June 2025


Elegiac Residue II - Seven Int Group Show at Down Arts Centre, Ireland 1st Jully 2025



Seven Int Group Show at the London Museum of Water and Steam summer early autoom 2025





  1. Summarise and evaluate your overall progress and formulate a constructive plan for continuing Personal and Professional Development. (AC Communication)

⠀



Reflection and summary of my overall progress


At the beginning of the MA, much of my thinking about making was frequently shaped by a ruminative approach. Over time, this process shifted and I began to move towards learning a Socratic mode of inquiry, one centered around the questions what and how. Walter Benjamin’s in the text, The Destructive Character, he writes, “what exists, he reduces to rubble, not for the sake of the rubble, but for that of the way leading through it.” This transition required an internal dismantling, a breaking down of expectations, habits, and preconditions. In the process, I got lost, at the end of unit 1, not knowing exactly where I was within my practice. But this cleared the space for something less defined yet more honest to grow as the Unit 2 and Unit 3 took place


Photography has been with me since childhood, introduced through my grandfather’s work. What began as a familiar influence gradually became part of my professional life.

A particularly difficult period was when my wife was seriously unwell last year. To cope, I began making camera-less photography such as rayographs, chemigrams, and water-based images. I was attracted to the unpredictability of the process. I became interested in the conditions that formed this process: light, water, chemistry, time, and chance. I was enjoying this process and was fascinated by the outcomes. Some of these chemigrams developed into a handmade book, an exploration of flow, impermanence, and layered experience.


As the project evolved, I began to ask: what will happen if I included photographs taken by my grandfather into this book? This decision created a temporal overlap within the work, allowing the past and the present to merge through process and form a new work. It transformed the book into a personal vessel of both inherited and experimental imagery, allowing space for my virtual collaboration with my grandfather, who passed away when I was three years old. The work became an intersection of memory, loss, and material exploration.


I still engage with my old photography project along the River Thames. My persistent obsession with walking its banks is something I can’t fully explain. Now I’m turning my camera towards the riverbed, exposed by the tide going down. My photographs juxtapose movement and residue, revealing the hidden and overlooked. This process became almost forensic and archaeological, exploring the river as a place layered with history, memory, power, labor, and ritual. Creating these images is technically demanding and ritualistic in itself. I frame and focus meticulously under the dark cloth, setting up the large format camera. While engaged in this methodical process, my thoughts drift beneath the surface, imagining life lost, discarded objects, rituals, and the hidden histories of the River Thames.


Recently, I started engaging with learning printmaking. I trace my curiosity back to the Woolwich Art Fair two years ago where the detail of certain prints captivated me. I kept asking myself, how did the artist make these marks? Etching holds a sense of alchemy that I find obsessive, the acid biting into zinc plates, the playful preparation of materials like sugar lift and soap ground. This handmade solution allows me to study a variety of textures, giving the process an experimental and tactile dimension.


It’s when I noticed the shift in the way I was questioning the way I was approaching making work. I was interested in what happens if I try this? What happens if I do the opposite of what I was instructed or read in a book? I was feeling naughty, and that felt good. I started playing with these so-called mistakes and accidents, and they became part of my work. Etching is meditative and therapeutic for me. The slow, repetitive action helps to keep my thoughts quiet, allowing emotions to visibly influence my work. Each time I lift the paper from the etched plate after running it through the press, I experience a childlike satisfaction.

 

Bookmaking is acting as a structural mechanism within my practice not to impose, but to find the narrative within the fragments around me and allow connections to form and to create rhythm. The books I make become a space for reflective sequencing, a way of holding together stories and materials without the need to resolve them.

The most significant shift during the MA has been moving from questioning a negative why towards a constructive Socratic what and how. It changed my relationship with concept and material, developing a focused, embodied, and responsive approach. This openness is something I intend to carry forward in my future art projects and in my teaching practice, creating a space for continual discovery and growth.





Plan for Continuing Development



Looking forward, I aim to keep the momentum of the process-led approach in both my artistic and teaching practices. Immediately after the MA, I will continue developing the River Thames project, possibly expanding it into a publication or installation that brings together image, text, and object. I will use the oportunity of th eGrda Show to test few Ideas of hw this could develop. I also intend to further explore the relationship between alternative photography and etching, particularly around ideas of time, residue, and impermanence which I dont feel I completed the work.


Professionally, I plan to pursue teaching opportunities that align with experimental, interdisciplinary practices—using what I’ve learned to create spaces where my studnets can take creative risks. I will also continue my own education through workshops, residencies, and critical reading, maintaining the balance of inquiry, experimentation, and reflection that this course helped me cultivate. I hope to crayon with using the space on this blog as a spce to tell Jonathan and the MA course how Im doing and were im going, and to use it as a map of retunring when I will get lost again.


Long-term, I aim to contribute to symposiums and exhibitions with work arround areas that matters to me. This will help me stay infromed and open spaces for futire colaboartions. This MA has helped me build the confidence and to become curious. This curiosity will guide my continued growth, both as an artist and educator.


The Seven Int Group will not end here our journey is only just beginning. We already have plans to exhibit together again and to seek out new opportunities. I’m deeply grateful for the friendship, solidarity, and genuine sense of belonging this group has given me. Martina, Karen, Holly, George, Karl, and Ben, thank you for your encouragements, inspiration and friendship.


Martina, our friendship has been such a lifeline. We’ve shared countless long conversations, listened to each other’s frustrations, and kept each other going when things got tough. This has been a raw,  honest, and supportive connection that has meant a lot to me- thank you. Karen, thank you for your kindness, your steady friendship, and the moments of mentorship you offered when I really needed guidance. Your patience and willingness to offer guidance never went unnoticed. George thank you for friendship, suport and that understanding when was needed - you know what I mean. Karl, Ben, and Holly—your sincere and warm friendship and partnershio have been source for strenght and inpisration for me,I value the friendships we’ve built.


To all the MA Fine Art Digital peers: our group converations as part of th eThursday lecture that always ended with that brutal 60 seconds count down also shaped my experience and you contributed to my growth and development. I hope new collaborations and opportunities will continue to form from the connections we’ve formed.


And finally, Jonathan,thank you for leading this program. You created exactly the kind of space I needed to find my voice, my own way, even if I didn’t always realise it in the moment. Reflecting back, I see just how important those moments were. It allowed me to unpack, re organise and to rebuild, and to become ready to begin again with greater clarity an honest new journey. What a journey the past 20 months were? I said this before, I feel like a bird that just learned that it can fly and now wants the sky ahead. You tought me what it means to feeling free as an artist. I need to learn now what it means to me! Thank you.


Links to blog that support the learning outcome:








Recent exhibitions:


University of Arts CSM INterim POst Grdauate Show 2024



University of West London Doctoral Symposium 2024


London Museum of Water and Steam Solo exhibition 2024


Ellegiac Residue Belfast -Sevent Int group exhibition 2025




Up coming exhibitions


London Festival of Architecture 20 June 2025


Elegiac Residue II - Seven Int Group Show at Down Arts Centre, Ireland 1st Jully 2025



Seven Int Group Show at the London Museum of Water and Steam summer early outoum 2025



MA Fine Art Digital Post-Grad Graduation Show at the Central Saint Martins 1st July 2025

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