The art of Archiving

This week we had the pleasure of hearing from lecturer, Steve Lovett. As Steve puts it, 'The focus of my work is continually shifting, yet there are a series of thematic concerns and formal visual concerns.' Much of Lovetts work concerns time, transition and loss. Working primarily with print, and believing that print images are nomadic by nature, Lovett is all about recording, processing and transmitting information. An archivist if you must. Lovett often archives much of his life and experiences, such as the idea of getting lost, navigation, unfamiliar teritory, history, us, family, education, access, social spaces and cultural spaces.

For me, upon hearing the word 'archiving' I see files upon files, draw's upon draw's of discarded, unwanted, dusty, precious and secretive information. Wikipedia defines archiving as this, 'An archive is a collection of historical records, and the location in which the collection is kept.[1] Archives contain records (primary source documents) which have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime'

I definately see Lovett's work as a way of archiving. But not in the sense of filing and stowing away information in dusty rooms for people to sift through and find years later. But infact his way of archiving is visual, we see and get a feeling of his experiences, his ideas and the context behind this. I certainly believe that there is a sense of autobiography in most designers and artist's work. It may be impossible not to make work about your beliefs or yourself, it may not be present at the time, it may even be subconscious and psychological, unless the artist can completely remove themself and their experiences from the work. Some artists make their life work upon archiving themselves, call it selfish if you must, but its just like keeping a GIANT scrapbook. Whilst some artists are set upon archiving people and places such as Christian Boltanski, who archives things of both himself and of other people.

I find I quite like making work like this but, not about myself but about my family, I have a very strange and interesting family tree, but thats for another time. I have, in the past made work about loss and the death of a family member, I think that in doing this it helps me to deal with the loss, and is sort of a rememberance of them. Although my recent 2D print about my Grandfather you can hardly see him because of the colour of ink, he almost fades into the paper. This means that he is all but a memory, fading, but still there.