I use the word Fieldwork as a process of research and art production, generated from an anthropological position.

I have been participating on various skill-based courses to extend my knowledge and experience of the material world, and different mind – hand – material – environment negotiations by participating on skill based courses including: 

Fish knife skills

Taxidermy 

Baking

Bread-making

Butchery

Sushi cookery

Basket weaving

Pot throwing

Experimental Ceramics

Fishing

Shoe making

Glassblowing

Blacksmithing

Dress making 

Jewellery making 

Weaving

Cheese making

chocolate work

Patisserie

Bee keeping

Pizza making

Mycelium growing

I am interested in initiating discussions with others around making and handling – how we learn/extend knowledge through ‘hands-on doing’ and how skills are acquired (eg. copying others actions, talking to one another as we learn and looking at visual aids – U-tube demonstrations and printed instructions), how we experience and understand our environment and bodies through using material and our hands/body, relationships between material, hand and cognition, and the rich experience of understanding the world through direct hands on engagement.

The experience of these taught activities I have share with galleries and other institutions to take this fieldwork beyond my own experience and to share with others. E.g. A project with Raven Row and the RCA running a session: ‘what it means to handle stuff – auto-pedagogy – a course in butchery’. This included a presentation about my practice with a discussion around the notion of making and skills: what it means to learn a skill and to deskill, the environment we learn in, the groups we learn with and skills we can access both as an amateur and a professional. This was followed by a course in butchery lead by a professional butcher who taught us (myself, gallery director and the fine art students) butchery techniques in pork and poultry. 

This DIWO (doing it with others) I continue to explore, working with students and local communities, to set up groups to engage in different skills delivered by local professionals, and to extend the experience through discussion.