I helped out with my first formal crit in November with 3rd year part time students on the fine art course at Canterbury. My fellow AA2Aers Julie and Chris were there too. It was really interesting to see their work, especially the scope of ideas. I am looking forward to seeing how their ideas have progressed by the time the degree show comes!

I have a lot of catching up to do! I'm sorry I haven't been around before but just let me fill you in on what I've been up to since September.

In my first few weeks I spent a lot of time in the library, I've really missed being able to just research anything when the thought comes to me. I discovered Vivienne Dick in the UCA library. Really interesting work that made me think about all sort of things, mainly about super8 and what it evokes. Dicks work reminded me of the dark side of being a girl with all the sickly-sweet nostalgia and sentimentality heightened by the use of super8.

On this series of trips I also found the artist George Barber. I watched all of the videos on the DVD made by Lux "Beyond Language". "Say Hello To Lottery Park" struck me immediately as it looks like a strange tourism video, panning over lots of quite unglamorous people sat on deck chairs in a park. In the voice over the people talk about how much of their life is dictated by fate, Barber is here poking fun at how much we as a society believe in fate and chance, when in reality we are just a lots of eccentric people sat in a rubbish park but are ultimately quite content.

This piece reminded me of a conversation I had with an Australian guy over the summer who was visiting British seaside towns to photograph them because he thought "it was hilarious that Brits sit on the beach even though it is rubbish and we are miserable". This annoyed me, he's totally got the wrong end of the stick, its not miserable its fun, we are quite happy thanks, it’s the way it is and we are quite happy with that.

I think every artist would really benefit from seeing "I was once involved in a shit show" made in 2003. I have only been graduated for a year and a half and I was hooting with derision when I watched this piece (internally, I was in the library). The video follows the imaginary interactions between an artist and a curator as they both attempt to overcome the difficulties of putting on an exhibition with the theme of "Cement". The story is told by the weary artist ("broadbrush impressionist, spare me the details, type of artist") as he attempts to create work in the face of the shifting parameters of the curator. This video explains why basically you should never come up with a piece of work based on someone else's idea for a show.