Reading Surface Matters is a project by Surface Matters where artists living nationally were invited to meet virtually each month, to discuss texts, video resources and conduct workshops in response to a range of stimuli around place, nature, urban, materiality, craft making, materials and more.

Through collaborative exchange, each artist brings their unique voice to discussions, offering new insights that can enrich personal and collective perspectives.

Reading Surface Matters is a call for exploration rather than definitive conclusions.

You are invited to scroll, click, read and share in our collective imaginings.

What are surface matters?

7 artist's unique responses to Reading Surface Matters

REFLECTIONS
WEEK 1:


LANGUAGE

Where is language located in relationship to our practices? (within, adjacent, after)?
How can it be utilised to empower / agency / communicate / inform / position(ality)?
How might we define/redefine our relationship between language and a making/practice?
‘You can not smell a sound’ - CC
Empowerment that can come from understanding and owning the language around your practice - CC

GENDER
Where is the ‘female’ within our practices / theories / discourse?
Recognising what and where this is present and what affects / implications / nuances are at play?

INTERGENERATIONAL
What does this mean?

BINARIES
Where are there binaries and can we consciously move away from them to have nuanced articulations? - RL
Create new spaces for discourse / being / making?
Craft - craft as materials / as materiality / as matter - How might we address or define making / material encounters? Can we frame this relationship in a way that moves dialogue beyond age-old art / craft hierarchies?
Emotion - where is this located in our practices? What are the implications / affects / words? - AS

TIME AS MATERIAL
What are our relationships to time - through touch / making/ doing?
Labour - work, commitment, politically weighted? - AL


MIND - BODY DULISM
As a group, can we mix our strengths to create a thinking through making exchange? A way to unlock the making and unlock the theory to create a mix?

PROCESS AND TECHNIQUE
How might this be articulated or shared?
Skills, value to, relationship to the body, knowledge, amateur - AL
Squidgy & squishy as methodology - CC

Children of the Columbia
What are we children of? - CC (Anthropocene question)
Man-nature-technology - CC

Stephen Knott
Is the material in control? CC - ooo love this ‘control’ and materials...do we need control...RH
Explanation & trickery -- explanation does not mean that mystery is gone CC
‘Material registration of passing time’ CC
Unfinished SK
Constant grinding as a representation of time SK
How much can we expect from a material to communicate its process? RH
Impassive conveyance
Giving the ‘process’ time - dwelling, looking, experiencing.using process as the linchpin for a way of considering materiality, time and new materialism. Materials and processes anchored in ‘a sensory material world’.
A multi-sensory / all sense engaged in accessing the making process.
“How matter is determined by the making hand.”

Anthropocene Lecture
‘Trying to make representations that matter’ CC

Footprints
‘Footprints as gestural inscription, bound to the dynamics of its formation’ CC

Relationship to Children of the Columbia -- connection to ground, ground is not inert CC
Consciousness and exchange of consciousness… RH

New Materialism
Agency of materials -- how does that come into play when selecting materials CC
Enchanted materialism - CC

Freelands Foundation
Representation of Female Artists in Britain During 2018

REFLECTIONS
Week 2:


Rona used the wording ‘looking for something 'More Porous’. The words ‘more porous’ seemed to resonate with me (RH) in terms of using the texts / exploring these themes and theories and considering ‘making art’ and questioning connections with the world around us and the space of the reading group is like a quest / exercise in looking for something more porous.

Someone (CC?) said ‘developing the material presence in tandem with the language’ is what we are doing / investigating.

RH - Rona recommended Jane Bennett on ‘agency’ - agency as an extension / matter having agency / consciousness
RH - In reading this following section from Jane Cool page 6 Introductions to New Materialisms - can we collectively consider over the course of the weeks, constructing our own interpretation / definition of what New Materialism / Relationships to Matter are. Do we have our own language (visual, written, audio) that communicates what a new materialism response is informed by our experiences as makers / artists / creators / thinkers?


Technology - how and where does this fit within / in relation to power structures / experiences / other - CC and RL investigating further…

REFLECTIONS
WEEK 5

Weather - 'untampered'
Waves - 'untampered'

WE ARE INSIDE THE LOOP

Care...Restorative...Finding restoration in natural landscapes...

FETISHIZATION

Making and touching and trying to understand where are practices sit within it.

What as artists do we bring - what is are proposition that art making brings to this.

What would that mean in practice?

DOING

Reading through doing
Reading through touch
Reading through listening
Reading through manipulating
Reading through play
Reading through squishing
Reading through tactile
Reading through sharing
Reading through clay