Insight 21: An Ever-moving Research Question

I called my research question locked several times before I had even applied for a Master of Fine Arts, although the wording continued to change as my thinking developed. At first glance that looks contradictory, but locked never meant finished; it meant this was the working version I would stop wafting around until further reading, studio evidence or reflection gave me a reason to reopen it. Each lock allowed me to stay with one question long enough to discover what it could and could not hold, rather than revising it every time another interesting possibility appeared.

Locked meant stable enough to work with.

I was preparing well ahead of any candidature decision, so there was no value in pretending I had already arrived at a permanent question, but there was equally little value in allowing it to float continuously. A temporary lock gave me a stable point from which to research and make, while keeping open the possibility that evidence might later expose an assumption, an imprecise word or a boundary that no longer made sense. When that happened, I could make a conscious revision and lock the new working version again.

Pic above: Ideas and notes are ever evolving.

A boundary can create room to move.

Before I had a working question, almost every direction seemed relevant because waste, consumption, conservation, beauty and human behaviour all opened into enormous fields of possibility. The question reduced that field into a more useful swim lane, giving me enough direction to recognise which ideas genuinely belonged to the inquiry without deciding in advance what each artwork had to become. It did not remove complexity; it gave the complexity an edge.

Beauty remained part of that boundary because attraction matters to the way I want my work to operate, and because I also want the work to succeed in art shows and sell. Frankly, I think it can be easier to make ugly art that proves a point than to retain beauty while still asking something difficult of the viewer. Holding myself within that aesthetic band may be a limitation, and it may eventually be reconsidered, but for now it gives me a challenge that belongs honestly to both my research interests and my life as a practising artist.

Pic above: Research informing exhibition boundaries and exhibition informing research boundaries.

Having a desired encounter does not mean the outcome has been predetermined. I can decide what the artwork is trying to do, just as I can decide which problem I am testing, but I cannot decide that the attempt has succeeded before anyone encounters it. A viewer may respond differently from what I expected, the material may refuse the role I imagined for it, or an artwork may close down the question rather than hold it open, and those are findings rather than inconveniences to remove. The research remains open only if I allow that evidence to alter the work, the question or my own assumptions.

That discipline also helped me separate what I hope art might eventually influence from what I can reasonably investigate through an artwork and exhibition. I want my work to make a difference and create an opportunity for people to think about their own behaviour, but wanting that does not mean I can claim to have caused it. Narrowing the question forced me to become more precise about the encounter I could construct and observe, while leaving any longer-term response with the viewer.

Today, the current version of my research question is:

How can sculptural transformation of waste material, through calibrated attraction and destabilisation, prompt viewers to recognise their position within systems of consumption and environmental cost?

The question guides the work, but it does not make it.

That distinction is becoming visible in Microplastics, a body of work for which I began with no resolved visual answer. The working question gave me a purpose and some conditions to test, but the sculptural form still had to emerge through glass, waste, clay, resin, repeated trials and the happy accidents that occur when materials begin interacting in the studio. I still ask whether a piece is visually compelling, whether it reveals too much too quickly, and whether its more difficult elements keep the encounter active or simply create disharmony, but the framework cannot answer those questions for me.

Prototype C is a simple example, as a phased attempt to test whether an artwork could prompt viewers to recognise their position.

Early sketched directions involved a bunch of Valentine flowers, but while working with the idea I felt it needed to become more personal, and the form began shifting towards lungs and the concept of breathing. No research question instructed me to make lungs, and no chart could have generated that decision; intuition moved the artwork, while the purpose I had established helped me recognise that the flowers were no longer carrying enough depth in the viewer encounter to test recognition. The destination had not supplied the route.

Pic above: Microplastics design C changing.

I am now at the point where material experimentation and intuition must take more of the lead, although the research question remains embedded in my mental dialogue as a guide rail. It gives the experimentation purpose without taking the art out of my hands, and it gives me something against which to question a decision without turning that question into a recipe. If new evidence changes the direction, the temporary lock can be opened again.

A useful research question has not given me a predetermined path or unlimited freedom; it has given me somewhere purposeful to wander. That may be its greatest value to my practice at this stage, because the work can remain intuitive, materially responsive and genuinely unresolved while still moving within a direction I care deeply about.

Pic above: Interesting discoveries while experimenting in making Microplastics C.

Related Insight 20: The Benefits of Preparing for an MFA, how the preparation created a documented practice, clearer boundaries and a question worth continuing to test.