Student Conversation - Gwen Burlington

"The studio is always open, so you get a lot of time and learn to set your own time frames. Everybody works in different ways, you kind of find your own pace. I don’t think there is a correct process. The medium and area I have chosen to work in reflects my pace."

On process:

My work is all about my process, it’s not that I have fallen in love with an almost obsolete medium and that’s it. I just started to work with the material and so everything I shot had something to do with the material. It allowed me to have a lot of time to consider what I could do. The different methods I learned over the years have informed my choices but for me this medium suits this concept. I’m not doing this for the sake of it, or just because I like the film. Do I have to justify everything? Do I have to have a reason for everything I do?

On being a joint course student:

I don’t think being a Joint Course student effects your studio work. The studio is always open, so you get a lot of time and learn to set your own time frames. Everybody works in different ways, you kind of find your own pace. I don’t think there is a correct process. The medium and area I have chosen to work in reflects my pace.

     

On influences:

I think it’s important to respect other people’s methods of work and also to talk to people outside of this world. I think it’s helpful because it stops you getting caught up over intellectualising your work.

On her final show:

One film from my final piece was when I shot out the back of a car driving around and echoing a girl hula hooping. Another is a girl on a trampoline who jumps in and out of the frame. The final film captures two people and their movements playing table tennis although my focus here was more on the ping pong balls and the material they are made from. The starting point behind all of this was to reflect the current uncertainty in the college which I was writing about and it evolved into capturing the movements of the people. I suppose I was trying to impose a conceptual idea onto my work but I didn’t need to, it would have been too contrived.