It was not really easy to get into the habit of writing a reflective review every week.

I have to write four more reviews for the past weeks apart from this one. Alright, here we go.

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This week was studying week. We didn’t have lessons but we had to finish printing Riso prints for our Project 4: Museums and Archives (Wellcome Collection).

Fortunately, I finished printing on Thursday. However, there was something unhappy to me during the week.

I had planned to produce the final outcome as a chain of little square papers cutting from the A3 paper as a reflection of the object I selected.( You can find the object here if you’re interested.) However, on Wednesday, one of my tutors came to see how we’re doing. When she knew my plan, she said my idea of cutting the A3 paper into small pieces was not allowed. I was really surprised about her reaction because the other tutor didn’t say my idea was not allowed when I had a tutorial with her. I took the brief out and read the lines to the tutor and showed her that on the brief it wrote “…you can choose how you use this A3 sheet” and “You can choose to display this IN ANY FORM YOU CHOOSE…”. She didn’t say it was not allowed anymore but I was quite upset and confused about this. Who should I listen to? The course leader or the main tutor for this unit? What should I do after the tutor said my idea was not good?

I knew I had to HAVE MY OWN VOICE on my project and be confident to my ideas. However, when it came to the restriction of the brief, should I abandon my old idea and being forced to create a new one, or went on doing what I thought was right? I had no answer to this at the moment. I was really confused and feeling sad about knowing that there were still some limitations in the so-called CREATIVE education.

I would talk to the tutors and find out the answer about this or I’d be really disappointed about this. However, I knew this was a challenge to me and there might not be an answer to it. Or maybe it was just a misunderstanding between the tutors or I didn’t understand the brief due to my poor English???

Whatever.

Finally, I decided to change my design and create a new image under the restriction which the tutor requested. Although I felt bad and even hated myself when doing so, I thought it was still safer to do what the tutor requested. I could only ease myself by keep saying “these are all the learning process.”

The final outcome was not too satisfied with me because I felt no passion for it anymore after the argument. Nevertheless, it was still a challenge to me to draw things in a different way and I had learnt a lot from it. I knew I might feel appreciated in the future, but not now.

Here is the process of making the final image using the Riso prints. I like the story and the idea of “The First Gift” after all. I might create it again with other materials in the future.

The story behind this work is here: [MA] The First Gift: A Story Inspired by the Object from Wellcome Collection

Unfortunately, I felt no passion on Riso printings due to the way it presented colour. They looked too dull and artificial to me, especially the fluorescent orange which everybody loved to use, it was too shiny to me and I just didn’t feel any love in it… I think I might not use Riso prints to create other works in the future.