In March, I had the privilege of having my portfolio reviewed by four industry specialists including art director Jean-Christophe Godet and photo features editor of the guardian Sarah Gilbert.
Having to layout my work in front of them felt almost like a completely vulnerable experience, for 18 months I had been working to conceptualise Dear Uncle Eddy, and I was completely shocked and in awe of what they had to say.
My approach to the review was to attempt to act confident, say hello introduce my self and shake their hand then sit down open my portfolio box and let them flick through a dummy book I had sequenced. I was looking to see if the work kept their attention whilst grasping what I was trying to say with the work. I wanted to use this opportunity to gain research as to whether my work was approachable and understandable to a viewer without any previous knowledge of the context behind my approach to creating this project.
During one review, Godet explained how he felt very moved by the work and how it was extremely powerful, he suggested that whilst the images were strong, the sequence was possibly too long and in some places it felt repetitive. He explained that whilst the sequence was strong, my self portrait series summarised and rounded off the project as a whole and suggested that if I were to exhibit the work then just the portraits would work to achieve the same goal of presenting a narrative.
Godet's review had a profound effect on my perspective of the work, he was harsh which I enjoy, I always enjoy criticism of my work- it's what gets people talking. There is no perfect project and Dear Uncle Eddy, is far from perfect and I value it so much when reviewers find places to pick and unwind it, giving me new ways to progress in ways that I never would have thought about. Godet suggested that I take a pause with the work before I get to overwhelmed and obsessed by it leading to burn out, he suggested coming up with a new concept, whether that be my relationship to new technologies or my relationship with myself, he wanted me to test coming up with a new concept and explained that a good artist can come up with an original concept but a great one can imagine many and can progress with new works.
All of the reviewers had different critics of different parts of the work but a common denominator was to play around with the scale of images within my work whilst continuing to test stock- a few of the reviewers said that if they were to me extremely picky then they think that there is too much grapefruit and repetition with in the phonebook and that the work could be culled. However over all feed back was very impressive, with very kind words from all of the reviewers.
I had 20 minutes with each reviewer, so making a good impression was vital, I was most nervous about meeting Sarah Gilbert because of her expertise and position within industry. I followed the same routine, allowing her to read the photobook whilst I ran off a script I had memorised explaining the context of the work.
My nerves where soon alleviated when she opened the first page of my book, saw the image of my Grandad wearing a fluffy striped bonnet, before looking up and laughing whilst clapping her hands. I thought phew! This is it, she gets the humour. It was quiet for a little minuet whilst she read the text and imagery before we conversed around how I had made the images and where I was from, I told her from near Liverpool before she started quizzing me what team I supported ‘Everton of course’ I projected whilst she sat up explaining she supports LFC
She began flicking though the photobook again before pausing: ‘See I can tell you understand sequencing because you’ve put these two images together’ she explained whilst holding up a spread where I had grouped an image of green flora with a pastel green building. She took particular interest in these images questioning if I actually visited the city just because Chat GPT told me to, I hesitantly nodded before she exclaimed ‘brilliant just brilliant’.
Later Gilbert went on to explain how even though the concept of the work was hard hitting, it was treated with great care. She completely understood the messages encoded within the imagery of Barcelona and stated that Dear Uncle Eddy is ‘a seriously impressive, brave body of work that is highly politically motivated’- I actually couldn’t believe what I was hearing, to know that it could be decoded as politically motivating was so encouraging as this is what I wanted to convey within my work the whole time. Dear Uncle Eddy, isn’t just a narrative in which I rely on my Uncle for support with my mental health struggles, it is a multifaceted conceptual approach to how I navigate the ever changing political, digital and some what artificial world encapsulated by a conversation with a non sentient being which is my driving force for therapeutic catharsis.
I left the review with Gilberts contact details, she explained how she’d like to keep in touch.