Tuesday Talks: Jacqueline Donachie

The Whitworth talk this week again was very good. Jazqueline Donachie was a very good speaker when it came to her work and really got the audience interested. She discussed her work from the nineties up to her most recent work. The piece that stuck in my mind was the piece she did with the community of a small town and how they rode bikes all day creating marks on the roads. It seemed quite nostalgic and it was clear that a lot of her work was based around the public, using them and incorporating them.

What I found in this lecture was how she came across as a speaker. She was very confident when speaking which allowed the audience to always be switched on to what she was saying. You could also see her passion for what she does, and how she has brought different factors from her own life to the public into that, so in that way I think she is easy to relate to, and quite down to earth when it comes to her work, it isn't intimidating, if anything it invites people to be part of it. This seemed to work in her favour because her art work was very public based, public art.

When I think of public art it seems quite mundane and just there for the sake of it. It was interesting to see stories behind the public art and how an artist has to work around things to create it. She was very successful in what she did and has created a name for herself. So if in fact people like myself find public art boring, that's her job, she is getting a lot of commissions and paid well to do it, so in fact, she is having the last laugh. I realised this when discussing her work as a group, I'm finding it easier to understand and be open to different artworks and to get out of this head as viewing things as a viewer, but as an artist.