Any student will be intensely aware of the sense of being required to work within a framework and of being under scrutiny.  In such circumstances my conditioned response is conformity: to do 'good student'.  However, good art student by definition would not necessarily be good student by any other measure.  And if, as Schjeldahl suggests, artists make the worst students, someone attempting to embody coexistent good student and good artist would find themselves suspended in a state of tension and contradiction.  Even Lacan's notion of the multiplicity of the self or selves, or Jung's thesis on sub-personalities acknowledges one is inhabited by only one such self at a time.

This response to the ambiguity and tensions inherent within the student experience and particularly this sense of contrivance, of performing the curriculum, has led to my consciously performing the student.  This in turn has led to an ongoing enquiry throughout my studies into the performative nature of the making process and perhaps has further fed the impetus to embody tension and ambiguity within my work.   Below is a sample from an extensive series of images documenting this enquiry.

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