Podcast Transcript: Lab Session 1 Reflections — Odur Ronald

I was struggling with concept development which was answered by research, so there is no way you can inform me of work without research. You have to go deep and make research about something and then all these levels of creating everything and then translating everything to an art visual or a composition, at least they were answered during the lab sessions. I used to just have this concept but then it was humongous, like it was very big, very huge, whereby without that deeper research about it, it forced me just to move with it in its huge format like that. I got a lot of problems with it, whereby I got lost at some point and the during the concept development, I had a chat with Molemo when we were in Gulu for the politics of return residency exhibition and she told me to go and write down all these things, all these concepts I have in mind, and then try to narrow them down.

I tried that several times, actually right now I am working on something, I am working on a body of work based on these small little details that help me to narrow down everything. So, I learnt a lot, at least right now, I can happily say that I tried to narrow down something. The research also at times dictates the material you are going to use or the art form you are going to use to explore a certain concept you are working on. For example, statistically, me and Molemo when they were working on the lab thing whereby they couldn’t use painting or poetry so they preferred using writing to put up the whole concept, there are certain art forms that could not use to bring out all these concepts.

So, for me, that is what I learnt from this, right now I used to emboss on metal but then, to bring out my idea very well I had to add on some artistic form or media that can bring out my artwork. I am now painting instead of embossing and burning like I used to at some point.