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RCA graduate and print designer Joanie B Lam’s degree show project reconsidered what it means to have a practice

14.08.19

When asked what her work is about, Joanie answers “I think I am exploring the idea of a practice.” Acknowledging that practice is probably one of the most recycled words in an art college, Joanie wanted to turn her focus on to what it really meant. “I think sometimes as students we are too caught up with the outcomes,” she says, “we condemn what deviates from our fixated thoughts as misguided or failures simply because it does not correspond with our preconceptions.”

Joanie wants to embrace spontaneity within her work, whilst still maintaining a baseline for her visions. “Perhaps that is the reason why it is always a bit hard for me to articulate my practice, for it has become a philosophical experiment,” she tells The Peep.

“I think my practice is about growth and understanding, and I like to attribute these sprouting of ideas and creations in any practice — be it martial art, meditation, or fine art. In my case, it is the tiny mark-making process through which my mind, my body, my fingertips always acutely experience time and its passage. I believe that labour could release us to meditative thinking, Gelassenheit as Heidegger proposes. That way, we can become more aware of the things we overlooked before, exactly because we stop concluding so quickly, that there are always fluidity and rhythm in slowness however static it might previously seem.”

To see more of Joanie work, visit her website.

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