I spent most of today in studio again for first time in six weeks as illness prevented me from being there. I went in today with the supervision meeting yesterday for M.A. in the back of my mind. Clarifying the subject of the M.A. as ‘Graphic Research’ has helped greatly. However my next decision is how far I pursue the Frayling argument between now and next September. In what form I investigate the ‘research question’ when defined (has to be submitted as a new proposal by 7th January) so something to work on over Xmas and finally how much of this can I move forward as interrogation of own practice leading to a possible PhD?

To that end I started looking through old art magazines in studio going back to 2001. I was looking for mentions of ‘academic research culture’ in an attempt to find out when this started affecting what artists produced and the way they worked. Without going into detail it did seem that by 2003 it was observable within magazines to a degree which it wasn’t earlier. There is a whole PhD in analysing this subject in relation to magazines and wider art practice ‘fashions’ but for now i simply cuttiing out references then analysing them as best iIcan with cartoons drawn over the top. This could develop into a range of artefacts or be a dead end but seems a useful way of directly looking at shifts in artist self-definitions and institutional advertising.