To a student it may appear that sculpture has no rules, no limits and no clear definitions. The seeming paradox of being taught in a context where there are no rules is a challenge for the tutor and for the student alike. I have found this freedom exciting and I see it as very specific to sculpture. However, it can cause students to struggle to find their own language in a multi-disciplinary tradition, engaging them in a complex system of references. In my teaching I have encouraged students to investigate contemporary and historical practice in order to situate their own work. This is sometimes bewildering, and yet this sense of the past, of what has already been done, said and written, can be a vital resource. The challenge of enabling students to access this resource is what led me to develop the The Subject Identification List.

The idea of the list was to make a record in writing that I could use with students, to help them identify the subjects they were interested in and to understand the interconnected nature of these ideas. As I identified a new subject matter I would just add it to the list, collecting all the various themes and subjects the students were engaging with. It captures a unique set of relationships in a particular place through time and a history of the ideas of students.

As the list formed it became a quick reference guide for me to help navigate students through the wide variety of intellectual, political and artistic movements that related to their practice. Most students would identify with more than one subject; no two students would ever generate the same list. Their particular combination of subjects would prompt me to introduce them to relevant artists, exhibitions, and writers for further research. This led each student to form a detailed bibliography and toexpand their research processes, enabling them to contextualise their work as their practice developed.

So The Subject Identification List has grown with my teaching – and my life as an artist. It is a net that caught what students were interested in and what came up in our conversations. There is a huge potential out there for students if they can access the right information at the right time. For whatever the student is interested in can become a starting point for their work, and whatever that is, it can be investigated.