Finishing my First Residency

I've now completed my first ever artist residency I feel happy to have been apart of it and create a small body of work that I am proud of. I developed a previous avenue of my practice from university, which I felt was unfinished.

What I ended up displaying was a series of 13 pieces on cardboard packaging in a similar style to my previous work. However I have developed the arrangements of the work into small groupings, instead of 1 large wall piece. I feel that these are like miniature wall based interventions in to the display space.

I also handmade a book to go along side the work, which contained the collages specific to Wakefield. I am now contemplating making a new book with images of the paintings and arrangements that I made in Wakefield, it might also have the prose wirtten by Robin in it.

Art House residency

I currently doing an artist residency at The Art House in Wakefield and have just finished my second week. This residential opportunity at the Art House has meant that I can develop a previous work series from university that was previously left unresolved. Being a part of the graduate residency program has really given me a confidence boost as an artist. 

During the past few weeks I have also been exploring a new series of collages that are specific to Wakefield. They contain photographs of the exteriors of buildings from around the city centre collaged together with interiors from totally separate buildings. These interiors project how I imagine them to be on inside but are actually completely false. I am also hoping to produce an artist book from this series.

 
 

I have also been developing previous work from university, which involved painted onto cardboard packaging and creating site-specific wall pieces by extending the linear elements of the pieces onto the surrounding walls.

 

My Practice (so far)

I am fascinated by the physical spaces we create and play with in childhood and the imaginary spaces that emerge from this. This idea stemmed from spending a considerable time at my Grandmother's farm during my childhood, which was mainly spent exploring the out houses and sheds and converting them into dens and hideouts. I wanted to express and explore this in someway during my first year of university and that initial idea evolved and progressed throughout my entire university career.

I focused on notions of imagined spaces and memories based on textural qualities found in architectural structures, with three dimensional spaces revealed within these works. I represented these ideas in a traditional painterly practice, along side other media and materials such as de-constructed and reassembled photographs of abandoned buildings, as a means of creating new imagined spaces.

This piece is called 'Carceri 2', (basically all the work I produced at uni is apart of a series called Carceri) and i think that it's a pretty good representation of what my work looks like.

However, as I have matured my practice concepts around topophobia, the fear of place, and vertiginous feelings have become increasingly apparent, creating an interesting juxtaposition to the initial origins the work. “Our fears today are less about openness and more about a general uncertainty surrounding the perception of space itself.”, Dr Caterina Albano, 2011.

My work is hugely influenced by the writings by Italo Calvino,Gordon Matta-Clark's and Emily Speed.

Gordon Matta-Clark

Emily Speed

At university I worked on large scale paintings that travel around corners or other architectural features and I started to use string in an endeavor to bring the work out in to physical space that the public inhabits. I work predominantly on both thin cardboard and cartridge paper as I feel that it potentially provides the fragile surface that attempts to capture the precarious spaces I am investigating.

I investigated combining and siting these pieces in relation to one another in an attempt to create other physical spaces and dialogues that aim to reinforce and heighten the sense of real and imagined spaces. This has was taken further through arrangements of wall-based pieces being linked by linear drawings as a means of create a subtle balance between collaged and painterly elements as well as connecting surrounding space and merging the work into the given architecture. 

This is an example of the small pieces that i would make (generally just on food packaging card) and then arrange of the wall and join together with connecting lines.

And it is this idea that I have decide to continue with after university, I like the idea of developing it so that whether it is placed it will be different and specific to that place according to what architectural features there are within the work.

Introduction

So I have recently graduated from university with a Fine Art (BA) and I recently decided/thought that it would be a good idea to document what I'm doing next. I know that initially after finishing it felt like i was in a void almost. I had no idea what to do with myself, or what I wanted to do and everything felt like a massive anti-climax.
Fine art is a bit of an odd degree to do i think, not odd like its strange, just that when your doing it you feel great because theres always something happening. You feel apart of things and then it finishes and it all seems so daunting and impossible.
But hopefully I'll muscle though?