one eye see
DESCRIPTION
MA/MFA DEGREE SHOW UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS 2011TRANSCRIPT
Juli Bellante
Kate Black
Susan Carron Clarke
Claire Evans
Sarah Francis
Jess Laljee
Gaia Rosenberg Colorni
Chris Smith
Lydia Westerman
ONE EYE SEE
We have become used to a kind of art that appears in the form of social activism, interdisciplinary research, pedagogy, community service or, more traditionally, as everyday objects. In fact, the appropriation of methods or rules proper to disciplines outside of art, or other domains of life experience, has always been an essential element of modern art. It is a token of the artist’s reflection and self-criticism, an expression of a desire to discover and explore, a way in which to push and challenge boundaries of the discipline itself and thus bring about coveted innovation. However another approach to ‘surrounding’ disciplines, particularly to (art) theory, can be traced within contemporary art practice.
As the art works presented at this show manifest, contemporary artists do not turn to theory to appropriate or ‘exploit’ its peculiar methods and melt theory into ‘Art’. Nor is the aim to serve as an illustration for points made by theoretical discourse. The ambition is to work alongside and the way that they keep this companionship is via the common denominator of research.
The tendency of art practice conceived as research can be understood as a continuation of democratizing projects within the arts when Art, being recognized as heavily elitist and exclusive, is taken from its pedestal of limitless adoration. Simultaneously, it can also be seen as a symptom of the inferiority that artists may experience especially in academic environments. Being identified as researchers thus undoubtedly carries the potential of enhancing recognition within particular institutions for artists. However, on the other hand, the label ‘research’ at the same time threatens art with subjugation under ‘scientific’ and academic discourses, with a reduction of that what makes art ‘art’.
Whether we describe art’s specificity as being concerned with the issue of how things are done, with the materiality of an art work and its aesthetics, or we define it with regard to its effects, i.e. what is it doing to the audience, in either understanding we separate out what is essential to art as the ‘unnameable’, as something which we used to situate as close to ‘sacred’; it is in any case something which necessarily has to transcend and elude both theory and research. While facing the challenge of art practice as research it thus seems urgent to ask again and continually, perhaps more than ever before, the fundamental question, what is Art?
TexT by Lenka VrábLíkoVá
Juli Bellante Art is man’s expression of his joy in labour - William Morris Cardboard, found images, newspaper, twigs, text, and photocopies give form to Juli Bellante’s imaginary spaces. Her labour intensive constructions immerse us in uncanny spaces in which the precarious nature of materials and low-tech processes reference different stages of development in human history. The viewer is positioned as the central subject of the work and the process of identification with the space is used as a vehicle to confront the other’s reality. Individual pieces are integrated within the work which can be perceived as belonging or foreign to a specific place and time, challenging the viewer’s mental conceptions of this development. Bellante’s choice of materials speaks in a language in direct opposition to industrial production centering human labour as the core value in the work.
ContactFirst floor, Union 105105 Chapeltown RoadLeeds – LS7 3HY+44.78 3406 2641 [email protected]
Kate Black
Black hands, eye balls on fire, dismembered body parts and strange creatures are explored in the work of Kate Black which reveals an insight in to an interior world in which she retreats to rationalise her thoughts and feelings. At times humorous and playful, at times frightening and morbid, her works challenge the viewer to look at the world anew and confront the fears, fantasies and obsessions that lie beneath the surface of daily life.
Susan Carron ClarkeSusan Clarke uses her own body and domestic objects to explore notions of femininity. Much of her work suggests bodily fluids and internal skin-like creations, through which she explores different feminine issues. Clarke also addresses the traditional roles women occupy within the household, which she examines through old domestic objects. All the objects she uses also have a sense that they have been scared from their previous lives.
Her latest work includes a series of women’s clothing, which explores primitive and carnal desires within contemporary life. The process of physically making (and wearing) her creations is an important aspect of the artist’s practice. She uses the tangible presence of her sculptural artworks to give a physical domain to those things which are thought, felt and imagined.
Claire EvansClaire Evans’ artistic practice explores the significance of corporeal experiences within physically constructed environments. Although she classifies herself as a sculptor, Evans uses a variety of media such as film, drawing, etching and embossing to explore questions of sculptural spatiality. Throughout her MA Fine Art, the subject-space issue has been a reccurring theme central to her artistic development.
In her most recent works, Evans has employed drawing, self-portraiture photography and slide projections as part of a reflexive process in which to situate her position as an artist. This approach allows her to map, sculpt, and draw the sites of convergence between herself, her practice and her surrounding location. For example, in her 2011 series Drawing Spaces Evans created a number of works where she literally draws the connection between her artistic practice and the act of interpreting space. In these works, she projected self-portraits in the act of drawing onto her own pencil renderings of Modernist Le Corbusier’s interiors.
Similar to her undertakings in the past, this recent series illustrates Evans’ reflexive attempt to visually articulate seemingly insignificant corporeal experiences of space. Both in her individual pieces as well as in her collective body of work as a whole, Evans aspires to emphasise the importance of movement through, and experience in, space. Ultimately, her practice not only reflects a personal interpretation of the material environment, but it also suggests that the social impact of architectural design occurs similarly on a larger public scale.
TexT by rosLyn sTanwick
Sarah FrancisSarah Francis works within the medium of performance photography. Francis’s art practice observes the idea of reality and representation, fascinated with the uncanny duality of photography. Gathering and relocating particular events or reminiscence that were once lost, forgotten or left behind Francis rearranges them weaving together with traces of dreams, the spoken words of stories and re-evaluates to create her own landscapes for her ideas to exist within. In reinterpretation of the facts and fictions Francis never fixes meaning to the impulsive performance, the pre-planned stages or the fragments of reality, which are still left tangible within her work. At first glance the work holds the sense of reality that photography demands as a medium, although on closer inspection the secrets the images contain start to unfold, the reality they contain becomes confusing, playful, but often creating an anxious tension between the presence of representation and the absence of realism; a new clear state to envisage a different world.
Contacthttp://www.sarahfrancisart.co.uk/
Above top: Lines
Above bottom: Sink
Above: 198 Souls But One Pair of Shoes
Jess LaljeeDay For Night
Jess Laljee builds the unexpected into her picture- making by using differing technical approaches. Exploring artifice, using light and darkness, her photographs hint at a hybrid status between found and staged images, although nothing is physically altered.
Long after they are completed, the meaning in the images continues to develop. Suggestions of failure, loss, urban life, and the particularities of the photographic, looking and seeing, weave in and out; oscillating between allegory and realism - between night and day.
When the photographs are exhibited, the purely visual combines with the idea of space and presentation as a pictorial narration. Individual images seem to refuse the viewer; the process of forcing them to show up for consideration brings the status of the photographs as mere conduits of information into question, inviting the viewer into a participatory role.
‘Coliseum’ and ‘Rise Fall’ were shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011.
Above top: Day For Night, Garage
Above bottom: Coliseum 1
Above: Day For Night, House
Gaia Rosenberg ColorniThe work sets out to articulate a haptic approach to the rediscovery of heterogeneous spaces, their construction and habitation. By means of transversals, the artist-explorer enacts new encounters with the surrounding environment, the potentiality of its functions and the socio-political encryptions residing within it. The artist, as well as the work, is in constant flux.
While implementing and somewhat critiquing the literature and methodologies rooted in the Situationist movement, as well as its contemporary psychogeographical branches, the work emulates the casually playful approach of the adventurous hobbyist. The immediate surroundings of Leeds alone lend themselves as a haven for the exploration of forgotten islands and underground infrastructures, providing the hobbyist with an untapped source of weekend activities ranging from geocaching, igloo building and dinghy promenading.
Chris Smith
On the land adjacent to our studios a large building takes shape. The constant drilling, banging, manoeuvring and fixing of materials has found its way into my work. Now I think of painting as a form of construction; the foundations are established in the ground and the form rises from the central surface and out to the perimeter where it is completed.
Contactwww.chrissmith.gallereo.com
Lydia WestermanLydia Westerman works with photography, print, sculpture and painting as well as traditional crafts, giving her practice a diverse and varied feel. Her current work consists mostly of photography, and centres around ideas of memory, domesticity, kitsch and art versus craft. From observing the contemporary world of people and objects around her, and engaging with the spoken word, Westerman creates new works which take a photographic element and marry it with traditional craft techniques such as cross stitch, embroidery and knitting. Enjoying the physical act of making and the processes it entails, she integrates into the work ‘found’ objects from flea markets and souvenirs from the places she visits. The work is a culmination of images (some are found images such as the family photo) where the physical act of creating the image is extremely important to the nature of the work - there are no automanipulated computer enhancements. It is a purely physical process; this relates to her practice in general
Above: MEH! cushion
Above: Nipper Hill
Thanks toProfessor Roger PalmerChris Taylor
Richard Bell Catherine Ferguson Professor Vanalyne Green Elin Jakobsdóttir Simon Lewandowski Emma Rushton Mark Sadler Jan Svenungsson
Claire Harbottle John Hornsby Peter Morton David Sowerby
The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust
School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural StudiesOld Mining Building, University of LeedsLeeds, West YorkshireLS2 9JTTel: +44 (0)113 34 35192Email: [email protected]
For Symposium Sponsorship:
School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, Research Committee for Funding
