My Low Residency Artwork, A.K.A. The Bridge - A & B
Here are the final touches made to my chosen artwork, leading up to the Low Residency Interim Show in London!
As you will notice from all of the preview images on this blog, all of my recent artworks have had vines in them. Vines are incredibly rich symbols for a surrealist vocabulary. To me - they are organic, ambiguous, quietly subversive, and often disliked by those who want to control a more minimalist reality. As a female surrealist artist engaging (or questioning) reality, consciousness, gender, sexuality, and geopolitics, I feel that vines can operate on multiple layered meanings at once:
Interconnected Consciousness
Feminine Growth and Reclamation
Sexuality and Desire
Geopolitical Entanglement
Distortion of Reality…
So, these vines are not just decorative or a simple reminder of the importance of nature. These vines are agents of infiltration, connection, and transformation. They can embody a tension between control and chaos, intimacy and invasion, nature and system. They could also function as a living metaphor that quietly but relentlessly questions everything it touches.
Leading on with the subject of tension, my installation plan for this piece at the Interim Show was the pull the double-sided canvases as tightly as possible between two of the pillars in the Central Saint Martins open public space that was dedicated to our class. This physical tension is intended to highlight the opposing poles of duality that I am trying to fight every day (in no particular order below):
Feeling town between living in France and coming back to the UK, to spend time/take care of my lovely mother
Oscillating frequently between happiness and sadness, deep mood swings, questioning mental health and reality as a result
The very thin line that exists between my conscious, subconscious and unconscious states, as I come closer to finding a way to integrate my decade-long Dream Diary into my art practice
Questioning my sexuality and born gender, female - male, heterosexual - homosexual, the spectrums of all sorts, pulling between everything on a daily basis
Continuing to doubt/question what truth our world is moving towards - geopolitically, spiritually, and existentially. What is right today, and what is that always the same as what is morally right
Last but definitely not least - Integrating references to great surrealist masters in my artwork creates a compelling tension, where the echoes of the past are reimagined through a contemporary lens, opening unexpected pathways toward future artistic possibilities
Next blog post = LONDON!!!
