Evelyn Williams Drawing Fellowship 2001
(University of Derby)
I spent the 1-year time period of the Evelyn Williams Drawing Fellowship experimenting with drawing through other media such as video, photography and typography. I researched into the relationship between language and identity.
The final exhibition at the Q-Arts Gallery at Derby showed drawings on paper, slide and video using idioms, shorthand writing and memorised songs.
Installation 1:
“A storm in a teacup”, Installation, 3 slide projectors, 240 slides of English and German idioms written in tea cups projected onto coffee table, cloth, cake.
To view a press review of this exhibition, click here
Installation 2:
“Lob des Liedes”/ “Praise the song”
Sound installation and performance video, 5 speakers, TV screen and 4 mirrors.
The project "Lob des Liedes" explores both memory and identity by the performance of well known communist songs in various European cities.The placing of these songs out of context, resonates in the youth identity of the artist which exists only in the imagination.
Video, 28min, black and white drawing on water-soluble plastic, milk and coffee in white ceramic container.
Sound track by Iain McCurdy.
In the video various grids slowly dissolve into near-organic shapes. As in some perpetual dynamic process representing order and chaos, grids form, dissolve, dissipate and reform again. Once the grid drawing is placed into the liquid it takes on a life of its own.
Somewhere in everyday reality
(catalogue essay)
Video documents of 5 East German songs performed in 5 European cities, 11 years after the fall of the Berlin wall. The project explores memory and identity and by placing these songs out of context and time the text of the songs begin to take on new dimensional aspects.
The thematic concerns central to the work can be understood generally from three diverse but connected discourses.The human relationship to Nature has been explored through anevolving art practice.Through the authentic experience of various environs and the
exploration of the ambiguous edge between the urban and the rural a process of questioning is inferred.The order or chaos inherent in Nature provides a rewarding creative space andcan be focused inwards to the self and the perceptionary psychological states influenced byour environment.
From the juxtaposition of man and Nature emerges the associated theme of identity. The commercial manufactured homogenised identity which exists in the popular imagination has provided a creative platform for art projects.The realisation of these can provoke an
ironic response while accessing the image bank of memory both real and imagined. The crossover point between realities opens up another path of inquiry on the theme of memory. Fragmentary glimpses can provide a unique insight of personal experience which conflicts with the outer imposed identity.The internal dialogue contained within language mirrors the thought process itself and provides a conceptual base for creative unfolding. In the imagination the mind stores memories lost to a shifting contemporary society. In the art practice words are sometimes used and applied as brushstrokes reflecting complex
nature of the mind.
The creative approach releases and opens up into abstract play with form, texture and a way of seeing.To communicate the unclear, the confusing and the transience of form, to speak visually to the viewer, coaxing him/her to decipher meaning and to call forth. An aspiration to originate open-ended images that cannot be grasped immediately but which have multiple possibilities for interpretation or definition.The time based process investigates the temporal transformations from macro to micro perspectives responding to the entire and the complex. The making of the path of inquiry more visible which could reveal divergent thought or locate an inconsistency.
The process of drawing provides a creative unfolding central to the art practice. It allows a space for the expression of non verbal communication.The physical act of drawing, exploring spatially through mark makings is not only studio based. In an outside environment drawing uncovers one's own inner and outer landscape forming a sense of inquiry, discovery and arrival. Every arrival is also a point of departure and drawing becomes a method of memory with the process taking precedence over the outcome.The tracing or mapping of memory is visualised in the layering of images reflecting the process of time.The private investigative activity of drawing can be observed in the installation form where it invites the viewer into a polysensory territory where drawing is translated into a broader discourse.
In the art work titled "Wish you were here to trip up memory lane" drawing is transformed into an installation where layered paper sheets form a sculpture. By moving within the piece the viewer is invited to experience the inside and outside perspectives.The multi-layered drawn images refer to the cartographic process of walking in both rural and urban environments. In an earlier piece "Found Elements II" a series of 360 images printed onto tissue paper were specially placed as an installation responding to the light, space and
movement.The transparent and delicate nature of the work opened up an interplay betweenelements occupying a volume far greater than the sum of its parts.
Another installation "Memory Land", combines drawing with a video image of the artist within a landscape. Two video screens at either end of a series of drawings provide the frame for the viewers imagination, inviting them to visualise the traces of landscape revealed through memory.
Complimenting these projects a broad body of work encompassing the media of artist books, painting, printmaking and photography have been explored and accumulated.This work has emerged from a process of inquiry and collaboration with others under residency programs and exhibitions.
Evelyn Williams Drawing Fellow,
August 2001
For a downloadable pdf version of a catalogue that features this exhibition, click here
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