What is your work about and what informs it?
My work centres on exploring the appropriation of objects and how they are imbued with nostalgia. The narrative tendency created by nostalgia for the past and how it creates and shifts our values.
The importance of this work comes with the growing separation we have from our particular pasts, the gap increasing the possibility for longing, but also deception of the mind and what it remembers. The idea of nostalgia has been of interest to me in light of it's deceptions. The term first being coined in the late 19th Century as a medical term describing the homesickness Swedish soldiers suffered from when away at war. Today it is almost fashionably tossed around as a romantic description, evoking a sense of longing for a better time. I guiltily enjoy this modern interpretation of nostalgia, however am equally concerned with exploring the untruths with which it weaves and fools us with, often exploited deliberately.
Grayson Perry's work, which fuses the traditional medium of pottery and craft with contemporary adaptations of ancient rituals, has been a mainstay in my research and influence this year. He has a keen awareness of the cultural traditions which still influence us today, modern rituals that emulate ancient ways and cleverly using humour making it accessible I have been hugely influenced in my approach to choosing objects and reading them in terms of what they say about a perceived type of 'Englishness' we have of ourselves. The 'Englishness" is a construction grounded in nostalgia for something that didn't exist, but is romanticised and mythologised. His 2013 Reith Lectures gave me an insight into his take on this subject matter, and it was exciting to realise the relevance and appreciation that went with it.
How did you resolve your work for your final exhibition?
I wanted to create a space that would display the appropriated objects like cultural artefacts and would appear to have been collected so the artefacts could be examined in a new context and relationship between the objects could be explored. The cold interior aimed to evoke this nostalgia with visual cues via the objects and materials used in the space with which the viewer might feel some relation to.
There were some practical installation issues that I had to overcome and it made me look at curation and installation as one entity and appreciate the practical solutions that need to be considered with a hang. From the process of producing the degree show exhibition I learnt that the initial plan for a certain curatorial idea will more than likely not be what will happen. It is easy to get hung up on an initial vision, but it is essential that you are flexible and remain true to the concept, it could make or brake a piece.
What do you think is the most significant thing that has helped you during your time a UCA Farnham?
The most significant thing which has helped me during my time at UCA is the constant support of fellow students. I couldn't have fully comprehended the investment of time the course has you on you mentally, so having a studio with friends and colleagues who are in the same position as you and ready to talk through a piece of work was priceless and well as help with practical issues. The calibre of tutors and visiting artists on hand to engage in critique was also something that fuelled the continual progression of the work.
What are you planning next?
I am now looking for opportunities to work in galleries hoping to build my knowledge within the arts sector. I am particularly interested in developing my curatorial skill set, expanding the work that I have already had with artist and curator Mindy Lee. I also considered doing an MA and was accepted onto a course, but I would like to make a considered attempt at establishing myself as an artist and developing my practice further first.
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