It is different…not in terms of the making of the work, but you do feel a heightened awareness that ideas are not isolated. I have thought about how art of the past reflects the historical, political and social realities of its time and how art made now does the same thing. I think that exhibiting in the context of a historical collection highlights the fragmented shape of historical time. The experience of reacting to the work of artists who opted for a more theoretical approach, to the ways in which I have traversed and interwoven my work into their history. I believe my position is no different from what those artists of the past where doing. It highlights that history is a construct, and a way in which we process contemporary experiences of change. 5. Can you tell us a bit about the materials and processes behind the production of the work? The materials in the work are plaster, steel, inkjet prints on paper and fabric. I crafted all of these parts from the paintings, so the plaster piece is a slab relief work of the profile of the face in Warrener’s Mary Ann Carlton. The metal frame represents the reflection of the figure in The Kimono, the prints are details in Dunlop’s Portrait of a Woman zoomed by 1000%, and the fabric piece is from the ruff collar in Van Mierveldt’s Maria van Wassenaer Hanecopswith. These various details have been repeated and made into patterns. I hoped he individual elements would become unrecognisable from their original source. Also significant was the fact that my experience of looking at these paintings was on a computer screen. The digitisation of culture and subsequent drive of image circulation has shifted representation of the image into uncertainty. I have used figuration to produce colourful abstractions, a move that helped me to make sense of the indeterminacy of digital material (images that can be downloaded, zoomed, deleted etc) to a tactility that belies its digital source. I feel there is an ambiguity that can be created when showing something new within a historic collection. My work references many of the paintings and the women that they contain, but keeps them at arm’s length - detached and remote from the original.
It is different…not in terms of the making of the work, but you do feel a heightened awareness that ideas are not isolated. I have thought about how art of the past reflects the historical, political and social realities of its time and how art made now does the same thing. I think that exhibiting in the context of a historical collection highlights the fragmented shape of historical time. The experience of reacting to the work of artists who opted for a more theoretical approach, to the ways in which I have traversed and interwoven my work into their history. I believe my position is no different from what those artists of the past where doing. It highlights that history is a construct, and a way in which we process contemporary experiences of change. 5. Can you tell us a bit about the materials and processes behind the production of the work? The materials in the work are plaster, steel, inkjet prints on paper and fabric. I crafted all of these parts from the paintings, so the plaster piece is a slab relief work of the profile of the face in Warrener’s Mary Ann Carlton. The metal frame represents the reflection of the figure in The Kimono, the prints are details in Dunlop’s Portrait of a Woman zoomed by 1000%, and the fabric piece is from the ruff collar in Van Mierveldt’s Maria van Wassenaer Hanecopswith. These various details have been repeated and made into patterns. I hoped he individual elements would become unrecognisable from their original source. Also significant was the fact that my experience of looking at these paintings was on a computer screen. The digitisation of culture and subsequent drive of image circulation has shifted representation of the image into uncertainty. I have used figuration to produce colourful abstractions, a move that helped me to make sense of the indeterminacy of digital material (images that can be downloaded, zoomed, deleted etc) to a tactility that belies its digital source. I feel there is an ambiguity that can be created when showing something new within a historic collection. My work references many of the paintings and the women that they contain, but keeps them at arm’s length - detached and remote from the original.