Great Exhibition of the North 2018
N18 Artist Development Programme : June - August 2018
https://www.retsofyma.space/great-exhibiton-of-the-north
The N18 Artist development programme aims to bring together 18 artists and creatives from the North of the country to develop their digital capabilities and to create work in response to the Great Exhibition of the North commissions. The artists have the opportunity to work and collaborate together and be mentored by digital professionals throughout the duration of the programme. The opportunity is open to artists at any stage of their creative career.
For myself, this will be a fantastic experience outside of my studies to expand my knowledge and allow my individual practice to progress beyond an institutional structured framework.
I plan to use this time to reflect on my own work and how I want it to operate, and to learn new ways in which I can thread digital tech into my physical installation in space.
Application Questions & Answers :-
Tell us about yourself as an artist including what mediums you work with.
For my research-based practice; physical installation and digitally manipulated imagery converge in material spaces or online. These challenge how we experience the events of the everyday and social phenomena, fusing sociology and strands of philosophy with art. The mixed media installations are constructed in a variety of different observational locations, examining a physical relationship to spaces and moments in time in present visual culture.
Edited films and still digital images often feature in the multimedia compilations. They detail an essence of transient events and digitally transformed real-spaces that are attentive to the excessive culture developing around us at great speeds. Abstracted aesthetics embody the unfamiliar, uncanny transformation of our sensate ‘human’ experiences, changing due to evolving technology ever-present in our everyday encounters.
Pushing the boundaries of the everyday is important in understanding our relationship to developing 21st century technologies. Artists have potential to play with what we value as society and offer alternative narratives or parodies to draw attention to our sometimes-autonomous acceptance of happenings.
Drawing on creative experience in several arts institutions - public gallery spaces, artist-led initiatives and commercially led locations. I’m motivated by diverse social dynamics in the creative industry. In particular, dissolving apathy towards women employing digital mediums. Not to reject femininity, but to reject preconceptions of the work associated with its authorship. Combined, my diverse mixed media projects thread humanity with space and digital technologies.
Please give us a short biography of your work to date.
As my work deals with a social conception of places, previous projects have played with how we physically interact with ephemeral projections in a constructed installation space. By disrupting the experience of the art with constructed, obscure spaces. The effect is more immediate and coincides with the intent to offer space for thought and contemplation, something that is lost in the fast-paced excess of consumer-capitalist cultures.
Digital prints and films I’ve created have been stirred by film theory associated with time and human experience. The imagery is often extracted from moments and experiences where there is a significant, obscure social construct at play in the environment. For example, places with a niche history where the people who know of it and its ephemera are bound in an individual community. In fusing these films with installation, they enhance various environments with alternative narratives. They come to be associated with the sociology of space. More specifically, the dynamic of the cinema; which appears to have an intent to generate conditions that encourage an engrossed experience of the film.
A site-responsive project I worked on this year was generated with collaborative exchanges with non-arts workers. Some of the discourse around the logistics of gathering materials in a non-traditional art space led us to having in depth discussion around the preciousness of business and process. This notion of stories and exchanged memories was echoed in my ephermal filming and prints which offered a snapshot of these workers’ memories and the significance of those to place and community.
Please tell us why you are applying for this opportunity, what you hope to gain from the programme and what change you anticipate from taking part.
Northern art and artists have long been undervalued as a strong ingredient in the UK’s cultural cooking pot. As an aspiring artist, originally from The Midlands/Yorkshire, this is an excellent opportunity to be involved in changing perceptions of the Northern arts scene and contributing to the development of arts organizations and artists outside of London and The South. Coming from a working-class background, taking part in these programmes offers a chance to further develop myself in a field that is can be shrouded in exclusivity. This diversity in the arts is something I feel I try to advocate with my work and something I hope to develop as a primary motivation for my practice/vocation in the future.
Collaborating and networking with other artists and professionals interested in digital mediums and technology will hopefully expand my knowledge in the field, and further inspire the development of the digital strand to my practice. In meeting a cohort of individuals interested by the same theme, the immersive weekends could potentially foster new collaborations or partnerships beyond the programme. This further strengthens the Nothern arts scene by nourishing future connections between its artists and creative practitioners.
The programme offers space to experiment with alternative ways of thinking about and presenting contemporary art, exploring the ways in which artists can maintain their practice with minimal space. Digital technologies in particular are often more readily available to us than a physical studio space to develop a material works. I hope to develop this digital and technological aspect of my practice that I might later fuse with installation pieces and present in physical space. I wish to also experiment with ‘online’ installation. Careful curation of digital pieces online could offer an experience inclusive of physical interaction. Accessibility is also important in developing an online installation project, the internet is a current and immediate way to broaden the audience of contemporary art, further advocating for this diversity that I seek to advocate with my work.
Due to the weight of art history and the breadth of global connectivity on the web, authenticity and originality are terms that can often disrupt the flow of work production. The challenge to create new art that is completely original can prove to be counterproductive in developing present projects. By taking part in the programme, and learning more about the possibilities and potential in digital art. I hope to combine this new knowledge with my individual interests to create something that chimes with the sociological thread that links the themes in my practice with alternative disciplines.
How do you plan to use digital/ technology to develop your practice or business?
Visual realities have played a key part in my projects to date, I’ve already toyed with digital manipulation software to create an alternative perspective on real spaces. Given the advancements in AI, VR and simulation technology over the last 3-5 years, contemporary art practices now have scope and access to a number of tools to further push the boundaries of the visual art experience.
My knowledge of the ways in which technology alters our perceptions of reality can still be strengthened by the mentoring scheme in the programme, I hope that with experience, exchanges and opportunities to learn more about a specific element of digital practice with a specialist mentor, I can further experiment with different technologies and softwares to create my visual art.
I hope to develop digitally constructed or edited films and prints with alternative technologies that can be used to experiment with ‘online installations’ and to later combine with physical materials for an ambitious installation project. Exploring the possibilities of viewing is important to the glue of the research strand of my practice. In extending the physical renditions of moments in time in my work to digital pieces contained within a visual sphere. The work has potential to offer a space of escape and intelligent commentary on the overabundance of material in our social realms, whilst also exploring our relationship with new media and visual technology.
Have you produced work before through a programme of collaboration? Tell us more about this, in particular what you believe the key ingredients are for a successful collaboration.
For a collaborative and co-curated exhibition I worked on in Feb 2018, the resulting work of a 4-week residency was developed from conversations and collaborative exchanges with the residents of a traditional, working tile factory space. This communication became a key element to the work and informed our approach in welcoming spectators to the exhibition weekend which also became a conversational affair. A sensitivity to the ideas and the feelings of others and how they might blend with our own in this scenario became a valuable ingredient in the success of this project. Working with a public audience less familiar with art practices to create the work challenged the collaborative methods I was comfortable with, broadening my experience of collaborative working processes.
In previous collaborations with a variety of peers, the strength in the projects were in these shared exchanges and communication. When ideas, thoughts, experiences or sketches coalesce; it nourishes an equal experience which results in a successful exhibition or partnership that is reflective of everybody whom takes part. I’ve found that communication has been the most essential component to a successful collaboration. Further positive qualities, such as a balance in the contribution to the work, follows positive conversations. During the programme, I hope there will be opportunities with the mentors and other artists to have conversations and exchanges which encourage equal collaborations. Inspiring future exhibitions and experiences that I might undertake beyond the development scheme.
N18 will support artists to produce a creative digital response as part of the programme. This may require you to work at speed due to the timescales involved. Can you provide an example of when you have worked at speed to produce a creative output?
For a 4-week residency/exhibition I participated in during the month of Feb 2018, myself and my collaborator had just less than 2 weeks to create the material work for the resulting exhibition. Over the course of the month, the limited time frame had to be managed with precision to allow for the collection of materials, creating the works and organising the exhibition opening independently. We successfully managed to produce digital prints, sculpture and film installations within the 2-week allocated time and get them set up in time for the organised exhibition weekend.
Great Exhibition of the North website :- www.getnorth2018.com/
~ Amy
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