During my MA in Fine Art at Chelsea, I am asking how, why and what it might mean to slow down our way of seeing, which is currently defined by multiple screens, uploads, feeds and mash-ups.
How does a united painted surface survive in the current visual climate of Photoshop, fragmentation and glitch?
Why might the artist choose to involve herself with the act of painting as a way to deal with a world full or uncertainty and impermanence? Is this a valid position in contemporary image making?
What is the possible result of presenting the viewer with an artwork that requires a more contemplative frame of mind, providing a surface and space in which they might lose themselves momentarily? Is this approach too didactic?
My painting practice revolves around the grid/web/checkerboard as a passive tool within which we generate and organise digital imagery as soft-copy material, as well as in the more hard-copy world of printing. I paint this motif as a way of making an imagethat has to be completed by the viewer, who projects her own image upon thegrid. I consider iconoclasm (or perhaps aniconism) as a counterbalance to the creative act as defined by the western cannon, and approach this through the problematic perception of the mishandled grid as ‘merely’ decorative or ornamental.
www.vanessahodgkinson.com
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