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ma art pyschotherapy exhibition goldsmiths 2012
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PLAYING WITH REALITY MA ART PSYCHOTHERAPY EXHIBITION 2012
ARTIST'S PROFILE AND STATEMENTS
Meriel Abraham'Thank You' 2012
Since starting my training as an Art Therapist, I have noticed a change in my artwork, I believe this is a result of the experiences I have had as a trainee and the work I am doing with my clients. The therapeutic relationship is a unique one between client and therapist and I have used my art practice to help me gain a deeper understanding of the complex and difficult emotions this relationship can arouse. I have stopped being so concerned with how accomplished a piece is and found an urgency in my art that comes through in the materials. I believe that without my artwork I would not be able to process the experiences I have as an Art Therapist.
Emma Adler‘Internal, External’
My art practice continues to inform my thinking about the internal landscape of an individual and how this may be visually represented. My thinking has been inspired by drawing comparison to the external landscape; the feelings and atmosphere created by an external landscape and how these can both soothe and excite. I pose questions to myself such as, how may the external environment inform and excist in the mind and thus in the art therapy space.
My recent work is an exploration of the ways in which I have experienced the body as a profound communication whilst working with people given a diagnosis of Autism. I am beginning to explore emotions that can be seen and felt in the body.
Fawzia Afifi ‘Water’ (2012)
I am interested to explore how the digital medium can influence our flux of consciousness, open questions of what is matter and consequently change our perception. Currently, I am working on a circular screen, which focuses on the pre-verbal and the sensual and tries to change our pre-conceptions of cinematic language. The piece ‘Water’ is an experimentation and part of a long-term research project.
The space is aimed to be immersive giving the viewer an experience of being ‘within’ the womb – the viewer becomes the performer, yet hidden and free to explore. Sound was created from the sound artist Eliane Rodrigue who recorded the heartbeats of her unborn child within water.
“To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water”. (Gaston Bachelard, 1942)
Abigail Allen
The role of art in the experience of training has been particularly important in deepening my identity and exploring my development. Prior to the course my involvement with art was without boundaries and controlled in context and aesthetics. This year I have worked on liberating my previous relationship with controlled art to develop a new engagement allowing myself to be expressive. In this I have allowed the materials, colours and the experiences of the course dictate my expression. This piece is a response to my first year on placement.
Zoe Andrews‘Hairbrush’ 2012
My art explores the event-horizons between opposing, extreme perceptions, and in particular these associations when applied to women. Throughout time women have been perceived in extremes. My work aims to explore some of the overlaps of the desirable and the abject and much of my work in recent years has involved the use of human hair. The symbolism of hair itself is hugely contradictory. Hair’s symbolic history includes sexual empowerment, purity, damnation, spirituality, commerce, genitalia and excrement.
Kristeva (!984) describes a cleaving between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ that begins with separation from the mother at birth: the beginning of pre-symbolic abjection. Humans are fascinated with the abject, are drawn to it. Hair can be abjectified once it leaves the head. In its ‘correct place’ hair can be desirable, a place of safety and refuge, a source of power; once it is removed it loses this power, it becomes impotent and abject.
Karin Henny Ångström Ludwig
There is a paragraph in Paul Gauguin’s memoir ‘Avant et après’ that has stuck with me where he reflects upon being an artist and exhorts his readers: ‘To liberate oneself from rigid institutional values (religious, moral, or artistic) and accept that it is one’s duty to work. Toil endlessly. Otherwise what would life be worth? Even if one can’t grasp the full meaning of one’s art or occupation, it is the duty of everyone to try, to practise.” For now that is all I can do.
Rachel Arguile 'Kebab Shop. Outer Space'
This is me in a kebab shop having had one too many drinks. Layered over the top is an image of outer space. Both realities. Both equally as futile as the other.
Steph Bedford 'Cusp'
between greedy mess and narcissism, sprouts of time and art transpire to allow glimpses of inter-generational trauma and indecision...
'An Experiment in Decay, Attachment and Transformation' 2010-2012 (collected found dummies, three year old jar of rotten maggots and cornmeal, string, things found on the way to the exhibition)'Trauma man' 2012 (ceramic, cloth, newspapers)'Being in the maelstrom (lost words weekend)' 2012 (audio visual 4mins)'Psychoanal' (Series 1) 2012 (water colour on paper)
Emma Bennett
Achieve Action Affirmation Anxiety Art Avoidance Awakening Awareness Belief Bonds Boundaries Breaks Build Bridge Calm Closed Conflicting Connections Conscious Contained Counter-transference Creativity Critical Denial Depression Distress Dynamics Emotion Endings Enjoyment Escape Experiment Failure Faith Fear Feelings Gaining Group Help Helping Hope Hopeful Imagination Imagine Individual Interpretation Insignificant Judgement Judging Keep Kind Lacking Learning Link Loss Maintain Mind Nice Now Obsess Occupy Open Pain Past Present Pressure Psyche Questioning Quiet Real Realisation Reflection Self Sense Sign Significant Succeed Therapeutic Thinking Tired Train Transference Trust Truth Try Unawareness Unconscious Unique Unloading Uplifting Upsetting Voice Vulnerable Whole Why Wishing Working Yourself Zero
Verity Blakeman
I am interested in the associations individuals make with particular objects that become imbued with meaning beyond their intended purpose. Through the process of casting I replicate everyday objects in ceramic forms, capturing the essence of their original qualities yet altering their function. A hot water bottle provides warmth and comfort. It is an object I associate with childhood, growth and nurture.
Claire Brett'Remembered'
In remembrance of a wet evening in April.In remembrance of Patrick Kavanagh.
In remembrance of us all.
The birds' ceased their singing long ago.One day we too shall exist only in the memories of others.Perhaps words upon a page or paint upon a canvas will continue to hold traces of us. Little fragments of our being preserved within the amber of our art.
Alison Brown'He / She Piece' 2012
My sculptures are part of a series of works that evolved through my training as an art therapist at Goldsmiths. They are about what happens when individuals meet in psychodynamic situations. When dreams, fears and desires intersect: images are created. My pieces have both insides and outsides, playing with what is visible and what is secret. They are designed to be shaken like rattles. This piece combines male and female aspects and resembles a weapon, but it is also a container. Through transference and countertransference in psychotherapy we are required to recognise and accept bisexual elements in ourselves.
Lucy BrutyA running theme in my art practice is black. Blackness of night sky, the outermost reaches of the cosmos, united with the blackness within, the unknown elements of self. Working with the theme of ‘unknown’ is a two way process, working with unconscious and conscious sources. Through art making, previously indistinguishable thoughts, feelings, memories and imaginations surface and are given form within an image. My art practice is an interface for which I can re-experience these, a quest into the ‘unknown’ in search of moments of discovery.
Oliver Campbell'Summer Flooded by Winter' (After Poussin) (unfinished, oil on canvas)
This piece combines two paintings from Nicolas Poussin's Four Seasons, one of a bucolic summer scene, the other of the deluge in winter. In colliding the two scenes together, I sought to explore something of the way in which contradictory emotions can often coincide.
Sarah Carson
I am interested in how different people use visual expression to interact and communicate within the boundaries of their social contexts. I think an art object is the product of a negotiation between a person and their environment, which makes art inherently ‘political’. I am currently working on an art project which is an ethnographic study of my local high street. Using a mobile studio I have worked with individual local residents to create art works that represent their views of our shared neighbourhood. I will produce a book of the images, and exhibit them locally.
Boon Chee'Eggs in a basket'
I moved to London for my art therapy course this year and is in a unique position of being a minority. As I think about my differences, I also think about others’ differences. How do my friends view themselves? What is their image of themselves? How about the children that I see for art therapy? What is their experience of being different? One of the reasons for their referrals is that they are different from their classmates. Being different is such a fragile thing. Some may like it while others do not. What about you?
Sophie Cottingham'Untitled' 2012
“Awareness of bodily separateness is the heartbreak at the centre of human existence…” (Tustin, 1992)
This year my work has been concerned with spaces. I have thought about the formation of the self as a distinct space from that surrounding it, and how the confusion of these spaces affects relations with the outside world. The belly-button is the remnant of an actual connection from one to another, in the very first inhabited space.
Gina Concannon'The Fate of Place’
My art practice explores the world of personal identity through the mediums of assemblage and text often encompassing the use of my own body. It is at times deeply confessional and endeavors to be both frank and provocative in its representation of human emotion and experience.
This work attempts to communicate the influence of cultural roots, the fate of place and the impact of displacement. It also represents a personal relationship with physical pain as well the psychological pain that can often accompany insight or ‘wisdom.’ The ‘lead’ balloon speaks of a fear of failure and plays with notions of transformation inherent in the therapeutic process through the use of the materials.
Kathryn Cooper
At the moment I'm playing with NHS primary care trust forms used to measure mental health states and emotions. I like to make interactive performances – I made a sort of ceremony, like a guided meditation/visualization followed by acting out the symbolic death and rebirth of one of the participants. This included the 'dead' person having a microphone to talk from beyond the grave about what they regretted and hoped for in their new life. I have an ambition to make a piece of work involving talking in tongues - but am still trying to master setting up the right conditions for audience members to spontaneously do this without forcing or faking it!
[email protected]://www.flickr.com/photos/kafs/
Hannah Cridford'Couple' (hand blown and cut lead-crystal glass h: 45cm approx)
As a designer-maker in glass and ceramics, I have always been interested in how materials may imitate or relate to the human form. Couple, from the Poise series of vessels, uses refined lines and minimalist form to explore the equilibrium of and between objects. Hand-blown in glass and freestanding, the Poise series challenges the viewer to contemplate their understanding of the material, which is often perceived as fragile or hazardous. Historically, I have developed ways of working with materials over long periods of time, allowing ideas to ruminate. Training in Art Psychotherapy has had a dramatic impact on my art practice, which is currently more reflexive; an urge to use materials to explore and expel thoughts and feelings.
Sharon Daley'What's the Difference?' 2011 (Acrylic)
This piece of artwork is in response to one of the large experiential groups, following a comment about a ‘paper baby’ that was made. The painting shows a collection of coloured pencils, of varied lengths and shades of pink, bar one which is brown. I sought to convey my feelings in this image about the difference that was in the room on the day and the importance of difference. How we have more in common than we sometimes choose to realize and how, despite our differences our purpose or goals are the same. The use of art material images to convey this feeling is significant. I went on to explore the notion of ‘sameness with a difference’, (a contradiction in terms?) and how I would seek to meet the needs of a culturally diverse clientele through my practice as an art therapist.
Ana DrummondI think that art has the potential to unlock many memories. Memories that are not necessarily located in narrative, but are perhaps kept locked somewhere else. I have been drawing clouds since I began training as an Art Psychotherapist, searching for an image that might capture the idea of the individual, in a constant state of flux through the experience of learning. Clouds reflect this idea for me, as they change shape and form according to their surroundings.
Always changing, always moving, always responding.
Tracey Elizabeth Downing'Playing' 2012
My art work represents a culmination of understanding of art psychotherapy process experienced over the last three years, along with visual responses to my personal journey and work with clients in various therapeutic settings. My exploration of relationships, both personal, familial and therapeutic has led me to consider themes of trust, abandonment, isolation, togetherness and belonging. The symbol of the person has emerged at different times over the course of the MA in Art Psychotherapy programme. The inherent blankness of these symbols signifies the potential projections that occur within relationships, institutions and the wider community.
Magda Florek 'Movement in red' 2009 (digital print)'Cry Out' 2012 (acrylic on canvas)
“You do not have to be good...you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
My visual explorations behind the artwork started with my passion for the 5 rhythms movement practice … Movement triggers in me a need to capture colour, to engage with it. Having previously used only film/photography, my current training has inspired me to explore more traditional art media such as paint. The artwork selected represents this shift.
Stephanie Frisby
I graduated from the Kent Institute of Art in Design (Rochester) in 2005 with a degree in Silversmithing, Goldsmithing and Jewellery Design. I also have experience of working within residential care for adolescents and now work for CXK (formerly Connexions Kent), specialising in working with young people with learning disabilities and difficulties. I have a particular interest in how jewellery can enable us to transmit exterior signs of interior states and how it can bridge the personal and public space.
Cecile GeoffrayI worked as a ceramic designer for a numbers of years before deciding to train as a primary school teacher. It was then that I realised there was more to me than just telling the kids what to do, even though there were great moments of creative learning taking place.
I designed this porcelain jug a while ago. It symbolises fragility and femininity but it also represents the body: container that can hold sins, hurt, pain and many other feelings, certainly unwanted. Because of it, our body is often taken for granted. Even it is the only connection we have to feel that we exist, the price is too high to pay.
My experience of using art has helped me to externalise many unwanted feelings and to face them rather than carrying them with me. This is what art is to me, a way to eject the bad from the mind and out of the body. That way, the vessel that is our body, does not have to endure so many wounds, metaphorically speaking - as it deserves to be treated better.
Lucy Gibson-Hill
A true Londoner with a taste for the exotic. A background in life-drawing and digital media, graphic design and abstract painting. Also a web designer. Globally concerned about human rights. I love life, my dogs and dancing all night long. Have a look at my website for an idea of my work and get in touch if there’s anything we could do together!
Nadine Grech
Past dreams, monsters under the bed....shadows and ghosts......fears .....are they fantasy or is it part of reality.............is it just me?
Preethy Grima'Uneven patterns'
Uneven patterns are joined together in layers. The transparent quality of paper allow all of the parts of layers to be seen through.
Pihla Gross
My current artwork is very much entwined with being an art psychotherapy student. My exhibition pieces represent my imaginary places where the mind can rest and experience a sense of serenity.
Art is a multidimensional tool and for me personally it can sometimes soothe and nurture but in comparison it can also question and be angry.
Katrina Harris What is a jellyfishOnce it is out of the water, And off of the beach?We used to poke them with sticks,My sisters and I
Half-remembered, half-formed.With a sting that half-hurt.I never felt spineless at that ageI never felt speechless eitherI’d been happy with blind, privateexploration of my seas,Pulsing through the dark like a heartbeatUntil now
Jessica Hill
Over the course of my life I have collected a range of small objects and kept them in a box. Each object tells a story. On a rainy day I'll go through this box, picking them up, looking at them and then putting them back.
I'd like to respond to the title of this exhibition 'Playing with Reality' by re-presenting some of these objects, independent of the meanings I denote. By doing this I am asking what their true object-ness is and at the same time I am asking the viewer to re-find and re-define the objects through the act of looking, which for me highlights the very relationship between artist, viewer and art object.
[email protected]://singlehandedslap.blogspot.co.uk/
Mary-Clare Hobbs 'Mum' 2012 (acrylic on canvas board)
“The mother's face is the primary locus where the child begins to know herself and to acquire a sense of playfulness and creativity. The artist and her work is a continuation of this relationship, but one that, unlike the mother, over which the artist has at least partial control”
Professor Jeremy Holmes.
Mary-Clare Hobbs read Psychology at York University, before training as an Art Psychotherapist, and is currently working with Older Adults in an NHS setting. Her artwork focuses on themes of boundaries, separation and entanglement; conveyed through painting, collage and sketches. She currently lives in Hertfordshire.
Hana Ibis Smeeth
'Clay' (60cm x 30cm)
My art practice is an attempt to explore and reconcile bonds that have been broken between me and significant others. A symbolic process, representative of the many fragments that make up my identity as an artist and trainee Art Psychotherapist. I t brings a sense of closeness that has been lost.
Marina Ioannou
A sculptural synthesis complied by six clay pieces, coated with dark purple paint and brushed on with a bronze varnish, executed after a study on animal sculls. This work of art represents the complexity and vanity of life, coupled with the struggles and heavy load of responsibilities one has to take on in order to achieve and fulfill their aspirations.
Nicola Jefferies
Rowena Juliet Banfield
I smile each time I remember that I have the knowledge of another form of communication, that of images; a language that in its own right delves deep beyond to a place words may never dare step, bringing into focus our experiences so that my perceptions are clarified. The image embodies both the concrete experience and my emotional engagement through the stimulus and with the art material. The image acts as a container, allowing me retain and revisit in order to refocus my eyes and process my own experiences, leading to a transformation within and a developing ability to acknowledge this externally.
Leo Maciel 'Mind The Box II' (Detail)
“Leo Maciel’s images are not there simply for the cheapness of shock value but are intended to be a vehicle which allows the possibility of ‘seeing’ situations in a different light... going beyond and behind the obvious impact... trying to break down preconceptions we society, opt for. His images surprise by their content and composition and delight us by our sudden realisation of what they are! He uses, for instance, the image of the box (Pandora?) and, in this respect the presentation resembles a honeycomb whereby all are separate but also part of a whole. Shamans of the Old World told us of the ‘gap between the worlds’. Not reality versus un-reality but a gateway from the mundane to the supra-mundan”’. Phil Coram, writer on ‘Mind the Box’.
“Colours call the tune, whilst marks are scored to a future order constructed into shapes, reassigned their own meanings. A tableau is mounted before us functionally freed from gallery constraints”. Wendy Sullivan, artist and poet on ‘Mind the Box’. [email protected]
Emma MacKinnon
Making art about my children enables me to keep them in mind when preoccupied with other areas of life. The work is currently a response to their adolescence and growing independence.
“An artistic conception of my work can help me understand how the different roles I play complement and find one another” Catherine Hyland Moon
My attempts to capture the moment are already history.
Josie Mahoney'Gingerbread House' 2012 (pastels)
The Ginger bread house represents my placement in a hospice. The house is laden with sweets, appealing and trying to be kind, caring and full of niceness. The house may symbolise the mother and body but they can’t protect the child from the illness. The witch is the illness waiting inside the house and must be destroyed for survival and for everyone to live happily ever after.
Amanda McLauchlan ‘Strength through Fragility’
My art practice is centred on experimentation with processes involving glass and clay. The work utilises the ‘unknown’ reactional element of materials in the firing process to symbolise the ‘unknown’ experienced on the therapeutic journey. The negative space held within my work provides transparency, whilst speaking of what is absent. For a fluid state, the containers are ‘uncontainable’ which plays with the idea of how we as therapists learn to contain and hold all that our clients bring. My work also aims to capture the paradox between fragility and strength- prevalent in my own personal journey. [email protected]
Jaki Musker (90 x 20 cm plaster and wool)
Through this piece entitled Orkney, I am exploring the natural relationships of textures and organic form through the process of plaster casting and weaving with wool. References to the undersea world of anemones and rock-pools, corresponds to an underworld in my thinking; that particular experiences are available to explore only at certain times before they re-submerge back into their underworld. Forces, constantly at work, shape our internal and external worlds.
Alice Myles'A symbol of pain'
A symbol of pain: warped, stripped of immortality, its history suffocated in synaptic crash. This is an ongoing project exploring physical, psychological, emotional and cultural constellations of pain. Documenting my process, I am reflecting on how art practice and theory might interpenetrate in production of knowledge.
Saskia Neary
Crunching up charcoal, making rough forms, painting back over and rubbing out has become part of my process. Figures emerge as shadows of people who have left their mark. I am reminded of patients on the ward; intensely present for only short periods of time. Some figures take shape as 'the image' others fall to the background; struggling to claim space to be seen, to hold my attention. Impermanence and pain are captured in the entwined lines and shapes invoking my realisation and feelings of grief about the tragic inevitability; for many patients I have been working with, repeat admissions to the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit will punctuate the rest of their lives.
Helen OmandMy work encompasses drawing, video, and more recently ceramics. The image of a dolls house cradle came from my experience working with children on placement this year, and their play with the dolls house in the therapy room. The baby in its cradle was used to play out fantasies about babies and mothers, and the cradle became an object became full of meaning. I thought of ‘cradling’ as meaning keeping safe and protecting, and the cradle as a container, to hold the baby after it has come out of its initial container the mother’s womb.
Casting a dolls house cradle involved considering the object in a new way. I had to try to conceive of an inside and an outside at the same time. The outside of the cradle would become the inside of the mould. I thought about negative space and the idea of absence. In each cradle, there seemed to be something about loss that was present, with the absence of the original object. The cradles are like little ghosts of the former object. The emptiness of the cradle seems to ask where is the baby? Have they grown up and the cradle is abandoned, or is the baby missing, lost, or safe in its mother’s arms?
Roisin O'Brien
From the start my art practice has been driven by emotional influences. A fascination with the emotional hold of art - and with an artist’s ability to express oneself through the medium - led directly into my interest in Art Therapy. Through my own work I attempt to explore my thoughts regarding the ‘self’. The dominant theme of this being the consumption of my own body by an ‘other’: The feeling of something taking over and stopping me from showing my true self.
In this work I imagine the lined mass creeping up on me, but only as it passes over me is (part of) my body revealed.
Kristina Page 'Harbour; stray boat' (oil and tippex on canvas. 76 x 102 cm)
My work is often based on repetition of physical tasks that are explored through image making and through performance. This painting suggests to me a harbour wall, lost boats trying to find a place to attach to. It makes me think of our primary need to attach ourselves somewhere so we do not drift alone.
Isa Pastor Gonzalez
Art has been always something intimate that accompanied me naturally. It never was a professional area of my life. It just was with me, in the shape of different women that use to appear on the paper. Lately it has being also influenced by the energy of the 15M social political movement that was born in Spain one year ago.
I had the intuition about art as a way of meeting, expression or communication inside the therapeutic space. Being close to the end of this first year at Goldsmiths, I come to realize that my conceptions and experiences about art, inside or outside the therapeutic space, have been transcended. And, in conceiving this, my art became embodied, and my body became weaved with it.
I was born in Valladolid, Spain. I studied Psychology at Salamanca University and Constructivist Psychotherapy at Universitat de Barcelona. I worked at social, educative and clinical areas before coming to London.
Andrew Phillips'No end in sight'
Working in the mediums of drawing, film, and music my art is interested in the creation of enigmatic landscapes. Evocative of a space that could be internal or external, micro- or macrocosmic, it seeks to explore something of the paradoxical nature of being potentially both finite and infinite.
A drawing I’ve included in this exhibition took it’s lead from a three-dimensional art work created during an ‘experiential group’, which forms one aspect of our training.
Steve Pratt ‘The Playing & the Reality’A Tragic Comedy in 3 parts
In the beginning I liked War Games,But the expectations never matched up to the reality. Especially when I imagined the person over there was trying to kill me.They say everyone cracks up in the end. It’s just the degree that varies. We all have different breaking points. I reached mine sooner than expected. But it’s ok. It comes as a relief to learn. It’s all been a terrible mistake. I’m not the person I thought I was.
Sandra RosPigliosi'I feel you'
A feeling is an essential part of an experience. No aspect of our mental life is more important to the quality and meaning of our existence than our feelings. When listening, entirely and attentively, one can sense the transmission of feelings that come from an other. It is often enough to be sensitively aware of our connections to feel we are not alone. There is no need of touch, no need of language, just the energy passing within. Through the heart, one can bodily and instinctively feel the other, the interrelation comes alive and the mirroring of affections is born.
Taiseer Shelhi'Salma'
Miranda Sharp'Room with a sea view' 2012
'Without the public, my work ceases to exist. I attempt what Rosalyn Deutsch calls making the invisible, visible when working in the public realm”. (Deutsch: 2005, Tate Modern, Making Public Symposium)
Miranda Sharp’s sociological approach means that she uses her art practice as a research tool spending time in a place observing and engaging in unique ways to the people who live and work in that particular environment. This type of participant-observation allows new perspectives to emerge for the artist, collaborators and audience. She uses a variety of media including, text, photography, sound, film, installation, live performance art and psycho-social methodologies.
07905 [email protected]
Chris SmithStill frame from the Bath Half Marathon Project
I don’t know what to say that doesn’t sound confusing, I am not sure what kind of artist I am, or what I am trying to do. Maybe sometime with help I will.
At the moment I am interested in groups working with ideas.
If you want to take part now or in the future contact.
Myles Stewart'Mother and Child' (10ft x 3ft)
The image joins a tradition of “mother and Child” art works, the most prevalent being ‘Madonna and Child’ paintings from religious iconography; the almost Holy bond between mothers and babies upon which so much psychoanalytic theory is based. The loss of the primary relationship is perhaps the greatest loss, the template from which all other relationships grow. Perhaps the search for this lost bond is one we unconsciously strive to fulfill throughout our lives.
This image is taken from a dream of my own attachment with my mother. In the dream I could not use ropes because the tension between the mothers body would pull the child apart. So I used a crane and an anchor to fix myself to the ocean floor as close as I could to her. It was an unpleasant dream but captured an essence of the primary relationship that only dream images could possibly capture.
Lynn Towers Strong and Courageous'
This pencil drawing is a creative response to my partner’s motorcycle accident. I used pencil frequently when he was hospitalised and subsequently housebound for two years. I had previously worked on larger scales using paint but I found, during this tense time, that I was able to express myself more accurately through tight drawings, on top of an etched in image; rubbing out repeatedly.
Stacey Williams
“Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.”Salvador Dali
After years of creative scrutiny, searching for perfection to meet aesthetic needs of others, I finally move away from the fear of failure once illustrated through my anxious, solid black lines. I now embark upon a time of experimental exploration of more fluid mediums of clay and paint. I have no clue where this journey will take me, I simply hope to rekindle my lost freedom of unconscious expression.
“There is no must in art because art is free.” Wassily Kandinsky
Karen Wydler'Oil drums and water carriers'
Karen’s work is concerned with the use of land and resources, and the social implications of environmental degradation. She is interested in exploring ‘feral’ and ‘civilised’ behaviour in relation to this.
Kate Woodfield
My piece for the exhibition is an attempt to show how I felt whilst on my first placement and how clumsy I felt negotiating my way with vulnerable children whilst I began to try to learn how to be a therapist.
Shireen YaishDrawing inspired by art residency in Al Faraa Palestinian refuge camp in the summer of 2011. The writing is from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish; a dialogue between the head and the heart. The head tells the heart that it is tired of the heart constantly asking where they are heading when there is no sky or land, and it ends with the head asking the heart to rebel against it and take it where it wants. It could also represent male and female attitudes in the same person... the constant struggle of which to follow and which to let dominate.
Palestinians who live in the worst living conditions caused by the occupation, still maintain their need to live life to its fullest...with love, a free land and the basic human struggle to find peace within.
