Interview with Mariya Zherdeva
Mariya, how are you helping with the organisation of the degree show?
Well I’m on the publicity team, and we advertise our show as much as possible, we run a blog [here on a-n], twitter feed, Facebook page and tumblr, and try to organise a lot of other things. We just finished writing the press release.
What are you currently working on?
I decided to follow through the concept of the panoramic format, which I wrote my dissertation on, trying to prove the elongated canvas is better for landscape painting. I want to be able to create a 3D space in the mind of the viewer on a 2D surface. I think this comes from the fact that I have a very uprooted cultural and geographical background – and so I’m trying to explore how a human body relates to landscape.
So what is the subject of your paintings?
A landscape. Specifically not the because it’s not quite a real place. It’s based on a combination of my own memories and also made-up memories. So basically I’m painting landscapes that are telling an honest lie.
What is the landscape?
I don’t base them on specific places. I want it to exist in the viewer’s mind.
So is it their landscape or yours?
Their own landscape. It’s all about the viewer and ‘the place within us’, which could have been developed by the fairytales we’ve read, our childhood and places we’ve visited. So it’s definitely the viewer’s landscape.
Can you speak more about panoramic theory?
The panoramic format gives you the opportunity to have several angles of perspective, so in a way that makes it more real than, um, looking at the format that’s based on the Golden Section. And it also gives the viewer a more active role in the perception of the painting, they have to physically move their head. To enhance this, I also paint my trees all the way from the top to the bottom of the canvas, so they’re in the foreground of the painting, they kind of step into the viewer’s space. By that I make the viewer part of the work.
Yes, it immediately places you as the viewer in that scenario. I really enjoy the textures of those trees too, and the contrast between them being clear and in focus and the unclear, uncertain landscape beyond. I can see how that contrast relates to the landscapes being honest lies, part truthful and partly imagined. Also this lack of clarity giving the viewer freedom to interpret them as they please. So thinking about the final show… you’ve got two paintings here [in the studio]…
I’m not going to show one of those. Hopefully I’ll have four of the same size. I’m not quite sure what the landscapes are going to be yet… although one of them’s definitely going to be a woodland.
You’d planned the paintings for the final exhibition out before, have they changed from what you originally planned?
Yeah, I plan them out to a certain extent, but sometimes when you paint them the paint has a control over you, I like to give the paint freedom to develop. I’m also going to have a video piece of my performance.
Which performance?
I’ve done two, but I’m going to have to do another one and film it. It’s going to be a bare human body, disappearing into the landscape.
It’s going to be you?
Yes.
How does it relate to the paintings?
It’s the whole idea of immersion into the landscape. It’s kind of like this dislocation of our identity – where do we belong? It might not be obvious, but I think it’s very connected to the paintings. Because the paintings, they are not of specific places… and then there is a video of the human body in a specific place… but I know for sure this human body doesn’t belong to anywhere in particular.
And there’s text floating around your studio space, are you going to include any in the final show?
It will be included in the titles. I haven’t decided on the titles for definite yet, but I have lots of pieces of text to work from. I just want to make sure they don’t impose ideas on the viewer.
Interview by Alex Hackett.
