And now… time for pirouettes

We have posters ready to send to printers for our degree show. It took a while but everything has been organised now, just need to do vinyls stickers for gallery space and window.

If you are in Brighton between the 3rd and 10th July you are very welcome to come and see our show at the Grand Parade campus in town.

Catalogue for my degree show is now with graphic designer so hopefully I will be able to send it to the printers in couple of weeks. I hope all looks good. I have only inclueded sculpture and drawings, leaving performance and video work out. As my performance and video are not very well documented, I only wanted to put together work that works together and that I feel more strong about. In the other hand, now I will have to do a little leaflet book with the performances and video of this year for my assesment but hopefully that it won’t take much time.

I have been in touch with someone in Cambridge who is going to help me with the electronics to exhibit the monkey. The monkey will be programmed with a series of movements or by using sensors and in relation to the viewers. It will be located inside a plinth with an acrylic box on top, like a urn.

I will also exhibit La mujerzuela, (The floozy) on top of a low white plinth. Which I have to make too! But I still have a month left to present work and although I have essays to do and more assesment work to get ready; I will like to create something new for the show.

I have been suggested to make work (probably sculpture) about the Nigerian girls that have been kidnapped to keep them out of education and I’m considering this.

I’m currently working on a presentation for next Tuesday so I do hope as soon as I finish this, I will be able to lock myself in the studio and start preparing for the show…

Hopefully monkey will be travelling to Cambridge for a electronic surgery but I have to bear in mind all the fixings to the plinth so not sure where to start.

I will trust that everything is going to be okay and I’m going to keep working hard until it is all over in the course and beyond… (health permiting)

And then that question that everyone seems to be asking at the same time… what are you goint to do after? and that some days I answered with energy and positiviness and some others I’m not sure what to say… surviving and living I guess like until now…

I hope to be posting pictures of work in progress for the show very soon!!!

I want to make again… I must.

At last! After a few hours battling through I have managed to update my biography and artist statement. Feels like I have taken some heavy weight from my shoulders. Thank you to artist Chris Shaw Hughes, http://www.chris-shaw-hughes.com who has helped me with the editing, proof reading!

Let’s move on,

Pasta, tuna, olive oil and salt for lunch.. and a sore eye from staring at the computer almost all night.

Mercedes Ferrari

Born 1979

Lives and works in Brighton, UK

www.mercedesferrari.com

BIOGRAPHY

Mercedes Ferrari was born in Spain in 1979. She graduated from the Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton with a BA (Hons) in Sculpture (2013) before progressing onto the MA Fine Art course at the same university, where she is currently studying. Her MA studies, funded by an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) scholarship, has greatly enabled her to continue developing her art practice. She has exhibited in a number of solo and group shows including; Solo exhibition, Work Programme 22, Community Arts Centre, Brighton (2013), Light Thickens, Vyner Street Gallery, London (2011), Bi-annual Birth Rites Collection competition-shorlisted artworks, MediaCityUK, Manchester (2013), Selected Works Reel Show, Saatchi Gallery, London (2013), Winter Pride Art Awards 2014 shortlisted artworks, CHART Gallery, London (2014), Winter Pride Art Awards 2014, Tobacco Docks, London(2014), Office Sessions, 4th Floor, Anchorage House, London (2014), MA & Other Postgraduates 2014, Atkinson Gallery, Street, Somerset (2014) and Vanity Unfair, Desperate Artwives, The Crypt Gallery, London (2014). She was awarded with the Santander Community Engagement and Volunteering Award, University of Brighton (2013) for her project, the Artist Parents Group, and shortlisted for various competitions including; Bi-annual Birth Rites Collection competition, University of Brighton Alumnus Award (2014), British Women Artists Award (2013), People’s Choice Award, The Signature Art Prize 2013/2014andwas a runner up for Winter Pride Art Award (2014).

ARTIST STATEMENT

With wry humour, raw energy and visual puns, Mercedes Ferrari’s practice explores human behaviour and relationships within the domestic space. Violence, gender politics, sexuality and maternity are recurring themes. Her work, which is composed of sculpture, drawing, video and performance is suggestive and provocative with cartoon and stage-like arrangements filled/packed/littered/liberally strewn with sexual content and strong emotional narratives. She deftly combines the handmade and the readymade – more often than not using domestic objects – creating experimental anthropomorphic figures which reference the human (especially female) body as she attempts to deconstruct the social stereotyping of women, such as the  objectification of women as domestic fixtures and the mother.

Ferrari, always obsessed with finding new ways in which to experiment with form, pattern, colour and composition, continues to challenge her own sculptural language. She finds inspiration in the tragicomedy of daily life, the absurd, childhood memories and folk culture.

Her work is informed by the theories and aesthetics of the carnival and the grotesque by Mikhail Bakhtin, and how these are used as a means of social communication in art. Using the philosophical ideas on human existence behind the Theatre of the Absurd and the improvisation and experimentation in the Comedia dell’Arte, Mercedes Ferrari constructs a playful and imaginative world of her own upon the rubble of the world to which we all belong.

A little entry with some more pictures from the work I did yesterday for the group show at uni once in the exhibition room.

Bank holiday over, back to routine and to the workload.

(For about 3 minutes I was just thinking about moaning here but I have decided to not do it and instead go straight to the point).

I have had to make something this morning for the group show we were having at 128 with some classmates. Getting in my studio was depressing really, I got a lot of stuff that I’m not sure I need or want to use for my degree show work. But what degree show work? I am not even sure what I’m going to do!? I have been suggested to put all my “characters”, “personas” in the gallery but I think I need to work on something better than that. I know my work has to have a scattological quality but I want to create something more durable, something that stays together if someone touches…

(I’m crumpy tonight)

The 46 packes of cloth are going back to B&Q. Not convinced.

This is what I have done to show today. A little thing made with cloth, wood, sponge and breastfeeding pads. A somehow funny and curious object I will say. I was thinking about my daughter today and how she is growing up and how much I love her., the breastfeeding pads reminded me of that nurturing.

I didn’t have any title.

I’m not sure if it works but I just had to make something.

I need to clear the room again, re arrange and think of more sturdy materials to build such as wood, plaster, zinc, I need to start again.

I have brought some materials from last year, some upholstery samples and I think seeing this in the studio brings me back to where I already have been. I need to clear and move on with new stuff.

Bye for now…

(I’m stressing out!)

(Continues from previous post)

Keywords/references for this work are:

Arte Povera and Expressionism movements, puppetry, Comedia dell’Arte, handmade & readymade, stage-like, Theatre of the Absurd, carnivalesque and grotesque aesthetics, whimsical?, scattological quality, performance, study on geometrical form and colour composition, sculpture, drawing, Gert & Uwe Tobias, Joan Miro, Picasso, Sarah Lucas… and something else… perhaps…

Bye for now,

Another crit next Tuesday, so I have to get more work done on time, new challenge (but my wrist hurts!) what materials? I think I’m going sew a lot of cloths (since I have 46 packets, eeeeekkkk) and do a sculpture with them. Something big, but need wadding a lot of it! or polysterene balls?? where do I get this from?? must carry on.

I think after yesterday I have a better idea of what to create for degree show. My tutor suggested a lot of characters in the gallery space, like the floozy, the domestic “goddess” (not sure about this), and other ones that I will be producing, ah and the monkey with the knife!

I’m very busy, my hands hurts of typing and there is so much to type, to talk, to make, please hands stay with me for a bit longer… almost done! (education wise)

By now