Oxford Brookes

The last week has been a mad week for preparation and organisation for the degree show, about 6 weeks away now! Despite the massive task ahead it seems like we’re on track for a spectacular show and there’s starting to feel a bit more of a buzz in the building and the studios.

We’ve got a timeline in place of the weeks remaining before the degree show, with plenty of tasks stuck on the corresponding weeks with their deadlines and the person responsible for each one. Something we’d probably been avoiding for too long, but now it’s all up in the studio and we can see exactly how much time we’ve got left and what needs to be done each week.

We’re just finalising the press release, and deciding on the press images. The catalogue’s well on track for printing in April, the private view mail invites are being sent off to print, our adverts are set to be published next month and we just need to work on the elusive mailing list for sending out email invites to the show.

Through our open studios this last Monday and by chatting to first and second year undergraduates, we’re building up a list of those interested to get involved with the preparation of the building and installation of work, as well as on the evening of the private view itself.

Just got to make time for our own practice in between all of that!

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.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Thursday 21st of March.

It is only seven weeks before the Private View.

Stress levels are rising.

We hope that you are as excited as we are.

And so we decided to give one more little detail away:

Open Studios Day on the 25th of March.

Come and become an insider of Brookes Fine Art Department.

We will share our experience of the build to the Degree show: the pain, the stress, the joy, failings and hopefully successes.

Interview with Kerri Anne Chisholm.

Hello Kerri. Can you please tell me about your role in the process of preparation for the Degree Show?

My role? I’m helping to put the catalogue together. And I am one of the secretaries, one of the two secretaries.

Please discuss the current themes and concepts of your work, and methodologies that you use to develop it.

Well, I am very interested in looking at human communication and the impact of different cultures on this communication. I’m looking at.. umm…proxemics. What im looking at is defined as proxemics. In my work I’m trying to find a way of incapsulating the magnetic energies in the spaces between people. I’m also looking at the electricity felt at the individual touch. This manifested through analysis of photography as an object – the object hood of photography and mediating the photograph as a method of preserving and documenting a subject, as well as its sculptural qualities. First I was looking at Polaroid images, taking them apart by doing emulsion lifts and looking at the relationship between the… umm…the lifts and skin, because before they dry, the lifts resemble skin. But now i moved from looking at them separately to try and pair them together.

Do you have an idea of how you want to present your workat the Degree Show?

At the moment I’m using latex skin to map parts of the body that we do not get to study unless we are in close proximity to someone. And through that comes the idea of looking at skin through skin and the lack of skin between; because I’m planning on stretching these latex skin maps over images that relate to proxemics and acrylic glass. I’m planning to have it lit from behind so that you can see the skin textures in the maps and also focus on the tension between the distance.

What inspires you? Maybe things that you see? Watching people?

I read a lot of books. I read a lot and get my inspiration from this. Because my touch experiences translate directly into text. I’ve been working recently with documenting these experiences.

How?

I keep a diary of touch experiences. Which is awkward.

How do you keep this diary? What do you write in there?

I write about strangers, about people that I know. All of it is anonymous. I write about experiences which have that electricity when a person touches me accidentally or intentionally.

It sounds very sensual. Do you hope to translate this feeling in your work at the degrees how?

Very much so. My work isn’t necessarily about specific experiences but about creating a head space in which the viewer can either reflect the experiences that they had that are similar or they feel like they can experience what is being portrayed through the work. And yes, my work is sensual, because the skin is one of the biggest organs, it’s one of our five senses.

Have you considered going very large with your work?

I did but I like the intimacy of it when it’s smaller. I have nothing against larger works, if it is appropriate I will make it large.

What do you find most difficult in the build up to the Degree Show?

Umm… A lot..it’s personal. My world translates as touch. And it is difficult to take something that has so much electricity and try to make people feel that electricity…

Interviewed by Mariya Zherdeva

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Interview with Sophie Lamb

So Sophie, can you please discuss the current processes you are using, what inspires you and what are the themes in your work?

Umm..I’ve been doing a lot of printmaking and etching. I am looking at the symbolist work and making my own allegorical narratives. They are quite dreamlike. I look at Egon Schiele.

What attracts you to his work?

I love the stark graphic nature. He was very clever in his use of negative space. And drew beautiful elbows.

Do you think it’s purely aesthetic qualities that attract you ?

No, of course it’s not just the formality.. they are so charged with vitality and secrecy. Ambiguity is important. Those are subconscious undercurrents.

How are you planning to develop your work from now?

I have the beginnings of compositions and fragments of pieces. It’s just the matter of working up more resolved plates.

For etching?

Yes. I’d like to, if I have the time, make some oil sketches, in colour.

What size?

Big enough to wrap your arms around.

What did you find most difficult and most successful so far?

I think the biggest difficulties were to stay focused and not throw in the towel at this stage. But it’s such an exciting prospect to see through the culmination of three years work. It’s a joy to see disparate strands coalesce and resolve into work I want to show.

Interviewed by Mariya Zherdeva

• 
• 
• 
•