Oxford Brookes

Interviewi with Susie Burningham

What is your role in the preparation for the Degree Show?

I’m a secretary with Kerri and I’m also at the web design team.

What are the current themes/concepts in your work?

Ok…That’s a hard one. So, imagining the somewhere else and trying to interpret an imaginary place within a framework of time and space. I am also interested in displacement and dislocation and taking yourself outside of yourself.

What mediums do you use?

I mainly draw and use charcoal and graphite, I also do oil painting.

How do these materials help you to develop your ideas?

Oil paint is really important because it gives you a great spectrum of colours and textures. I like to play with textures.

Is drawing a subconscious process in your work?

Yes I am quite free in the way that I draw.

Artists that inspire you?

Kathy Prendergast, she maps unconventional things, like she can map a hand… She interprets space and time in a new way. And Graham Gussin, he expresses our desire to be somewhere else.

What inspires you most?

Light and texture I’d say are the main things.

Do you dream about the places that you paint?

Yes sometimes, they are mainly day dreams…if I’m on the bus or train.

How are you planning to further develop your artistic practice?

I want to go really really large scale. To give my paintings a bit of an overwhelming presence. Which will heighten the sense of displacement. so that it feels like you are somewhere else when you are in-front of it.

What format do you like to use? I like to work with unusual canvas shapes, like circle, oval or really long and narrow.

Do you think a use of unorthodox formats in your landscape paintings helps you to immerse the viewer?

Yes I think it helps, I don’t think the standard format is necessary the natural way of looking. I think rectangles are used too much.

What was your main difficulty this term?

Probably time. Oil painting is very time consuming, so time management. And also…I don’t know how to explain it..when you have loads of ideas you have to pick up a couple, you can’t do everything.

Any other difficulties?

I don’t think so. (Laughing).

What was the successful part of this term?

Umm….successes….. I think that is harder than difficulties. Working with scientific apparatus was quite successful. I’ve never done that before and it was really exciting. What did you use it for? I used the scientific imagery to give my fictional landscapes a sense of reality. I added those images to my landscapes. What were the images of? Astrolabes. Always forget the names because they are too scientific for me..(laughing). Quadrants. Astrolabes mainly. It’s an apparatus that measures the outer space, the solar system.

Interviewed by Mariya Zherdeva

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The last two weeks of this semester we’ve had summative tutorials – individual presentations of our work so far this semester to tutors and peers. It seems that most of us have been through a major questioning of our practice – why we do what we do and why we should do what we do. It is difficult for us as artists to justify making work in today’s world, but a strong belief in the resonance of our work, and the importance of what we do should encourage us to continue.

Having such a long period of time to research and develop work this semester seems to have really focused our practices and caused us to pin down exactly what we’re interested in. There are themes recurring within our work as a group, most notably a respect and value for the natural world, as well as interpretations of landscapes and cityscapes and our experiences of them.

From now on we’re encouraged to go off the path of the known territory within our practices… we’ll see what follows.

An interview with Nathalie Eigen:

What’s your contribution towards organising the degree show?

I’ve been desperately looking for sponsors to help raise the £4000 or so needed for the degree show catalogue. Big companies aren’t proving successful so we’re going to try contacting university alumni, local businesses and personal contacts.

What are you currently working on?

I’m brilliant at working on five things at once! I’ve been working on the discrepancies between written descriptions and visual images; how you can make image match word and word match image, even if they’re unrelated. I’ve been doing some metal etchings too that I want to incorporate into my work. I’ve also got a poster project on the go that I’ll be carrying on over the holidays and I’m developing some black and white photographs taken on a recent trip to Mexico.

What are your ideas for future work?

I want to continue with more black and white photography to make a visual alphabet, looking at the boundaries between the visual and the senses. At the moment, I’ve got several ideas for more finalised pieces, all continuing to explore various ideas of the ‘alphabet’.

Are there any difficulties you’ve come across?

It’s the simple stuff that’s most frustrating: printing, paper sizes, image quality, type – all the little things. But this year my practice involves the initiation of a concept that is very personal to me, so it hasn’t been too much of a struggle; I’ve been really enjoying making the work.

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It’s approaching the end of semester and consequently the end of Research and Development towards our degree show at the end of this year. Dissertations will be finished in a few days time and we’re looking forward to some festivities and the art social on Thursday.

Stress levels are high but we shouldn’t forget that other final year art students around the UK are all in the same boat! This blog will share our experiences (from the Brookes point of view) in the lead-up to the degree show.

After a long few weeks of headbashing against the wall we finally decided on the crucial name for the show. Ba³, a nod to the typical white cube exhibition space, the three years of our degree, as well as suggesting the nature of art as an alchemical process.

This blog will include our fellow students experiences in preparation for the degree show. Look forward to hearing from one of them in the next post!

Over and out to fellow students and good luck with any approaching deadlines!