Writing my artists statement is something that I have been thinking about doing for a while. Previous statements have written consist of several descriptive lines that vaguely sum up what I am as an artist. Previous statements explain what medium I’m using and the title of my area of study with little more besides a description on technique.
I wanted this statement to be different. As the final statement I will write during my university career I wanted my statement to be more informative. I wanted it to capture my viewer and provide them with an understanding of my work and my intentions as well as the methodology. It may be a first draft upon which I build but here is my current artists statement:
My work serves as a platform of exploration, which enables me to decipher my inner most emotions. During the final chapter of my university career the theory of human emotion has become a focal point from which my work matures. The centralisation of this idea has initiated a compulsive desire to understand how an emotion is experienced. My thoughts have pivoted from the theory of emotion being highly perceptual.
The question that I have been contemplating is ‘how does one know for certain that an individual’s experience of an emotion is the same?’ We don’t. After all, we each experience things in a different way due to our cultural differences, our environmental differences and so on, thus meaning that what one individual believes to be a feeling of excitement may be another individuals understanding of surprise. So what if emotions existed in a physical state? Surely that would make it easier for our feelings to be transferable. If we could see what an emotion really looked like then maybe, just maybe we would have a better understanding of it.
It is important to me for my work to be meaningful. It is as much about the idea that is being explored as it is about the aesthetical outcome, arguably perhaps even more so. The concept of human emotions is relevant to me as it is an idea that causes much debate. Every individual experiences emotion throughout their journey of life and being able to understand each unique experience intrigues me. The journey through myself as an artist has been for me the most fundamental journey of my time at University Campus Suffolk as is has seen a conflicting relationship that could have been written by Shakespeare himself. The loving/loathing relationship I experience with my practise has driven me to develop my experimentation and research into the understanding of emotions. My journey as an artist has also resulted in the realisation that my body of work is most successful when consisting of mixed media and beng multi-dimensional in its being rather than focused on a singular medium and/or technical ability.
Audience perception is important to the success of my work as it helps prove that emotion is highly perceptual. In my previous studies I have found audience participation to be a source of inspiration to my work, as I believe it to be most successful when the viewer is integrated within the concept as it enables them to share my personal preoccupation with the idea. I have studied audience participation for previous work and installations such as rAndom Internationals Rain Room serves as a wonderful source of inspiration when considering the captivating effect that I want my work to evoke.
