Girl From The North Country

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Installation shot ofSalix cinerea, Salix alba. Apologies for the messy studio!

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Salix cinerea

Mixed media, 2012. Dimensions variable.

Installation photographs coming soon.

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Sneak peek # 2

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Here’s a sneak peak of what I’ve been working on, and the reason I haven’t been keeping on top of my huge “to blog” list (many apologies, patient followers!). My show opens on the 18th June in Camberwell College of Arts, London, and runs until the 22nd. Come along to see the final work, alongside the work of my very talented class mates.

I’ll be back with more photos and a deep, pretentious statement for your amusement.

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Molitor and Kuzmin have practised together since 1996 and form an interesting collaborative effort. Light is central to their practise, in particular the white fluorescent tube lighting found in sterile environments and no stranger to the gallery space. Whilst other artists working with fluorescents have dipped into colour, the collaboration sticks to white, giving their work an industrial edge. The interaction of light and space is crucial to the work, and Molitor and Kuzmin use the tube lights to create three dimensional installations in which the glare of the light seems to consume the form itself, resulting in undefined edges and a feeling that the sculpture extends far beyond its physical reach.

Click through on the image for a link to the duo’s website.

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Miina Äkkijyrkkäis obsessed with cows. Alongside raising them, she’s made them the focus of her art for the last forty years. Her giant metal cows are made of recycled cars which have been reconstructed into these huge structures which imply an odd but undeniable sort of grace and elegance in their suggested movement. There’s an interesting paradox in using such a contemporary media to suggest a domesticated animal which has been a staple of farming for centuries, and the cars come to represent not just the form they suggest, but also the flows and currents of our societies. As more and more people flood to the cities, away from the countryside and farming life, our relationship with cattle - an animal which symbolises the ancient relationship of humans and the Earth, as well as the way in which our species has developed and spread through agriculture - has also changed, and has become a creature that those of us from the inner cities are perhaps rather unfamiliar with.

Click through on the image for a link to Äkkijyrkkä’s website (Finnish).

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Slyvie Fleury is a Swiss artist who works mainly with the aesthetic and concepts of pop art. Her work has been called “post-appropriation” (which I think is nonsense) and deals primarily with the themes of shopping and the new paradigms we live in. Her work is full of brand names and designer labels, although sometimes these were hidden. In her series of shopping bags, where designer bags were arranged in such a way that the content was not visible, Fleury deliberately tried to buy objects which somehow referenced art history, but left these concealed within the bags. Fleury is obsessed with the power and importance we assign something as soon we are shown the markers of quality and expense.

Click through on the image for a link to Fleury’s website.

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Jeppe Hein takes one of art’s iconic forms - the cube - and distorts it by introducing a random new element: fire. Hein is well known for his minimalist aesthetic, and frequently references the grand masters of minimal and conceptual art, utilising the clean, structured forms so associated with the genres. However, Hein’s Burning Cube does one thing that traditional minimalist sculpture has never done - it grows and changes over the course of time. The gas canister within the cube keeps the flame constant, but the fire resistant white paint is slowly covered in a layer of black soot which leaves its own unpredictable mark upon the sculpture.

Click through on the image for a link to Hein’s website.