Art has left the Building
Re:Call Interview
1) When were you at Bournville School of
Art?
2006
- 2009
2) What course did you study here?
BA
Visual Arts by Negotiated Studies
3) Who were your tutors?
In
the final year it was Kelly Large (for the first couple of months) and then Michelle
Lord for the rest of the year.
4) What area did you specialize in?
Art
of appropriation. Resulted in an installation that included video, photographic
collage, text and sound. I guess I’ve always been interested in responding to
pre-existing works.
5) What memories do you have of your
first day at Bournville School of Art?
Excitement.
Anxiety. Optimism. Sort of like being at school for the first day!
6) What memories do you have of your
final show at Bournville School of Art?
It
was probably my worst attempt at an exhibition, which in retrospect was a good learning
process.
I
found the whole experience forced, awkward, controlled, anti-climactic and overall
dis-interesting. It wasn’t quite the experience I had imagined. However, I feel
our overall degree show was very strong in terms of context and exhibition
display.
7) What piece did you do for your final
show at Bournville and could you describe it?
In
brief, my intent was to appropriate and deconstruct the film La Jetee (1962), directed by Chris
Marker, a film made largely with black and white still images with a voiceover
narration.
I was
given a small space as you walk into The
International Project Space to exhibit my work. The space was filled by a
multi-exposure double A0 photo displaying a memory sequence in the film, which
was opposite to a video loop on a white Polaroid TV/DVD, showing a recreated
repeated scene of the only moving part of the film. Further to this there was wireless
headphones playing a sound loop of the film,
minus the voice over narration, and two text pieces in a frame that contained
two versions of the screenplay.
I
remember Matt Williams (who at the time was the Curator of The International Project Space and who is now the Curator of The
Institute of Contemporary Arts,
London) saying to me “remember less can be more”, - how right he was!
8) Could you give just five words to
describe your experience at Bournville School of Art?
Enriching.
Challenging. Exciting. Rewarding. Confusing.
9) Could you indicate what creative
activity you have done since your time at Bournville?
Mainly
exhibition-making and curatorial projects.
Had
various solo and group shows in the Birmingham, Folkestone (for the Folkestone
Triennial) and London.
Also,
had a 9-month residency at MAC Birmingham and been selected to be part of a curatorial
team for Glasgow International 2012 by Eastside Projects.
I’ve
also learnt how to make websites and this has generated some monies or an
exchange for an artwork to add to my collection.
Recently,
made a documentary short film for World AIDS Day 2012 in Birmingham.
Photographed
a few parties and weddings.
Started
an art collection.
Started
a part time MA in Fine Art at Margaret Street at Birmingham City University.
10) Could you describe your current
creative practice/ideas/work?
Currently,
my arts practice is interested in destabilizing the original and creating
artworks or exhibitions that are informed by curatorial decision-making.
I’m
interested in working within pre-existing artworks or structures to uncover or
reveal new lines of enquiry and alternate ways of viewing works.
Currently, I am
looking into Nicolas Bourriaud’s Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World
(2002) and Claire Bishop’s
Artificial Hells:
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012)
11) Could you say a little about the
work you have chosen to include in the Re:Call exhibition?
The work
I will be showing is a video called Funny Games from a series called re-makes. An overlaying of scenes from
Michael Haneke’s film Funny Games (1997
and 2007 versions), a film about cinematic violence.
12) What are you working on at the
moment?
An
exhibition about the potential function of an exhibition entitled ‘Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon or an exhibition
as a gentle form of exercise’.
13) What are your creative plans for the
future?
To run
an artist led/gallery space.
To
work on my first short film. It’s a revisionist Zombie love story.
To
travel (India, New York, San Francisco, Thaliand to begin with)
To
move to London.
14) Is there anything else you would
like to add?
Not
sure.