Cultural Fatigue

We agreed to move to New York for my husband’s job just before discovering I was pregnant with my second child, so I find myself living in Brooklyn with a toddler and a new baby.  A friend sends me a definition of ‘cultural fatigue’ in response to my complaint of weariness.  I smile at the notion that one might be just so damned tired of all that bloody culture, but the actual definition chimes deeply with me:  

“Cultural Fatigue is the physical and emotional exhaustion that almost invariably results from the infinite series of minute adjustments required for long-term survival in an alien culture.”

Yes I think, this is why I was overwhelmed by trying to post a parcel (mailing a package it turns out is not the same), confused by the ATM machines, unable to set up a direct debit payment, let alone figure out how to give birth in a medical system I don’t understand and rather despise. 

I think how the journey into motherhood has also felt like a migration to a foreign land.  The intense love, sleep deprivation, anxieties and joys, relentless repetition, surprises and delights, are all bumpy pavements (or should that be sidewalks) to be navigated without street signs or a tourist guide.  My ever-changing body, leaking milk, blood and frequently tears.

I love what I have and would never buy a return ticket.  But I am also homesick for the selfish, time-soaked, empty days and late nights in the studio to fill as only I choose.  With two small children there is no time to make art.  But there has to be time to make art.  Without it I fear I am stuck in a no-mans land - an invisible refugee who has lost their identity papers.

This series of small paintings Cultural Fatigue (gouache, charcoal and pencil on board) feel like postcards home.  They are born of snatched fragments of time, full of repetitive layers misaligned.  They are an attempt to articulate my experience of living somewhere Other, of the infinite series of minute adjustments required for survival.

Cultural Fatigue I, 2015

Gouache, acrylic, charcoal and pencil on board

15 x 15 cm

Cultural Fatigue II, 2015

Gouache, acrylic, charcoal and pencil on board

12.5 x 18 cm

Cultural Fatigue III, 2015

Gouache, acrylic, charcoal and pencil on board

12.5 x 18 cm

Cultural Fatigue IV, 2015

Gouache, acrylic, charcoal and pencil on board

12.5 x 18 cm

Cultural Fatigue V, 2015

Gouache, acrylic, charcoal and pencil on board

15 x 15cm

Cultural Fatigue VI, 2015

Gouache, acrylic, charcoal and pencil on board

15 x 15cm

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who participated and everyone who came to the Open House last weekend.  It was our first year of doing it, and it was great to get so many visitors.

To see details of the other artist's that were showing work, please see their websites:

Emma Corrall
www.emmacorrall.co.uk

Sian Gledhill
www.siangledhill.com

Stephanie Land
www.stephanie-land.com

Molly Rooke
www.mollyrooke.com

Jessica Wallis
www.jessicawallis.co.uk

Dulwich Artist's Open House 2013

I'll be taking part in the Dulwich Festival Artist's Open House this year.  Our home will be open to the public on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th May 2013 from 11am - 6pm.

I will be showing recent drawings and prints with a group of artists from the Royal College of Art and Central St Martins, including Emma Corrall, Sian Gledhill, Stephanie Land, Molly Rooke and Jessica Wallis.

More than 200 Artists will be showing work in houses and galleries in the area.  For full details of the programme and the locations open to the public please see:

http://www.dulwichfestival.co.uk/content/artists-open-house-3

Here's some of the work I will be showing (and selling):

Large Untitled Line Drawings, 2012-13
ink on paper
75 x 55 cm

Small Untitled drawings, 2013
white ink, charcoal and gouache on brown paper
18cm x 12cm

Space to Perform, 2012
Screenprint on paper
Edition of 20
59cm x 42cm

Utopian Structure III
Etching with gouache on paper
30cm x 44cm

RCA Interim Show

The Interim show is at the end of the first year of the MA to show work-in-progress.  It was held in the new RCA Dyson building in Battersea, London from 25th April - 3rd May 2012.

Proscriptions
Digital prints and carbon on tracing paper
10 x A4
Installation view

Each peice in the series is printed on multiple layers of differing thickness of tracing papers so that images combine and elements are hidden.  Themes of unfamiliar bodily structures, hidden forms within forms, fragility as well as the surreal and absurd, are explored using images originating from eighteenth century illustrations of coral.  Coral is an organism with a long history of contention about whether it was an animal, plant or stone, as as such is a structure that represents being between states.  This is juxtaposed with typewritten text on carbon paper of instructions to pregnant women of what to avoid to reduce the damaging affect of the female imagination, which if not kept under control could result in monstrous births: 

1. strong longing for something in particular, in which desire the mother is either gratified, or disappointed.  2. A sudden surprise. 3. The sight and abhorrence of an ugly and frightful object. 4.  The pleasure of looking on, and contemplating, even for a long time, a picture or whatsoever is delightful to the fancy.  5.  Fear and consternation, and great apprehension of dangers.  6.  And lastly an excess of anger, or grief, or of joy.

Recent drawings

Repetition

These are part of a series of repetitive line drawings that I have been working on for about a year.  They explore what is hidden or exposed through the repetition of the simple act of drawing a line.  The unreliability of the body in the context of the formal and conceptual is important to me in these works.

Drawings in Ink on Paper

Cafe Gallery, 9-11th April 2012

This is the work that I showed at the Cafe Gallery as part of the first year RCA Printmakers group show 'I took the Lift to the Sixth Floor'.

Papier-Mache and paint

It explores ideas of repetition, the viral, unpredictable growth, bodily structures and uncertain boundaries.