Deracinate

I have used the term ‘Deracinate’ metaphorically and in relation to objects – lost, found and relocated. To uproot an object could mean placing it in an unfamiliar environment and viewing it in a different context. When objects are moved or thrown away they are uprooted from their contingent use or functional existence. This has led me to become intrigued by objects discarded either because they are no longer useable or obsolete due to the passage of time, altering their function and significance in the world.

Sometimes these objects are designed to be disposable, at other times they have reached a point in their existence where a decision has been made to destroy them. By re-presenting, I feel I am giving function back, transforming a found or lost object into art attempts to reassert its position in society.

Display is carefully considered, through placement connections are made between the objects, construing a physical and symbolic synthesis; I feel this visual connection corresponds to the conductive tissue in plants that enables flow between the leaves and roots. In biological terms, this is called ‘phloem’ where vessels are involved in translocation and transportation.

Myfanwy’s catalogue text

View the press release

List of books (displayed left to right)

Interventions

In June 2015 I exhibited a series of garden tag paintings as interventions at Cairnhill Open Garden event in France. The tags made reference and connections between my own garden in Birmingham UK and the Cairnhill garden in France. The theme for the event was garden walks and the tags were positioned in strategic places to encourage discovery on a small scale. The tags can activate a video triggered by the Aurasma app enabling visitors to connect by video to my own garden. Since this exhibition I have started a tour of gardens forging connections between my own interest in gardening as a personal curated space both private and public. The tour includes connections made with the Ian Hamilton Finley garden ‘Little Sparta’ in Scotland.

The video element is also important to the work as it gives a longer life to the intervention; download the Aurasma app to your phone. Pointing your phone at the painted tags on a computer screen will activate a response.

Paintings

A collection of my paintings exhibited in the ‘Dialogue’ exhibition ‘Apporter sa pierre a l’édifice/ Bring to the table’ at Rugby Art gallery.

Film

Watch the Venice 3 video.

Photography

From the Ethereal existence book.

Recovered Fragments

Pattern and ornamentation discovered and photographed from my surrounding environment is layered with my own digitally generated artwork. This layering of a diverse collection of imagery is reworked and transformed into new images. The images are subsequently printed onto found fragments from our past culture. Series’ of works are indicative of the memory of an image; sometimes surfaces are whisper like, illusionary rather than assertive, traces of structures from the surrounding world. The effect produces connotations of archaeological findings, however, the reality of the image’s creation through digital technology subverts this notion of antiquity.

The digital print process allows the fractured edges to be wrapped in pattern and confronts notions of authenticity. Many of the fragments are retrieved from building site skips and reclamation yards, in one sense, contemporary archaeological sites. The work refers to the historical cycle of human aspiration and destruction of urban structures. The recurring patterns of nature, culture and history are transformed and interwoven, what is missing is as important as what is there. Pattern allows my work to connect with previous generations.