BFAP Magazine 2023 - Flipbook - Page 8
coming back from lockdown, I’ve noticed students are a
lot more creative after adapting to life without a studio.
Concerning materiality, students would bring in and
collect such interesting materials rather than ordering
straight from art shops or using ready-made paint.
Interesting phenomenas coming out from lockdown.
AD Yes! The pandemic and lockdown really challenged
artists to think outside the box with many different
aspects to their practice. That’s certainly how I feel.
YF I think that the pandemic has had a part to play in
shaping your year groups’ similarities in themes, but I’m
interested to know what common themes and similarities
that you both see across your year group’s different
practices?
AD I think abstraction is a popular mode of painting
within our year group. Everyone has such an individual
style within that genre which I think is interesting. To
be honest, the painting course here doesn’t seem to
have a house-style, each person really has their own
distinct style and way of working which I’ve always
found so cool and exciting - no one’s work looks the
same. Concerning themes, I feel like impermanence,
intangibility and the mundane are themes important to
a lot of people which could be because of the pandemic.
You had the time to focus on or notice certain sections of
your day that maybe you wouldn’t have been as aware of
pre-COVID, there was constant distraction.
EW Lockdown helped people to slow down and observe
more. I’ve found that students’ work often explores
either internal or external worlds, even if it’s not explicit.
I agree with abstraction too, a lot of people seem to paint
that way, including myself.
AD Portraiture is another genre that is largely explored
within our year group, and I’ve found the conversations
about portraiture during crits insightful. Attending
the student-artist presentations that we did in second
semester have been great too. Listening to Lily Aylward,
Lydia Edwards, and Hannah Meyer talk about how they
want to capture a moment with their sitter or transcend
the photograph has been inspiring. Their perspectives and
comments about portraiture have really made me view
the genre in a whole new light. In crits there’s usually the
question around, ‘why would you paint something that
you already have a photo of?’ but these artists highlight
the time it takes to paint their subjects, the importance of
their subjects, analysing facial features, spending time
with the memory, and the intimacy that can create. It’s
been wonderful to listen and absorb, I feel differently
towards portraiture now because of those conversations.
YF There were not that many opportunities for actual
interpersonal interactions during lockdown, so it seems
like when that human contact returned people were drawn
to painting the human subject and I think it’s about more
than just the appearance and image of a person. Like you
said Em, it’s about trying to depict the internal and the
external worlds through the medium of paint. Also,
BFAP
paying attention to the mundane and representing the
everyday experience and the unrepresented community
seem to be very relevant within the genre of portraiture.
Let’s return to both your comments on abstraction. Do
you see peoples’ explorations of that genre a way for
them to revisit history? It seems like a lot of people refer
to abstract expressionism; how do you see that language
being explored now?
EW I think people use it as a reference for the actual
physicality and process of painting and being solely
interested in the application of paint on canvas.
AD I find Alex Ardisson’s method of employing
abstraction very fascinating. The way he paints is very
cut and stick, piecing together fragments of memory and
colour on the canvas. And Emily Maguire’s practice has
evolved so much through the realm of abstraction; by
playing around with scale, she abstracts flora imagery
to create large-scale, colourful paintings that capture the
beauty of impermanence. Anastasia Avdejeva is another
painter who explores abstraction; however, they use it as
a means of expressing an internal landscape of thoughts
and feelings. They’re all so different but it feels like they
all have a very personal dialogue with themselves.
YF It has something to do with process, it seems like
people use abstraction as a process. In Alex and Emily’s
case it has something to do with digital painting and
digital manipulation. We now have the software to
easily collage or bring in secondary imagery, that also
poses an intriguing relationship between painting and
image I think. Not being fully satisfied with the image
quality and returning to paint and the process of painting,
through abstraction to make it about the material and
its tactility. Trauma or personal experience is also very
prevalent within your year group, it seems to be a shared
area of exploration, how do you think people deal with it
in their practice?
AD Again, I think it has a lot to do with the pandemic. It
inescapably highlighted so many often-ignored feelings
and thoughts that you had to sit with and either ignore
further or work on processing and exploring. Personally,
exploring and working through my trauma, whilst trying
to exist outside of it, is a large part of my practice.
EW For me, painting acts a mirror in some way. No one
thinks the same and we all have different life experiences.
When you have abstract thoughts, your work will reflect
that. I found my mind to be the gateway into creating,
any way I needed it to be, painting or not painting.
AD I completely agree with painting, or an artwork in
general, being a mirror. I had that experience with my
work a lot during first and second year. Making work
and then disassociating from having made it, before
returning to the same piece of work a few weeks or
months later and thinking ‘oh, that’s what I’m trying to
say’ or ‘that’s what I’m trying to explore’. Not being able
to fully connect with the work in the moment, needing
time for digestion so that when you return to the piece
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2023