This work explores the paradoxical nature of the monochrome – how the monochrome rejects subjectivity and simultaneously allows for subjectivity, embodies both the material and immaterial, and allows for multiple interpretations of both poetic and political aspects of everyday lived experience.
The central proposition of this project is that by exploring the boundaries of traditionally fixed binary oppositions, through the physicality of making, a new space for imaginative capacities can emerge. In particular, this project focuses on the feminine/masculine binary and the material/immaterial binary.
The motivation for this project is based on my personal history as a female practitioner and draws on my early studies of cadavers, which I undertook while living in Amsterdam in the wake of my father’s death. The background to the project explores philosopher Julia Kristeva’s writing on the role of the abject. The abject, rather than an overt element in my practice, makes reference to the underlying subversive nature of the monochrome in both historical and contemporary art practices.
My assertion is that the monochrome’s capacity for a non-dialectical structure, where paradox and contradiction can be explored rather than repressed, allows new space for thinking and creative possibilities to emerge, which has both political, poetic and personal implications.
This was my Artist Statement for the MFA Graduate Exhibition at National Art School in November of 2018.
My work for the Master of Fine Art graduate exhibition via this link.
