As one of the AA2A Artists at the University of Lincoln, we were given an opportunity to continue to develop our professional practices within the School of Fine Art from October 2015 to July 2016. This residency provided myself and three other artists - Veronica Proud, Mike Bruce and GÂST the chance to utilise facilities that we would otherwise not have had access to in order to realise our personal projects. For me, I wanted to push towards unknown territories in photography and print which ranged from home zinc etching to gold leaf chine-cole. Unfortunately, this caused a lot of frustration because gold leaf is a nightmare! Despite these obstacles, I learnt a lot about the technical limitations and managed to create a series of work that explored the monumental sublime in brutalist architecture which signified impermanence and the collapse of reality. With this, me and the other artists collaborated to find construction as a common theme in our work which led us to the term Sarking. While this term specifically means the use of wood panels in roof construction, we used this as an all encompassing term for the exhibited work. See description below:
Sarking: The title draws from the notion of an overarching canopy; a sense of an enclosure of around the artworks. This term is also reflected with the exploration of architecture and building materials as well as clothing as an indicator of inclusivity as well as exclusivity.
The preview night for the Sarking exhibition at Project Space Plus was great as it brought a range of people from the public to view the work. Even though the creation of work is a personal journey, it is interesting to see (and hear) how the work is received by the community whether that's critical or complimentary. Luckily, it was the latter. The exhibition will be running from the 25th July - 5th August 2016 should you find yourself in the local area and you can see the accompanied written material here - Sarking (PDF)
