The excelent folk at Made in Arts London continue to support students and graduates of the University of the Arts London which includes Camberwell, Chelsea, CSM, Wimbledon, LCC, LCF and more I’m probably missing out.

Their most recent independant fine art show was Intersection at Hoxton Arches and I was delighted to be one of their commissioned artists this time.

I have been looking for ways to get more personal with my work, in more explicit ways, as the deeply personal connections I have to my materials and processes which seem obvious to me soemtimes get lost to others. That’s not to say I want my work to become revealing or obvious, obviously.

For this commission, which was part of a group show, I was offered the opportunity to collaborate with my fellow exhibitors in a fairly closed environment. This gave me the chance to bring the personal to the fore, and gave others the chance to contribute and feel a personal investment in the work in a space we shared. I called the work In Context

I created a google doc questionnaire which was easy to share, and it was filled in annonymously by the other artists. The questions asked for information about age, length of practice and ranges of emotions felt about their artistic practice recently and during a period of time past. Most revealingly, I asked about notable highs and lows they had faced. This was a very provocative and private act, which was certainly helped by the anonymity of the forms. I was trusted with some sincere revelations, and was able to form a picture of the range of experiences shared by artists practising in London today.

This data was collated into a chart which visualised these experiences, and I realised it using cables and wires which I salvaged in London the week before. I find the possibility that some of our communications about this work might have passed through them really relevant and exciting. They could have been torn out of a building next door to any of us, and I can almost feel the physical traces of messages and electricity which have passed through them. This is the personal interpretation I was talking about before. I think adding the opportunity for personal engagement with the other artists brings it out into a more accessible space.

I see all the salvaged materials I use as intersections, points of change and possibility. I  imagine where they will go next and the uses to which they may get repurposed. For this installation I stripped the ends of the wires, ready for them to be reconnected if desired, as a nod to the ongoing, unknown practice to come.

Working with Made in Arts London is always a really good experience. They are really well organised and really professional. One of the prep sessions we had was with Ceri Hand who spoke about commissioning artists, and her experiences were reassuring and inspiring.

Making the work in the space has allowed me to see  it in a new perspective, and I’m sure it’s going to feed into the work I am developing for the three-person London Group Members prize show in November with Martin Heron and Darren Nisbett

*Thanks to Adriana Jaroslavsky, Alexander Devereux, Alice Aires, Altea Grau Vidal, Anastasija Pudane, Ben Edmunds, Camille Leherpeur, Claudia Cauville, Fly Chen, Franceska McCullough, Fredrik Andersson, Guilia Cacciuttolo, Hansika Jethnani, Helen Lieu, Juan Mateus, Juliana Dorso, Marta Barina, Monica Alcazar-Duarte, Olga Krasanova, Pamm Hong, Summer Oxley, Tahmina Negmat, Trystan Williams, Xiaoxi Kang and Zuzanna Odolczyk for donating their data to inform this piece In Context