As always, writing a statement has been really tricky - as I have been helping put together the catalogue and receiving everyone else's statements I have been able to read through many different styles. In one respect this was helpful because I was able to form an opinion of the kind of approach I wanted for my own, but it also made me very aware of what was suitable and unsuitable for my practice. My least favourite style of statement that I read was in first person, where people very explicitly explained what their work is about, what the viewer would think (I hate that - what if they're wrong, and it doesn't make the viewer think what they predict them to at all) and even who or what their influences are. On the other hand, my favourite approach was poetic, creative, almost abstract approaches which are cleverly worded and leave a lot of space for interpretation. It is thinking of these statements that stunted with my own however, because i don;t think this style makes sense with my themes of truth and science - it is not about fantastical narratives or particularly edgy, punchy statements. In the end I tried to forget that I read everyone else's and just wrote about my work in a slightly disconnected manner that would mention my processes without telling the viewer exactly what i was thinking about.
I wrote, admittedly, a very short statement. I would hate for someone to think that this was because I couldnt be bothered to write more, but I really couldn't think what tot write (just as with the dissertation, I just can't think of how to phrase things under the pressure of knowing someone is going to read it and mark it). I also decided to pair the statement with a reworded definition of 'lens', because it touched on all the ideas that I have thought about - contact lenses, camera lenses, crystalline lenses, as well as the idea that a lens concentrates or focuses attention, or changes someone's perspective. I really like how the first point mentioned both a magnifying glass and a telescope, which sums up my work really concisely.
Curated objects and quiet interventions trace entangled histories of sight and knowledge, the mythology of light and the fragility of vision. Artworks oscillate between the visible and the out of sight, the vast and the minuscule, the celestial and the everyday; amidst each, on shifting ground, are metaphors and allegories for the mundane.
In an old and crystallised contact lens there glows the moon, and indeed to somebody it once was the world.
Lens
i. A piece of glass or transparent material with curved sides for concentrating or dispersing light rays, used singly (as in a magnifying glass) or with other lenses (as in a telescope)
ii. The light-gathering device of a camera
iii. (anatomy) Short for crystalline lens
iv. Short for contact lens
v. An object or device which focuses or otherwise modifies the direction of movement of light, of sound, of attention etc.
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