Saturday 12 December 2015

Artist talk: Lydia Braithwaite


Lydia Braithwaite is our creative in residence for the sculpture strand. I remember her work from last year s she was in the year above me, so this was a great opportunity to hear from someone who is close to where I am as an artist, and to gain some advice. Since graduating she has been applying to competitions and galleries to get her work on show and gain experience, the creative in residency is a great opportunity to gain advice and a stepping stone to heading out and 'making it' after university. Continuing to develop her work in the studio and workshops.
It was great to hear encouraging advice from a recent graduate about third year and the dissertation. She was really nice and supportive of us, great sympathy! Encouraging us to look forward to extended practice and degree show. She said she would highly recommend taking part in Free Range exhibition in London as well as it was a great learning experience. She had a brilliant artist's website and blog that she had developed since first year showing a chronology of her experience and development at LCA.

Her work in the first term in third year worked with copper and her main material as it had associations with her Dad who is a plumber, working with that relationship to develop her own material practice and subverting the traditional use of copper and creating body extensions and wearable sculpture.

Taking this idea further in her extended practice module and creating wearable sculpture, developing the use of light and photography to break up the image of the body with reflective material often found on hi vis jackets, no longer working with copper but more mono chrome material.

Artist talk: Paula Chambers


Paula Chambers is the new head of sculpture on the Fine Art course at LCA, so it was really interesting to hear a new perspective as a sculptor student.
Her work is inspired by her own personal experiences as a woman and a mother, breaking down the stereotypes of women in revealing the taboos of woman and motherhood and the issues faced, such as psychological effects and the pain women go through, which is often brushed under the carpet. Looking at particular cases where women have committed crimes that have been called 'monstrous' but in fact if it was a man they would have been treated differently.
Using different materials that create connotations of the domestic but subverting our perceptions through unusual interventions to question what we see and what we know. Such as the knitted bonnet, which is stereotypical image of motherhood is transformed into an image of pain as she used copper wire instead of wool, a painful process and a physical struggle to complete, she says her hands were covered in cuts by the time she had completed it. For me there is a quiet struggle, something that a lot of new mothers go through.

He later works look at the woman and the domestic, subverting what women are expected to be like, not soft and vulnerable. Using everyday objects that traditional from a distance don't look threatening, but up close small alterations that had deceived the viewer. Images of women from pattern shapes for sowing from the 1950's have been altered slightly, still in their feminine 50's dresses but now holding weapons such as large kitchen knives, rope and blood stains. There is a difference between what is seen of women in the media and presumptions, and the reality behind closed doors.

Friday 4 December 2015

Artist talk: Ope Lori


Our new tutor Dr Ope Lori gave an artist's talk this week. It was really interesting to find out about her work. In her practice she deals with racial and sexual stereotyping through the medium of video, text and performance art.

Talking about her most recent work she did for her PHD at Chelsea School of Art, she broke her work down into four sections:

'Know the game, be the game, play the game, change the game.'

Working with her own personal experiences and portrayals of women in the media, she rewrites ways of seeing and asks the viewer what are they really looking at. Changing positions of power, destabilizing the norm and evoking consciousness in the viewer.