text michelle hobby

Reproduction

Cascading Algorithms (1-3, ed. 15, a2), Mixed media, giclee, screen-print & hand.

2017-18

Work in progress. A three part project includes; Cascading Algorithms 1-3 mixed media, photographs 1-3, and a proposal for a sculpture.

*only a sample of work online

Still Life (1-4, ed. 15, a2), Digital c- print

Winter 2016. A Dialogue with Space.

Philosopher William James asked the question 'How can the room I am sitting in be simultaneously out there and, as it were inside my head, my experience?'

In Still Life ghostly UK heritage interiors (some intertextual), co-exist with California's Salton Sea's ruined and abandoned landscape. Here simultaneity of a time and space is framed. Both useless spaces; one an ornament, the other a man-made disaster area and a failed dream.

Perspectives

The Dream (ed. 15), Digital c-print

Spring 2016

My dream. The skin on my back was diseased, scaly and necrotic. A shock heightened by a realisation that it must’ve been there for some time. The experience was so vivid that I physically shook and woke up. Sigmund Freud claimed that dreams are '…the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious….’.

No physical place could represent this space. In previous projects, an interior space would often set a tone for my concepts and themes to play out. I was forced to focus on the subject matter. I chose greek marble sculptures of women, researched skin diseases from old and rare medical books. At this stage I wasn’t sure if the pieces were going to come together.

Interestingly I felt a shift during the creative process. Franz Kafka said that he wrote stories to get them out of his head. This shift felt significant and I needed to represent this. I considered creating a diptych or triptych, but abandoned this idea almost immediately. The aspects of the dream felt more unified, time and space as one.

The Dream shares similarities with past projects, especially my previous project Rooms: 1817, 1908, 2014. Both projects include figures and co-existing temporalities, yet there are differences. There's an additional perspective in The Dream, an open space. It's quite different from interior and static spaces in previous projects.

Some context for the The Dream spaces. The unconscious space in the foreground and the physical place, The Salk Institute in La Jolla California. The Salk Institute, designed by architect Louis I. Khan in 1965 for Jonas Salk, for research into neuroscience, diseases, which includes those effecting memory.

Khan designed a building to adapt with new emerging technologies for medical research. Both function and aesthetics in design transcend time. There is a nod to the past, with a take on a cathedral footprint, and in materials. Khan's inspiration came from Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s travertine colonnade at St Peters Cathedral in Rome. He combined travertine with concrete for the The Salk’s colonnade arms. This gives the building a extraordinary quality, a spiritual atmosphere.

I never can predict if, or how inspiration for a project will be resolved. As it is the finished works are visually far from my dream. The unconscious is indeed a mysterious and fluid space, that can open doors for the creative process.

Immortal Memory (ed. 15), Digital c-print

I began creating Immortal Memory in the early stages of experimentation for project Perspectives, specifically when considering the idea of creating a diptych or triptych.

My interests in memory, myths, creation and creativity present themselves in this altar scene. The mother and child set in a domestic setting (another intertextual detail), takes centre stage in this work. The marble statue is Thetis and Achilles.

Project Perspectives was motivated by an unconscious disturbance. The mind affected the body or was it the other way around? In these creative constructions boundaries are fluid, intersect and merge. There's no roof in these spaces.

‘Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts.’ Peter Zumthor - Thinking Architecture