ARTWEEKS 2021 | HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

I think of my practice as object making in response to social observations. My sense of positionally in social power dynamics and hierarchies, drives my work. I am particularly interested how unspoken yet coercive elements control our behaviours. For example how marginalisation presents not only as explicit exclusion, but in the self-policing of individuals who pick up on the tacit hostility of social environments. This interest is also rooted in how we navigate digital spaces, and how our bodies become brands when we represent ourselves in online spaces like Tinder.

Lissart is the name of an art practice that aims to harness collective endeavour and collaborative working to produce visual art that is inspired by natural and imagined environments. It was set up in 2017 by Lissa (Mary Melissa Rodd). Lissart practice loves fusions and surprises. Fusions include those between East and West and between Art and Science. Surprises can come ‘in creation’ and when intentions go awry. Preparing the ground for fusions and surprises involves development of technical skills as well as a freedom of spirit to go with the flow. The aim is to produce art by integrating energy and intuition with precision and design with/within environments spiritual, human, material and mathematica.

I’ve been primarily producing abstract work, that has slightly evolved overtime into a more figurative approach. I’m interested in an element of versatility and surprise, I have been looking to challenge different ways in this state of mind that is consciously and subconsciously aware that allows my experience to be present, and fundamentally trailing my initiative to accept mistakes, that could bring something anew.

Juliet works though conceptual ideas to bring an emotive response to narratives on disability, family, illegitimacy, and housework with materials that enhance the storyline.

Catalina Renjifo is a visual artist and practice based researcher interested in artistic epistemologies and intercultural pedagogies. Her practice involves breaking down, dissolving, and questioning materials to absorb and assimilate their history and what is learnt in the process. In each artwork the specific formulation of materials and processes embody an enquiry.

My current work explores how the understanding of context can change an original perception. An image which only reveals a small detail is subsequently disclosed in its entirety. In this instance the ABSENCE of something suggests HOPE. INTRICACY and INGENUITY are the words which describe the wonder of this object from the natural world...its WARP and its WEFT.

My practice investigates the emotions and memories we bring to a space and how this influences our creative responses

Associate Member of Magdalen Road Studios working in oil and

watercolours, with inter-disciplinary background in bookbinding and

video, working as a camera operator, set building, rigging and editing.

Working through ideas,

Thinking through paintings,

Looking through lenses.

Between all mod cons, grey and sandy streets, in Oxford’s idyllic

settings many experience the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes on a

personal level. I want to find a continuity between the past and the

present in my art. Since moving to Oxford in 2010 I’ve participated in

photography and painting exhibitions at Jericho Art, the OAS open, and

Magdalen Road Studios during Artweeks. I’m always inspired by the

discipline and sacrifice I see in those around me as much as the epic

journeys one finds in the realms of higher gossip and the retrospectives

of great artists.

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Work evolves from interplay between technology, drawing and materials, and develops through cross-discipline dialogue. It operates in places which have a connection to the work and resonate with it.

I am doing a practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes. My work is about space, dimension, sight and time.

Karen Purple’s work is deeply rooted in the landscape and her local environment of rural Oxfordshire. She is interested in how her relationship with the natural world is mediated through memory, of what is remembered and of what is lost. Each returning visit to a familiar theme or subject brings a greater understanding of what that experience means. The artist works in cycles, which often are to do with the influence of the Season. She looks to the poet or composer’s method of constructing rhythm and pauses, repetition and pattern. Her paintings become arenas from which there are concerns about accumulation and connection, of emphasis and articulation of the paint. Purple is creating a personal visual language that embodies a particular experience of being in the world, a distillation and reflection of the familiar. The resulting work emerges from a mixture of recall and the imagined, of process and materiality.

Collage artist Miranda Millward is fascinated by serendipity, memory, and

nostalgia. Miranda’s collage making plays on memories real, imagined and

fictional. The domestic, feminine pastimes and childhood memories are often

visual reference points.

At any one time Miranda is working on a series of collages that work alone or

together - a recent series called Domestic Science – inspired by retro science and

domestic nostalgia was show in 2020 at the Old Fire Station in Oxford and

currently Miranda is working on a Spirograph inspired series of works inspired

by the ubiquitous childhood toy.

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