Mother & Daughter Reunited, 2021 (digital photograph)
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My work uses history and mythology to stand witness to often hidden or misrepresented lives, particularly those of women. In recent paintings, I have been inspired by notions of female agency in The Odyssey, and by images of women from black and white footage of the 1920s and 30s. I make paintings, drawings, sculpture, installation, assemblages, and moving image. Process, time, and the relationship between object and subject link the recurring patterns and images in my work: doubling; elusive surfaces; unstable duality; ambiguity; silence; strength and fragility. Hands, mirrors, threads, weaving, and unknown individuals, both past and present, frequently appear. Images of masks, mirrors and maps allow us to choose ourselves, enabling our different faces and divergent roles to align. *
I often use words and titles as my starting point, but I let my materials lead me, employing oil paint, graphite powder, charcoal, wax, soot, thread, and moving image. I have made 'blind mirror' plaster sculptures; graphite and wax panels; an octagonal graphite-covered chamber for contemplation; a selection of cartographical curiosities and handmade compasses; paintings of isolated buildings and individuals; and an installation of haiku and moving image about a community’s experiences of flooding. During Lockdown, I searched for different ways to connect and to focus on the materiality of my practice. Collaborating distantly with my dance-artist daughter, I drew large, expressive drawings in response to her improvised movements. They inspired me to make a new series of human-sized, dynamic charcoal drawings with projected video, based on a gift of flowers– anthropomorphic "moving still lifes”, are intended to be shown with a colour film projected on to them, creating a hypnotic atmosphere, pushing and probing the elusive surface; playing with drama, intrigue, and spectacle. * "There is no reflected delay from June’s mirrors: the delay is eternal. These are mirror portraits of an unrecognisable self: an unlikeness. Mirror sculptures that allow us to imagine a reflection, to choose ourselves, enabling our different faces that exist in divergent roles to align. We don’t escape ourselves when we shut our eyes, we just escape the revelation of reflection; looking at these mirrors is like seeing with your eyes shut. Mirrors that hide; mirrors that simplify." Jenny Allan (Royal College of Art, 2001) |