Community of Practice Award
THE INK GROWS LESS, THE SEA INCREASES.
This practice-led research project engages with longing, magical realism, sensation poetry, and word-to-image translation to explore how the alchemy of word and image has the capacity to generate worlds; revealing how the intimate and encompassing nature of books can be expanded to form enclosed spaces which envelop the viewer in realms which are both mystical and familiar.
Utilising installation and sculptural practice alongside painting and poetry practice, the research builds soft, immersive spaces which heighten our awareness of magic and poetry within everyday moments. Key to the research is the affect of materials and processes from art history. Detailed paintings on goatskin parchment evoke devotion through their connection to ancient illuminated manuscripts, whilst personal iconography channels and embraces the ambiguity of language, resulting in enigmatic pictorial entities and mysterious narratives that the viewer may piece together.
The installation elements, the paintings, and my fragments of poetry all reference one another, forming a dynamic between the realistic and the mythic. This creates a cascading worldview where the viewer is enclosed within the curtained space, and the curtained space is enclosed within the paintings, blurring the line between external reality and the realm of poetic sensation.
