Output details

End of the Beginning: A body of works in print, drawing, mixed-media, video and installation, presented in the exhibition “Barfield – End of the Beginning", at the LAFA Art Museum, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China, 13–27 September 2013; Individual artefact/s solely produced as part of a 2-person exhibition, with curatorial oversight

This work related to maps as narrative devices (Broton, Storr) and invented/alternative realities (Winner). It focused on the question of how maps are able conceptually to locate the viewer both inside and outside the world represented. It developed visual metaphors for the estrangement of the individual from their surroundings, emphasising the disconnection between perception and reality, and individual alienation as exemplified in the work of Calvino, Pessoa and Keiller.

Methods included the development of new approaches to combining autographic and digital techniques, including digital factoring processes. I combined laser-cutting/routing with traditional media, producing collages using additive processes (materially) and recessive depths (removal of layers of substrate). Results highlighted the suitability of these techniques to express layered memory, psychological meaning, and quasi-archaeological investigation. Disjuncture of location and experience was expressed, in video work, through layered still and motion footage (both visually and technically), and asynchronous audio.

The invitation to present this work at Luxun Academy of Fine Arts was issued by Professor Wei Ershen, President of LAFA and Deputy-Chairman of the Chinese Artists’ Association (following an academic lecture on my research and practice during an institutional visit in late 2011), with the aim of stimulating broader critical understanding amongst students, staff and the Chinese public, and to develop the practice-based research culture at LAFA. The exhibition at this major venue in Northern China, which regularly hosts international touring exhibitions, was extensively covered in the press: provincial TV, and local print and web media. Additionally: I was invited to take up a Visiting Professorship, and to teach annually within LAFA’s fine art programmes; my work was purchased by LAFA Art Museum for their permanent collection, and by contemporary art collector Wang Yifei; I also received invitations to exhibit in 2014 from galleries in Dalian and Beijing.