I create abstract monochrome prints that are stark, intimate and expressive.
By combining drawing with drypoint etching and collagraph, I develop the printing plate, instinctively reacting to marks as they are made. The process retains a spontaneity and fluidity whilst exploiting the technical discipline of printmaking.
The layering of abstract mark making gives the prints a subtlety and depth which accentuates their physical presence. The sequence and rhythm of lines creates the illusion of floating between, or passing through, veils of thin air.
Most of my prints are produced as small limited editions but each print is unique due to the inking up process. This introduces subtle differences and qualities to each image.
I begin by selecting banal, everyday material. Selection is contingent on the relations I identify in visual, physical and associative contexts. Choices can be based on a functional manufactured purpose, an imposed idea of agency, or the particular qualities of the material, its ‘thingness’.
The commonplace when presented out of its functional context somehow becomes more present. Its familiarity becomes strange, forming a new existence.
I try to work without narrative structures. My intentions are confounded as the physicality and scales within chosen materials articulate new webs of association and dependencies.
My ceramic work often takes the form of social comment. I frequently use historical models as reference or mixed with contemporary influences, subverting familiar forms to represent something other than their intended design and function. Humour is a consistent strand within the work. I like to explore the absurd, the provocative and the satirical.
‘Thompson’s work is satiric and fun and well executed’ – Judith Schwartz, author of Confrontational Ceramics
‘Thompson’s Trilogy of Death is both Clever and Funny’ – Anna Burnside, Crafts Magazine
Mixed media artist
Steven Malorie Potter practices systematic absurdity. Focusing on a small action or idea that interest him, he will exaggerate this obsession through method or madness, adding meat to the bones.
He chooses not to hold his work to any obligation and as such allows it to evolve without pressure, its finished form can be anything from serious to funny, sinister or even unfinished entirely.
“It doesn’t have to start off being about something, or maybe it already has. It doesn’t have to make sense right away, or even at all, it just has to be made”
Serena distorts scale and proportion to create fantastical miniature pieces of attire from an imagined collection. She renders these curios more mysterious by encasing them as if museum aquisitions, complete with fictional labels.
We are British/Canadian artist filmmakers working in film, installation, and performance. We are currently resident artists at Crescent Arts in Scarborough.
Our recent work investigates the problem of representation, the act of perception, and the boundaries between self and other.
In the acting out of various situations, we test the borders between an event and its re-enactment, being vs representing, and the real world as opposed to a ‘model’ of the world.
Recent exhibitions include Urban Organisms at The NewBridge Project, hmmmmm at Crescent Arts, and showing our recent three-screen installation, ‘Mother. I am Going’ at: Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, The Tetley, Leeds International Film Festival, and UK Young Artists.