Millennial Pink/ 10.02.20
(Millennial Pink, 3x4m painting (Acrylic on naturally dyed calico) with sculptures varying in dimension, February 2020.)
Images Above: Soft sculptures from the installation Millennial Pink, canvas dyed with avocado and cotton soaked in green paint, February 2020.
This work combines a painting depicting a child-like forest scene and soft sculptures, to form an installation. Exhibited as part of “Interim Exhibition”, held at the University of Reading.
The work explores a place that is fabricated from our childhood memories and imagination. The playful shapes and colours of the sculptures, although childish, have an obscure sense of weirdness and wonder from the way they crawl out of the painting. The fleshy tones and bodily shapes inject a more sinister nature to the piece, creating a dialogue between utopian and dystopian lands. I have always been fascinated by woodland. Its a place of natural beauty, fairy tales, but also the unknown.
Process is always important when I start a piece. This began with naturally dying the fabric with avocados to achieve the rustic millennial pink colour. This formed the base of the painting and much of it is left unpainted to be selective about what is illustrated. The missing horizon line, negative space in the sky and patchy foreground are all intentional and explore the way we perceive imagery as well as making it an unidentifiable place.
The sculptures were inspired by Dorothea Tannings work, in particular the installation Hotel du Pavot, Chambre 202, 1970-73, where her human-like cloth sculptures are emerging out of the walls and furniture.
