Creative Arts Showcase 2023

Ange Mullins is a printmaker and creative ink maker at the end of her BA (Hons) Creative Arts Degree journey. 

Her practice flows from an immersive interest in our human-nature connection by means of creative explorations with foraged organic matter. Through these materials, she brings a sense of nature's own voice in the work.

I’m currently most interested in how our faces and bodies are represented, interpreted and re-interpreted. See my website for some of my current work. 

https://www.kuchbhogal.com/ 

Expatriates experience layers of loss as they move into and out of contracts in countries other than their home culture. My work metaphorically uses machetes, lost and discarded items, and plant matter to represent the processing of these losses, within the geophysical context of Lomé, Togo.

Embodied Reflections

My work investigates the connections between life experiences and materiality. We carry our experiences on, and in, our bodies. The body becomes our archive.

Impressions of Terre Sainte 

A sculptural and photographic work exploring the mundane in our environment and how it contributes to our identification of “Place”.

Measuring 50cm x 50cm it is made up of clay impressions of mundane features in my local town, alongside cropped photography of key features we encounter daily and which register in our subconscious.

My aim is to create a typology of such works from different places.

Unfiltered thoughts referencing memory and dreams drive my work. The process is quite intuitive, which means looking at things as they are and making off into the personal unconscious. I paint how I see which bypasses the mind's logic.

Images:
Midnight Jacaranda, 2023
Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100cm

Déjà vu, 2023
Mixed media on canvas, 60 x 60cm

Liberation, 2023
Mixed media on canvas, 60 x 60cm

www.anthonycareyart.com
www.instagram.com/anthonycareyart

Projection onto folded paper of 35mm slides made from images of inkjet transfer prints and monoprints. Part of an ongoing exploration of the way that memory and meaning evolves, in this case my experience of being in a place that I visited many times with my parents. http://emmaprintsagain.weebly.com/assignment-six

This project explored the use of plastic from milk cartons. Influenced by artists who alter the appearance of every-day, mundane materials e.g. Tara Donovan, Francesca Pasquali, Jessica Drenk. I enjoyed working to transform the plastic to create playful, fun pieces, many of which mimic natural organic forms through their shape and texture.  

www.rachaelbarns.art

Instagram - @rachaelbarns.art

Tricia Burton (Unit 1.1) & Melanie Jeffrey (Unit 2.3)

Melanie and I teamed up for an exciting collaboration! Melanie asked me to write an environmental poem to develop ideas from, so she could create new pieces based on it. The poem is an urgent telegram to humanity saying -STOP- (harming our planet) View Poem Melanie’s experimental work uses fragments of the poem to draw attention to mass production/pollution in the textile industry. Saying -STOP- to the damage being caused.

If the 'Pointless Machine' is a metaphor for modern life then we, who maintain & service the machine, are rendered pointless by our employment" This is my first foray into stop motion animation. I built the set & character from workshop scrap & the audio is constructed from samples of machinery there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZF3c-a6TJA

“Transparency” is an ongoing experimentation on the theme of spirituality. It builds on a perspective by Brazilian artist Mira Schendel (1919-1988) who in the 60s described her work on transparency as “the visibility of the invisible, of that which acts without us seeing it, such as, for example, the physical or the spiritual.”

The “Transparency” series is an intimate expression of profound ideas with the simplicity of outputs, using fragile, light materials.

Images:
1. Transparency II (2023), 54.9cm x 42cm (h x w), cardboard, copy paper, wool, scrim, natural elements
2. Transparency IV (2023), 42cm x 29.7cm (h x w), cardboard, copy paper, scrim
3. Transparency V (2023), 54.9cm x 42cm (h x w), cardboard, wrapping paper, copy paper,  tissue paper, cotton, scrim
Find out more about my work here: https://www.brindusaburrows.art
Instagram: @brindusaf

JustViv; Level 2: Creative Arts Relations

My journey into this project began with the coal mining history of my hometown in Northeast England. This led me to explore how the rapid growth of the digital world parallels past changes. The end of coal mining caused significant job loss, similar to what AI might bring on a global scale. My concern is that AI's impact could surpass even that. Additionally, considering the influence of AI on the realm of art.

In this project, my multimodality process includes various modes like model making, painting, texture, collage, drawing, animation, videography, photography, poetry, soundscapes, and digital artistry, whatever I felt was needed to tell my story. My video story ends with 'To Be Continued,' reflecting on upcoming shifts due to EV and AI advancements.

I created this fictional archive about a baby landing in Shropshire for my Creative Arts 1.1 unit.

In it, I tell the story of my son's premature birth in 2017. This work is based on my own memory and experiences of his first years of life and the personal disconnection between self-perception and reality. I created this piece using different disciplines such as photography, collage, drawing, animation, sound and performance.

This work is presented by “The Pluto’s Project” a fictitious science organisation. 

Alix Brown, Creative Arts, Illustration 2: Working To A Brief

"Boy Meets Girl Comic", "You Are Here Cover", "Hybrid Spaceport". A small selection of my work that shows a range of tool uses, mediums and illustration types. These were chosen to give a general idea of what I do, and I hope you enjoy them. You can find much more on my blog below -:

• https://themenagerieofodd.wordpress.com

Level 2: Writing Short Stories

This linocut was inspired by a flash fiction story written as part of the Level 2 module on Writing Short Stories. The full story can be found below: https://nichopkinsphotography.wordpress.com/bear-surviving/

Creative Arts Degree unit 1.2

A presentation of skills I’ve been developing in unit 1.1Creative Arts Skills, an insight into how I understand myself and the things I see around me. 

A selection of work from Creative Arts Relations (Unit 2.1)

“Home(2D into 3D)” is a clay outcome for Project 1. Starting with a 2D floorplan, this is exploring ambivalence. Some places denote safeness, others work and worry. Bisque, 18x35x30cm

“Breakwater(Dawlish)” Scrap metal at the site of the sea wall breach in 2014. This has a figurative as well as a constructivist look. Three is a theme in my work since my two daughters and I were bereaved by suicide. Still indelibly linked. Project 2. Bisque, 38x30x32cm

“Hounslow(West Mid)” A Fattal-like archetype depicts changing relationships with my father, also a doctor. My aunt reports an occasion when I skipped with excitement, meeting by chance, because I was to visit my dad – at the hospital for 12 days and 11 nights each fortnight. Project 2. Greenware, 20x18x15cm

• https://relationalconnections.uk/

• Instagram: @relationalconnections

• Instagram: @sallyev

My Creative Archive for Unit 1.1 Experience Creative Arts.

This series of cards represent pages from a fictional medieval woman’s journal. The herb garden at Norton Priory, Runcorn inspired me, and further research led me to medieval ‘Herbals’ which document herbs' properties and medicinal uses. I was interested in learning more about women’s roles during this period, especially those who acted as healers and brewers, otherwise known as alewives. I wanted to create an archive that represented absent voices. sites.google.com/view/an-imaginary-archive/home 

Unit 1.1. Experience Creative Arts

My work is titled On a creative tide… View Here . It encompasses poetry ‘And the moon spoke in stars’, a creative reflection about the programme and students, digital drawings and video art of the stars reflecting off the night sea. The silence of the work reflects contemplation. I applied poetic devices learned during my studies.

These pieces show a selection of work taken from my Creative Arts Illustration 2 unit. They demonstrate my exploration of the world of colouring pencils (which I have only just touched on). The next faze of the exploration is the relationship between these colouring pencils and other mediums. 

I’ve chosen 3 works which I feel reflect my progress in 1.2.  I learned how important constraints are to me; helping me to let go of outcomes, and to stop me being overwhelmed by choices!  Time has been an important factor too; looking at local history, my own history, and limiting the time that I spend on a project, helping me to maintain focus.  The padlet showing a selection of my work from 1.2 can be seen at A selection of creative work from 1.2 (padlet.com)

Artworks from level 2. Painting 2. Mixed Media.

Secret Garden - a mixed media painting (plaster and acrylic paint with glow in the dark detail) which became the cover of my meditation book that was published this year.

2 works created during Covid lockdown:

Boris – planning the Experiment. There were a lot of theories at the time (I probably don’t need to go into any more detail)!

Love in Lockdown. Inspired by my daughter’s new online and ongoing relationship that began at the start of lockdown. The word LOVE is written in 24 languages, which I researched. 

https://www.triciafrances.co.uk/

At the edge of our town is the UK’s largest concrete garden ornament manufacturer which has long fascinated me. The stockyard frequently has a scattered collection of interesting sculptures, often still wrapped in card and plastic. There is something about the juxtaposition of figures, surroundings and packaging that makes the scene more than the sum of its parts. Many of the sculptures make me think of identity, especially the expectations of femininity. I have never felt comfortable with the ‘cookie-cutter’ expectations of femininity. It’s a mould I don’t fit and because it is a cultural construct I think that nobody really should be burdened by it. We are not statues made in a concrete ornament factory with identical traits but rather individuals with a wide variety of bodies and personalities. The mould imprisons us and robs the world of some of its colourful variety a bit like this grey ornament yard with its limited display of drab sameness.

During my 2.1 Creative Arts Relations unit, the most time I spent on a project using plastic packaging. I was exploring the material and its application in visual art. I discovered two different ways of manipulating the material which made it possible for me to create interesting works on paper or by stitching. I combined plastic waste with woven textiles as well as used it independently. I researched artists using the same material, their processes, and concepts. I can say that I have opened a world of possibilities for my art which are in line with the sustainability trends. I am amazed by the colourful works one can create using waste without using any paint. 

The project culminated in an exhibition at the art quarter where I rent my studio where I also taught a workshop in the technique which probably was the most wonderful part of the experience due to my interest in community art projects. 

Baiba Vagule (Riga, Latvia)

Photography by Rudolfs Liepins (Riga, Latvia)