STEPHANIE DAWN MURRAY
CAAF Residency st[art]@art central, December 2012 – January 2013
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The duration of this residency will be a much needed time of undistracted immersion in my artistic practice; an opportunity to separate my studio space from home. My aim will be literally to brainstorm-allow my ideas to pour out, let thoughts flow and engage with my work without the restraint of pre-planned exhibition, as has been primarily the case since graduation. Since there is no rigid exhibition proposal to fulfill at the end of this residency, the strain of compliance to proposals will be alleviated. Rather than work towards a specific idea of a final show, the results of studio research will be displayed for the First Thursday at the end of the residency. The time and space of the residency will be employed as a period in which to grow as a creator, with my work, in a dedicated habitat.
The space will allow me room to explore the interaction of sculptural elements of my work while pursuing intended research. Mixed media will be used including previously fired porcelain, possibly including collaboration and intervention.
“… disorder, by implication is unlimited, no pattern has been realised in it, but its potential for patterning is indefinite. This is why, though we seek to create order, we do not simply condemn disorder. We recognise that it is destructive to existing patterns; also that it has potentiality. It symbolises both danger and power.”
-Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger
Every mind holds a complex mix of elusive thoughts that co-exist with even more complexity and quite often seeming disarray. My practice explores articulation of thought patterns and mindspace, pushing the query “what forms would thoughts manifest as, if they were tangible?” Striving for cohesion within chaos while employing motifs of organic growths and thriving entropies, mixed media sculptural forms navigate interactions with one another while growing through and activating space as installation and performative/wearable artworks.
Thoughts are kin to the natural phenomena of lichens, fungi and infesting organisms. Moving in similar fashion they sprawl, invade and colonize with aggression and delicacy. They recognize one another’s dance, grow, bloom and thrive. Composition and gesture of the artwork reflect movement of thought and its chaotic (dis)organization. The process of the artwork searches through the intrigue of organic compilation to find the abstract nature of thoughts before they are coaxed through the sieve of communicable clarity, while exploring the notion of living in symbiosis with genuine thoughts, allowing them to become part of our life space, the objects we interact with and even ourselves.