Edited Artist Statement

 I am a visual storyteller, and my stories emerge from existing stories I reinterpret, stories I might have overheard in passing, or half-remembered stories from my childhood experiences. Drawing is an important part of my practice. I begin by observing commonplace, everyday objects that are usually overlooked but essential to daily life and drawing them in pen and ink.  These objects are not inherently special or extraordinary, but rather represent the ordinary and routine aspects of existence. These objects represent our time on this planet. Everyday objects will become historical artefacts that reflect our culture, technology, and daily life. Future archaeologists might study these objects to understand our society, just as we analyse artefacts from the past. I document these objects in illustrative forms, resembling 2D drawings rendered in clay. 

I let some of these objects challenge rational thought and carry me to seemingly unconnected realities. I tend to place them in surrealist settings in the spirit of Lautreamont's famous metaphor, "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." I take these everyday objects and playfully alter them to generate bizarre juxtapositions that subtly prompt the viewer to question their own eyes or, at the very least, shift perspective. I ask myself, "What if these objects had their own minds? What if they weren't only passive observers but active participants with agency? What if they were given the power to be something more?" I then transform these man-made objects into living, breathing hybrid creatures by fusing parts of them with elements from the natural world. Drawing inspiration from stories, proverbs, and idioms, I redeem the object from mundane to extraordinary. 

Collection of Objects coming together

Planning to add 3 more sculptures and then close it here and start on a new series of coloured pieces which will be more playful.

The pieces I plan to add to the black and white illustration series are Table Lamp, Flower Vase and "Cutting Ties". I will begin the new series in August.

 

Feedback from Neha

 Object installation

•Surreal style, drawing inspiration from dream life rather than deep

meanings.

• Not all objects will be surreal to avoid overwhelm in audience.

• Are objects are intended as an installation or individual pieces?

• In an installation the objects may have changing relationships and

changing meaning, but that the objects are related to each other is fixed.

Surrealism and your objects

• Consider not constructing objects to be absurd, but allow them to

become absurd through chance, and encounter with other objects and

stories.

• Freedom to not be restricted by material.

• Consider the story as a "ready made," like an object. Considered

borrowed phrases as readymades

• The story changes because of the object it's situated within or alongside.

• Don't worry about the audience; let them do the work of engaging with

your work.

• The audience brings their own understanding to the work.

• Challenge the audience's presumptions and understanding of

relationships between words and objects.

• Don't spoon-feed the audience; let them question their presumptions.

• What do you want when you want strangeness? What are you looking to

do or undo: for eg. Merete Oppenheim, Dali were looking to upend

notions of function, Duchamp challenged notions of art and authorship

with the fountain.

• Do your dreamlike scenarios tap into your subconscious or the

subconscious of society? Do you want it to?

• What does impossible things constitute in today’s socio-political

climate? cauliflower clouds versus mushroom clouds. I acknowledge

your work isn't overtly political but there’s room to include subtle hints

to geopolitical issues - that is what stories are about?

• Formal vs conceptual exercise. Identify if the lizard’s tail is a formal or

conceptual intervention with the telephone. Could you consider

exploring the connection between objects, like a telephone and its cord,

and think about what carries things from one place to another (e.g.,

intestines, roadways, courier systems).

• Reflecting, remembering stories, and reading to gather material instead

of immediately creating images. Use this reflections and notes as

tangible objects on the desk to create connections and build new stories

or mythologies.

• The strength of your work lies in its non-realistic, illustrative and

anatomically incorrect nature. Can you use the informality to create the

bizarre.

• Exploring various ideas and observing how the object changes with each

idea. For example, using a telephone with different attachments like a

lizard, intestines, or something that prevents picking up the receiver. Or

using the museum object vase with different handle forms to make new

mythologies

Object Stories in Installations

• Every object in an installation, regardless of its simplicity, contributes to

the overall story and has its own backstory.

• For example in the Mahabharata, or in Shakespeare's plays even minor

characters have significant backstories.

• Explore backstories of each object in depth.

• Being mindful of and allowing interesting things to emerge rather than

trying to force them, could lead to breakthroughs in the creative process.

• Trust that the audience brings their own stories and understandings to the

artwork, allowing for reconfiguration of ideas

Feedback on Artist Statement

• artist statement is very well-written.

• everyday objects in illustrative form placed in surrealistic settings.

• Could you include drawing as an important part of the practice.

• emphasize on the idea of being a stories teller. How are stories

important.

Looking at the work of Adrian Arleo, Katie McDowell

• The realism in Adrian Arleo’s work is what makes the absurd elements

stand out, prompting viewers to question the nature of the objects.

Adrian Areleo makes the oneness of human beings with nature very

literal, prompting questions about the body and its connection to the

world.

• In Katie MacDowell’s work the human element feels more like a site or

location rather than something with agency. Work feels like specimens

or dissections

• Your work looks at the continuity between human and non-human

organisms, as well as living and non-living beings. (Porosity + objects

and sentience)

Artist Statement of Samanta Batra Mehta

The multi-layered artwork I make is a commentary on the human condition. Understanding how past patterns of our experience and histories intertwine with the way we navigate our present day lives is of great interest to me. Themes in identity, personal history and culture are depicted and debated in my multilayered artworks that employ drawing, found objects, text, photo and installation. In a contemporary re-imagining of the ‘exquisite corpse’ genre, I oftentimes re-purpose collected antiquarian objects, imagery and texts along with my own drawings to render an altered visual engagement.

In my visual vocabulary, the human form and anatomical imagery is intertwined with foliage and nature. Nature/land/landscape is seen as a metaphor for the body (and vice-versa) and as a site for germination, nourishment and also plunder and transgression. My influences include history, myth, the natural world, medieval illustration and mystical philosophies, to name a few.

My work oftentimes speaks of journeys of dis/location. I spent my early childhood on a ship and have later lived on three different continents. My work examines what it means to be rooted and routed. As an incorrigible collector, my collections (of antiquarian maps, books, engravings and vintage objects) and my resultant artworks, give me a sense of permanence and points of reference in my shifting physical and emotional geographies.

Artist Statement of Adrian Arleo

 For over 40 years, my sculpture has combined human, animal and natural imagery to create a kind of emotional and poetic power. Often there's a suggestion of a vital interconnection between the human and non-human realms; the imagery arises from associations, concerns and obsessions that are at once intimate and universal. The work frequently references mythology and archetypes in addressing our vulnerability amid changing personal, environmental and political realities. By focussing on older, more mysterious ways of seeing the world, edges of consciousness and deeper levels of awareness suggest themselves.

Artist Statement of Katie MacDowell

 We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough.  We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment.  These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops.  They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones.  In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world.  In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats.  In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices.

I hand sculpt each piece out of porcelain, often building a solid form and then hollowing it out.  Smaller forms are built petal by petal, branch by branch and allow me the chance to get immersed in close study of the structure of a blossom or a bee.  I chose porcelain for its luminous and ghostly qualities as well as its strength and ability to show fine texture.  It highlights both the impermanence and fragility of natural forms in a dying ecosystem, while paradoxically, being a material that can last for thousands of years and is historically associated with high status and value.  I see each piece as a captured and preserved specimen, a painstaking record of endangered natural forms and a commentary on our own culpability.

Artist Statement 2025

 
I begin by observing commonplace, everyday objects that are usually overlooked but essential to daily life. They are not inherently special or extraordinary but rather represent the ordinary and routine aspects of existence. These objects represent our time on this planet. Everyday objects will become historical artefacts that reflect our culture, technology, and daily life. Future archaeologists might study these objects to understand our society, just as we analyse artefacts from the past. I document these objects in illustrative forms, resembling 2D drawings rendered in clay. 

I let some of these objects challenge rational thought and carry me to seemingly unconnected realities. I tend to place them in surrealist settings in the spirit of Lautreamont's famous metaphor, "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." I take these everyday objects and playfully alter them to generate bizarre juxtapositions that subtly prompt the viewer to question their own eyes or, at the very least, shift perspective. I ask myself, "What if these objects had their own minds? What if they weren't only passive observers but active participants with agency? What if they were given the power to be something more?" I then transform these man-made objects into living, breathing hybrid creatures by fusing parts of them with elements from the natural world. Drawing inspiration from stories, proverbs, and idioms, I redeem the object from mundane to extraordinary.