Jen Fox
MA Fine Art
The emphasis of my MA research was based on finding answers to why I and other creatives find our inspiration while walking in nature and why movement is connected to creative process. For Woolf, “both writing and walking enable, through different mechanisms, access to profound and unsettling questions about identify, about the nature of self, and the essence of our purpose as human beings on earth.” It is an embodiment to thinking, making, and knowing. The focus of my exploration was the existential aloneness experienced through walking.
Using my own body as a vehicle, I explored the fragility and strength of the human condition under pressure. Through meditative walking and breathing, I gave focus to my own haptic temporality to capture a profound connection to nature and stillness of being. I connected the visceral but looked at the tension between temporality and permanence, or the fallacy of permanence, to make links concurrently. Mechanical signals generated during walking on natural ground surfaces constitute a rich source of haptic sensory information. The body in motion or the vibration of movement and the complex interactions between physical movement, introspection and the landscape created an exchange. A connection through touch, bodily pressure, and mind.
My practice is interwoven with walking, materiality and working methods. Drawing from artists Salcedo, Gallaccio and Mendieta, as well as my own practice, I have explored and investigated contemporary artistic practices with connection to place, through sculpture, photography, and performance as a means of communicating identity, loss and belonging.
The sculptural piece ‘Subsumed’ was shortlisted for the Batsford Prize this year.
