ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [7 January 2012]

Holly Ford

My predominant ideas are associated with how we differ from human to animal to object. What each of these state’s means, and what characteristics we share or could share. Through being animal we become something before our belief and social systems, we lose one structure but take on another more internalized and primal one. By becoming the object we become what we produce, and what we produce is what we already know. We create new realities through these objects, but to produce them we rely on ourselves and our past. We are all interwoven in to our own objects. Ambiguity is clear within my work, and is essential at leading the spectator to their own impression built on their own experience. I am interested in open ended work, and how art should slow us down from our fast paced culture to re-question our familiar norms. Art should not give us direct answers, but lead us to more questions. With this in mind, I attempt to animate the materials I choose as to trigger links with current culture and primal behaviour. This anthropological stance has led me to look into our adaptability as living beings, and how social structures implement control on our animalistic tendencies. From nurturing to reproducing to hunting, these compulsions have been adapted and changed over time.

Materials that indicate animal, human or an object’s properties fascinate me. With the right material, there is little left to do but present it in a coherent way for the spectator. I enjoy relying on the strength of my ingredients rather than the eluding the viewer by ‘lying’ with the materials (making them something they are not). When I do ‘lie’, it is obvious and to the point of ridiculous, yet it promotes humour within the spectator. The sculptures tend to be quickly made, very tactile, and hold few illusions to what materials I have used. I do not wish to trick the viewer but to make them reconsider what they are looking at. By slowing the viewer down, whether that is through their own curiosity or through their own aesthetical pleasure of the work, they begin to examine why these sculptures stand before them. The ambiguity hooks them in. The materials make them question.