Breaking Ground

Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

Part 4

Perhaps, an introduction to Roz’s work should read “Roz Cran makes videos, objects, books, photographs, prints and live art.” How much of her work is now performance? Roz approaches her work by creating opportunities for “things” to happen. She follows her impulses to act out unlikely sequences of events often leading from one place and time to another, eventually culminating in a body of work which, almost accidentally it seems, is coherent, solid. For her, the question “where is the art?” is one that is often asked, and considered, carefully. Sometimes the boundaries are undefined as art and life merge; cooking for guests gradually extending into a ritual offering; a summer holiday becoming part of a pilgrimage to the Holy Wells of Ireland as “Holy Rabbit”.

Many of her works develop through the creative positioning and re-positioning of images and objects; a playful experimentation with combinations – juxtaposing individual items of interest, which when placed together, suddenly reveal new meaning. Experimentation and “play” are key to Roz’s work – whether it be playing with materials, techniques, ideas, technology or her own identity. So too are humour and mischief, qualities which give the work a life of its own, perhaps rubbing the sharpest corners from some of the darker pieces.

The final part of the article will be posted here later this week.

The full version of the article "Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other" can be downloaded from http://www.judithalder-live.co.uk/project_new_devel.html

Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

Part 3

Enquiry motivates Roz’s art. Her work is part of a process of exploration, of trying to make sense of the world. She treats it as an adventure, preferring to set up questions as starting points to explore, rather than providing answers. As Roz says, "Everything overlaps. Neither art nor life can be chopped into separate pieces. Both are messy and tangled. I will investigate some of the tangles."

Roz is based in Brighton, having moved there at the beginning of her art "adventure", to take up a place on a BTEC Foundation course, followed by a Fine Art (Printmaking) BA at the University of Brighton, from which she graduated in 2003. She went on to study at The Royal College of Art, completing her MA in 2006.

It was at the beginning of her time at the RCA when Roz, keen as ever to reach out for new knowledge, new skills, new experience, photographed herself reaching out to grasp an apple and then, fiercely, biting into it. The resulting image revealed a previously unseen ferocity, and prompted new ideas for making work which would feature Roz as the subject matter. She began to collect leopard skin clothes found in charity shops nearby and to wear them while setting out to explore what it might be like to be "wild". This was the beginning of a series of activities in which Roz would push her experience of life beyond the daily norm, adopting the identity of "leopard", or "rabbit", or later "stone" or "tree", experiencing for a short time, what it is to live as an other.

"Am I leopard? Am I lettuce? Am I bucket?

What are we? What can we become?
Are we animal, vegetable or mineral?

Can we see through the eyes of the other?
Can we cross borders and return?

When I spent days making papier mache buckets did I become part-bucket? Was the bucket different?"*

* Quote from Roz’s website – http://www.roz2.co.uk/

To be continued

The rest of this article will be posted on Projects Unedited in sections over the next few days. The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN – The Artists Information Company). This article is part of the project. And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment. In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists). The first BMPD event takes place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

PART 2

During the six years that I’ve know Roz, I have seen her make work which ranges from comforting and comfortable images of fairy cakes and hot water bottles, to unsettling videos of the artist as feral woman clad in leopard skin clothes, running wild; or as a white rabbit, ears flopping, reaching out to a distant Madonna. Is this the stuff of children’s dreams, or nightmares? These extremes demonstrate the range of themes which are central to Roz’s work and the friction which is present from the rubbing between domestic and wild, commonplace and fantastical, past and present.

Roz’s interest in art developed indirectly from her commitment to feminism and her resulting experience of feminist art as a means of expression and communication. Her early work formed an examination of identity, especially women’s identity, often using images linked with the domestic, with women’s work, and the associated suppression of the wild. In the part of her work which Roz calls “Bringing to Light” she interrogates her own links with the past, through personal and family history. She explains how this work was born from an investigation of significant objects which carried a history, imprinted with emotions and stories from earlier generations. Using simple materials and techniques, Roz captures the essence of these objects and some of the meanings which adhere to them. “Bringing to Light” is full of images which seem to appear and disappear. Objects hover in a space which Roz has created from her own experience – from memory. The past and present intertwine as she works with processes and materials which have held a personal significance. Childhood pleasures such as pressing flowers and making books are relived in the production of new objects which create a common ground accessible to all.

To be continued.

The full version of this article can now be downloaded from http://www.judithalder-live.co.uk/project_new_devel.html

Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Other

PART 1

It is a grey day in a muddy-looking park. A leafless tree stands alone in urban parkland. Lumpy grass stretches away to a horizon where more bare trees partly obscure a row of low buildings. A tower block rises above them. As I watch, a woman enters the scene, walking purposefully toward the tree from one side. She carries a bag, which she proceeds to place on the ground near the tree. From it, she unpacks a bulky, brown bundle. She takes off her coat and scarf, and packs them in the bag. She takes the bag away, putting it to one side, out of view. The woman returns to the bundle, unfolds it, and carefully steps into the opening of what now appears to be some sort of sack. Pulling up the rim of the sack around her waist like putting on an awkward suit, she gradually tugs and wriggles the heavy material over her body, eventually enclosing every part of her, even her head. Her arms slip into long sleeves, she shuffles nearer to the tree, herself a smaller version. Ready now, the woman raises her arms above her head and settles into position, crows caw, a white dog looks and runs off.*

The woman in the video is Roz Cran. Roz makes videos, objects, books, photographs, prints. Her work is complex and impossible to categorise or sum up with a few tidy words. It deals with those things in life which are not tidy.

*"Tree" by Roz Cran, was filmed in Southwark Park for "Let's Riot", Cafe Gallery Projects, 2006 View the video at http://www.roz2.co.uk/ani09.html

The rest of this article will be posted on Projects Unedited in sections over the next few days. The project, Breaking Ground, is a partnership supported by a NAN New Collaborations Bursary (AN – The Artists Information Company). This article is part of the project. And the partners (Judith Alder and, Roz Cran) will develop a joint residency on an allotment. In addition they are collaborating in the organisation of BMPD (Blue Monkey Professional Development for Artists). The first BMPD event takes place in June 2007 in Eastbourne where they plan to arrange a year-long programme.

Roz and I have been working on our articles for Breaking Ground over the past few weeks. We presented our work (past and present), to each other. Then we went our separate ways to write up our first drafts. Those have now been refined and we're ready to upload them to Projects Unedited. It has been a useful process, making us review our practice and establish areas of common ground which we can build upon during the rest of our collaboration. Reading what Roz has written about my practice has been interesting. She has examined my work from a fresh perspective, putting a different emphasis on certain areas of it and articulating some things which I could not.

We've decided that the best way to publish the articles is in small portions, a little each day for the next few days, and I'm going to start later today by publishing the introduction to the article which I've written entitled "Roz Cran – Seeing Through The Eyes of The Other".