Porcelain and Print - a-n The Artists Information Company

Maura Jamieson is a Photographer and Lecturer whose recent work

examines the narratives surrounding the lifecycles of plants; how they grow,

propagate and return to the earth.

The starkly lit images, produced using Victorian 5×4 camera techniques,

interrogate the minutiae of plant life, allowing natural forms to take on the role

of image-makers. While leaves, seeds and buds make up Jamieson’s subject

matter, the series of images represents less a botanical exploration than an

adventure into the semiotics of natural objects.

The photographic study seeks to isolate and amplify the familiar and often

overlooked architectures of plant formations. The resulting images offer an

array of contradictions to the viewer. The depicted rigidity of form contrasts

with the metamorphosis being studied – the viewer is presented with immortal

copies of short-lived foliage.

Jamiesons ‘Somnolence Series’ was inspired by the pictorial legacy of the

Nightmare, by Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli. This series explores the

subject of dreams and their relation to the subconscious.

Frozen in the stasis of a dream state, the subjects of Somnolence are

presented at the very extremes of hypersomnia. During the periods preceding

sleep, different conscious states meld together to form long term memory;

Jamieson’s series attempts to visualise these windows that occur each time

we fall asleep.

The trance-like nature of these images aims to resonate with a universal

experience that resides at the borders of our memories.

Judy Dibiase is a ceramic artist using a cross fertilisation of fine art and craft to

produce her work.

The recent series produced by Dibiase seeks to examine memory formations, our

position as everyday archivists and the passive recollection provided by physical

objects.

The porcelain works that make up the exhibition seek to demonstrate the fluctuations

of emotional terrain caused by changing memories. Enduring and atrophying

recollections are seen to stand side by side through these objects, often inhabiting

the same piece.

The process used by Dibiase follows the same contours as the subject matter being

interrogated. Initial recording, made through drawings, are reworked and partially

erased. These acts of physical remembrance are then transferred onto raw clay

through direct screen printing.

Shadows and small organic forms are used as platforms to discuss the fleeting

nature of consciousness. Fragmented sections make up the whole, just as our

memories make us complete.