My thoughts and reflections as I continue my research post my MA studies
The original purpose of this micro site was to display the progress and development of my Falmouth University Final Major Project- The In Between Places. It has now become a useful memory and research aid ongoing.
The project initially aimed to look at topographical and other features from various countries and cultures and see how interchangeable they might be since many features are now so generic globally. Marc Auget describes this phenomenon and examines themes of airport lounges, carparks, supermarkets etc in his book Non Places, an Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity.
During the course of progressing this project I have become aware and increasingly concerned with the rise of nationalism. Trumpism in the USA, Brexit in the UK, any number of other nationalist groups around Europe, South America, the Middle East keen to build new or reinstate borders, often shrinking their states with isolationist policies.
Beyond that I found myself to be increasingly anxious about other world and local events, rising inequality, politics, a serious illness emerged in 2019 so my entire world felt in flux and unpredictable and as a result I found my project constantly taking new directions as I tried to respond to my concerns which in turn gave me much more anxiety.
I thought my aim was to take topographical features from two or more countries and combine them to create a new place, I now realise these works are a reaction to my unease and anxiety with the world, finding myself unexpectedly but inevitably aligned with Metaphysical Art (the translation of the Italian Pittura Metafisica) which was an early twentieth century Italian art movement typified by dream-like views of eerie arcaded squares with unexpected juxtapositions of objects thus circumventing and subverting notions of what is normal, challenging frontiers and identity politics. Metaphysical painting was born from the artist’s intent to create a world that does not exist in reality. A world capable of enhancing the intrinsic beauty of objects and matter. A fundamental aspect is its ambiguous and paradoxical character . The artist reproduces objects and elements of the real world, combining them and combining them in an absurd way. In this way the objects are stripped of their usual meanings, the work loses its link with reality and is placed outside it.