MAstars 2008: Jacqueline Bebb, MA Fine Art

MAstars 2008: Jacqueline Bebb, MA Fine Art Jacqueline Bebb, Beaching a Pink in Heavy Weather, 2008, Cutting mats, printed poster, notebook, 27cm x 70cm x 53cm

Phil Toy selects Jacqueline Bebb from the University of the West of England for MAstars


For her MA exhibition, held within the UWE studios provision at Spike Island, Jacqueline Bebb showed five small sculptural works of great sensitivity, each displaying an enigmatic, poetic quality. Bebb has reflectively, persistently worked for three years on developing this body of work based on a ridge of making.

She quotes from Simon Winchester's, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded (2003) referring to the importance of the starting point of a mid-ocean axis for productive creative production.

As poetic as Bebb is in the delicacy of her work, she is pragmatic seeing the studio as a place of meeting of materials and mind. She uses materials commonly used in art and design – cutting mats, tape, notebooks – along with imagery drawn from the world of geology and engineering.

Her final year dissertation is presented in the form of a catalogue. It is a fine publication, the text written by her, the images of work selected by her, both in progress and final statements of resolved elements.

In 'The Secret Bond Between Speed and Forgetting', Bebb uses a wall-mounted cardboard box, with pin holes cut through, on which there are geometric signs – circles, squares, and stars. On top of the box, there is a small pile of black and white pegs. They are too big to fit into the holes. The folded together box shows its corrugated ends. One does not know what is in the box.

To me, the finest piece is 'Beaching a Pink in Heavy Weather', a floor mounted sculpture of exquisite poignancy. It is about 15cm high x 60cm x 60cm, and consists of a cutting board box with a flowing chart (poster) of geological structures; a seemingly complex web of images and texts. On it, there is a notebook, cut, folded into its sleeve to form a sail-like structure. The piece suggests the vastness of the origin of the earth and our passage within and over it.

Bebb is now based in London where she is discussing project possibilities.

Selected by Phil Toy
Published July, 2008

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Further information

uwe.ac.uk

 

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