Jennie Savage

(selected by Anthony Shapland)

People, place and the everyday are the base material for Cardiff-based artist Jennie Savage. Employing mapping, archiving and intervention, whether collecting stories or tracing journeys, Savage seeks to return the object to the source from where it was removed, or where it's journey began.

'I am interested in the dialogue between meta-narratives and the phenomena of the everyday particularly in relation to the perception of place. Working through a process that uses archiving and intervention I seek to map the other life of a place or community in order to reveal a multi-faceted, complex situation or micro-structure.

Using the traditions of story telling and the processes of documentary, historical research methods, psycho-geography and imagined other lives, the work adopts a phenomenological approach to making sense of place, raising questions above and beyond a topographical layer.

Reality and truth are fundamental concerns at the core of my practice and through relational processes I seek to question mechanisms which are in place for the recording of The Truth. I do not seek to make alternative mechanisms but more negotiate and develop strategies which indicate a truth about place.

The work is grounded in a fundamental research process that starts with the formation of an archive or collection, and concludes with an intervention or installation that puts the information back in to the public domain.

The role of the artist is instigator, researcher, collector, mediator and organiser, somebody that intervenes within a given system, bringing disparate elements together before placing/ leaking them back in to the public domain. Through this process I work a lot with the public or specific networks in order to articulate a set of concerns.

Through my interest in the phenomena of the everyday I seek to make work that will locate the unseen life of a place or community, giving voice to aspects of the everyday which would ordinarily simply pass. These small details get lost in the conversation between a mass culture and local interest where, increasingly, reality is seen on tv. I seek to engage with these everyday events through the generation of large amounts of information which are processed, indexed and handled and emerge into the public arena as an instant, or a moment which becomes a personal story to be remembered and re-told.'

Jennie Savage (b. 1975) is a part-time lecturer in time-based arts at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff. Since graduating from UWIC in 1999 (MA, Fine Art) Savage has completed residencies at Aberbeeg (commissioned by Cbat, September 2004), Chapter Arts Centre, and a six-month residency at Cardiff Central Library, funded by Artworks Wales (2002-2003).

Recent solo exhibitions include Anecdotal Cardiff, 2005, And then I returned it to the sea (Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, 2002), and Exhibition of Unrealised Ideas (Rotherham Art Centre, 2002).

www.jenniesavage.co.uk

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