June Nelson

Artist statement

Although rooted in painting, my practice is research based and has resulted in painting, sculpture, wall drawing, and book-works for exhibition, using materials from wax and graphite powder to plaster, paint or text. I am interested in the historical context of mirror and map making and the nature of the objectivity we seek when looking in mirrors, constructing and consulting maps to understand our place in the world or making signs warning us to keep away from the edge. This interest has resulted in shadow images and mesh drawings, blind mirror sculptures, large and small-scale graphite and wax panels, a graphite-lined octagonal chamber for contemplation, an assemblage of cartographical curiosities, and paintings of isolated dwellings and individuals. 

My processes remain ultimately painterly – underpinned by a lyrical and epigrammatic approach to an often-elusive surface and ungraspable narrative. My recent work (Sandbag Haiku) is based around flood waters in south-east  England and their effects on a community. I experimented with physical and digital methods of using words, objects and the element of water, for a series of photographic prints, projections and installation. Part way through this project, the title gained a poignant irony after the terrible post-earthquake floods in Japan. The scale was so large and the suffering so great that I couldt presume to do more than make an oblique reference to it through appropriating a TV journalist's phrase. Combined with the phrases I had already gathered locally, it inspired the 'haiku' that formed a major part of the installation, first shown in public in a domestic cellar in August 2012.