Approved: 18.05.2017

Gail Flockhart

Artist, Film-maker, Lecturer / academic, Maker, Researcher

Archived
Approved: 18.05.2017
  • Location: Exeter, South West

Artist Statement

Statement

In an age of perfectionism, with intense pressure to be ‘liked’ on social media, an emerging aesthetics of the self within digital-visual cultures creates implications for our unique sense of self and often vulnerable identities. 

My Practice-as-Research is situated within the field of women’s lens-based art and draws on art historical, feminist and conceptual contexts to explore the relationship between artistic modes of self-representation and social modes of self-expression.  As a practitioner-researcher, I combine traditional and digital media, to create experimental still and moving-image, sound, projection and installation works at the intersection of photographic, film and smartphone technology.  

My personal perspective of self/world is inflected by experiences of past psychological and emotional trauma. So, through experimental and more contemplative visual vignettes, I explore how personal narrative, visual-language and performative-actions can articulate and affectively-transmit the processes underlying identity and self.

 

Introduction

As experience transforms the sense of self, psychological pain or trauma can rewire our circuits of selfhood.  Negotiated through feminist perspectives and lived-experience, I ‘mine’ seams of self for material buried in time and personal history to uncover these complexes.  

Practice-as-Research and a phenomenological approach facilitate a ‘doing-thinking’ through the performative-process, opening a discursive space for memory and unconscious thought to appear through ruptures in identity. Revealing facets of self through visual images, can break-down elements we often fail to recognise in ourselves or acknowledge in others.  Being in front of and behind the camera-lens in a reflexive practice of self-representation, creates an opportunity to consider the processes involved in the physical performance and psychological construction of self. 

Bringing ideations of self into the open through re-performed actions, offers a therapeutic function and opportunity to identify with the ‘other’ - to reconnect the personal with the universal. 

CV & Education

Education:

MA Fine Art, University of Plymouth (2009)

BA (Hons) First Class, Fine Art, University of Plymouth (2006)

 

Selected Exhibitions, Works & Projects:

2018 - Un/perfect Ideals (ideas in progress)

2018 - Untitled Photocopier Selfie Series, 'Untitled Photocopier Selfie #12 (prayer)'  selected for Axisweb's Weekly 'Highlights' 8-14 Jan 2018

2017 - A/part from the Earth Series

2017 - Makers of the Multiverse (Postcards/Workshop), Juneau Projects via Spacex, Exeter

2016 - Untitled Shadow Selfie Series 

2015 – Re/imagined Film Stills Series 

2010 - CeilingSpring Screen South West Open Film Festival, Spacex, Exeter (short film top billed)

2009 - Moving Image Passing Time, Exhibition of Women Artists Work at Birdwood Gallery, Totnes

2009 - Assemblage (Inhabiting Metaphors), Peninsular Arts, Plymouth

2006 - Black Box, film shorts at Phoenix, Creative CollectiveiExeter

2006 - Degree Show, School of Art & Performance, Exeter, University of Plymouth

2005 - Nascent, Exhibition at Royal William Yard, Plymouth

2005 - To Be Discarded, School of Art & Performance, Exeter, University of Plymouth

2004 - Max 10 Events, Falmouth Arts Centre, Cornwall

2004 - Max 10 @ Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall

 

Collaborations & Residencies:

2017 - Dartmoor Art Project, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (group submission shortlist)

2012 - Being, Wayward Arts Group, Exeter (collaborative book-work project)

2009 - National Trust, Barrington Court, Illminster, Somerset (residency)

2007 Poltimore House, Exeter, Devon (residency)

 

Workshops, Talks & Conferences:

2018 - 57th Venice Biennale 2017 – Viva Arte Viva, presentation/talk for Wayward Art Group

2017 - Shadow Selfie Workshop, Juneau Projects/Spacex, Exeter (convener)

2009 - Source, Projection Workshop with Richard Milner, University of Plymouth (participant)

2007 - Screen/Space: The Projected Image in Contemporary Art, University of Edinburgh (delegate)

 

Curatorial Projects:

2017 - Dartmoor Project, co-curated for submission to Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter

2012 - Wayward Arts Group, Exeter, co-curated compilation of nine artists book-works

2005 - Nascent, Publicity Team and Exhibition Photography