Maria Jackson BA (Hons) Fine Art and Art History
My work orbits around ideas of fragility and memory, and I am intrigued by the playfulness of how things are built, made and can grow; seeing this as a metaphor for our own mental constructions of memories and narratives. Words and actions such as weaving, stacking, holding, catching, falling, and crumbling have been influencing my decision making. I am interested in the strong becoming fragile, undermined by time, the combination of hard and soft materiality, the natural and artificial, delicate and the industrial, and to some degree disrupting the typical masculine and feminine associations towards craft and construction. I work across a range of mediums including free-embroidery stitch work (sink hole and broken net), ceramics (bucket), wax casting (small toffee hammers) and laser-cut plastic (tear drops) with the endeavour to explore the edges and relationship between the two and three dimensions; by oscillating between them both in the form of hand-picked symbols and motifs I attempt to tell miniature narratives surrounding the slippery and breakable qualities of memory. I have also accompanied some small drawings that seem to be a constant form of automatic thinking and mark making throughout my working process.
My work is currently showing at PS Mirabel (22 May – 26 June) in Momentary with the Gypsophila Collective.
~There is more yet to come from the Manchester School of Art Class of 2021 - we are working on independent shows around Manchester set up by students who have collectivised in the effort to support each other and create spaces to display work outside of the digital realm - watch this space!~
