Stories Beneath the Surface - Session Two

The purpose of this session was for us to get to know the artists leading the workshops in a more in depth way. The artists involved are Paul Scott, Matt Smith and Jacqueline Bishop.

Paul Scott

Paul Scott went first. I have always been interested in his work and how he applies political satire and narrative into his pieces. He lives and works in rural Cumbria and that setting has been portrayed in some of his work. Paul described his life as a professional artist and gave great advice for anyone wanting to pursue being an artist as a career. 

His pieces are brilliant; he uses playful intervention on ceramics we are all familiar with, usually blue and white willow pattern for example. He subtly subverts the domestic familiar patterns and images revealing complex histories and comments on contemporary society through his transfer ware and collaging.

“Over the years, my artworks have commemorated and examined a range of issues, from the Foot and Mouth crisis to the impact of energy extraction and production on our environment… I have inserted nuclear and coal fired power stations as well as wind turbines into pastoral landscapes, exploratory oil rigs in pristine arctic locations – and placed landscapes with fracking rigs onto cracked platters.’  – Paul Scott 

Matt Smith

Before this course, I hadn’t been aware of Matt Smith’s work. He works as both an artist and curator and sometimes does both at once. Matt’s practice examines the work of organisations, such as museums or stately homes, and tries to shift their points of reference. This in turn shifts the visitor’s points of reference. In his work, the familiar becomes unfamiliar and power structures are revealed. He uses artist inventions with objects and spaces. 

I was really interested in a piece of work he created called ‘Flux’ at The Fitzwilliam Museum in 2016. He was asked to explore a collection of Parian ware that had never been on display before: it consisted of over 300 pieces accepted by H.M Government in lieu of inheritance tax. Matt decided to question the space these items were to be displayed in and why they were even made; who writes history, why do museums celebrate the lives of some people and ignore others, why were these people celebrated enough to be immortalised in clay? Through examination of the collection themes of mass production, celebrity, colonialism and our notion of history highlighted a jaded past for the figures portrayed. Matt created an impressive installation displaying the busts against elaborate wallpapers. The wallpapers challenged the reading of the figures by revealing the true nature of the wealth behind the celebrity. For example, Gladstone was displayed against a backdrop of slavery. 

Matt wants us to question narratives we are told  and provide a space in which marginalised viewpoints are given space and alternative/contradictory conclusions can be made.

Jacqueline Bishop

Jacqueline spoke next, we already had an insight to her work from the earlier session. She is a visual artist, academic and writer. She explained her recent work called ‘History at the Dinner Table’ where she explored familiar, to her, brightly coloured china plates used symbolically in Caribbean homes. She explored how they hid violent side of slavery and colonialism in European countries. She also explained her exploration into the market woman of the Caribbean. 

'My work focuses on making visible the invisible, in making tangible the ephemeral, in speaking aloud the unspoken, and in voicing voicelessness. In so doing, I engage with such themes as pleasure, desire, sexuality, memory and exile (and their concomitant absence, loss, erasure and silence). My practice is interdisciplinary and increasingly trans-disciplinary. As someone who has lived longer outside of my birthplace of Jamaica, than I have lived on the island, I am acutely aware of what it means to be simultaneously an insider and an outsider. This ability to see the world from multiple psychological and territorial spaces has led to the development of a particular lens that allows me to view a given environment from a distance. Because I am also a fiction writer and poet as well as a visual artist, the text and narrative are significant parts of my artistic practice.' - Jacqueline Bishop