Artist statement & seminar with Laura 05.05.22

Aldous works as a multidisciplinary artist exploring the boundaries of what it is to be mentally and physically 'human' alongside humanity's obsession with evolving beyond its current limitations, especially by means of science and technology. Working within the conceptual terrain of transhumanism and cyborgism, he employs physical structures and prostheses, processual audio and visual material to immerse an audience within the blurry area between human and machine and our inevitable transcendence and connection with technology. His work is exploratory, embodied and powerfully performative, using his sculpture as subject and sounds from his materials and tools, augmented by manufacturing techniques to stretch the limits and senses of the human to create an audio joyride of visual imagery. Aldous creates debate for technological ontology to be questioned and shared.

self portrait 2020 house paint and polyfilla on canvas 750x1000mm

Laura had emailed the notes (below) ahead of time for us to have a read, and think about how to go about creating our artist statements. Laura suggested using our bios from the Symposium as a starting point:

Bio & presentation from Symposium:

Since my recent BA, my artwork has been a mix of drawing awareness to mental health and physical disability with a hint of worrying about where technology might take us. My work in my MA is still in keeping with evoking emotion and drawing awareness to mental and physical disability, but also now has a heavier slant on my technological worries and has begun on a research path down subjects such as Transhumanism and Cyborgism, not necessarily giving my opinion but more as a way to create conversation and debate about where humanity’s relationship with technology will take us.

My essay for this year entitled: Transhumanism & Cyborgism: The Art of Extension, sparks debate about how the relationship we have with technology will shape society now and in the future, and looks specifically at the work of cyborg artists; artists that have some kind of neural modification, creating a new sense as a medium to create artwork, and how this new art movement is being received.

My symposium film presentation is work from my current project that takes my latest leg sculpture on a journey from the sea, through woods and over hills and ends up in a more industrial sci-fi setting. The concept for the film is an evolutionary tale of emerging from the sea, coming down from the trees, engaging with technology and points a finger to where we may end up from a transhuman and cyborg point of view. The film’s narrative is from my essay and prompts questions and investigation from you the audience. I have created a forum for those interested, to join in the conversation: www.aldousgeorge.com/forum

Laura paired us up to make bullet points and expand on these, describing not ourselves but who we were paired with (in an artist statement kind of way). I was paired with Laura herself.

After swapping notes and brief descriptions about each other we were allowed to edit each others contributions.

I don't have Laura's original response but this is mainly what she came back with and a few alterations from myself (and forms part of my actual artist statement at the beginning of this post.):

Aldous works as a multidisciplinary artist exploring the limits and boundaries of what it is to be mentally and physically ‘human’. Working within the conceptual terrain of transhumanism, he employs physical structures and prostheses, processual audio, and visual material to immerse an audience within the blurry area between human and machine and our inevitable transcendence and connection with technology. His work is exploratory, embodied and powerfully performative, using found sounds and objects, augmented by manufacturing techniques to stretch the limits of the human creating shared debate for concepts to be considered and questioned.

I had Laura down as:

Laura Hopes is a dynamic, site specific, story telling, collaborating PhD researcher extraordinaire. Hopes is a socially engaged artist who collaborates with the public and other artists, drawing awareness to political & environmental issues. Specialising in site specific art, creating a visual forum for sharing narrative and ideas, engaging metaphysics and hyper objects with reality. Hopes is encouraging and uses stories and story telling to engage audiences in nature and how humans connect - a form of intuitive biophillia.

Hopes is also a teacher encouraging others to fulfil their artistic capabilities.

Artist statement notes from Laura:

An artist’s statement is a short piece of writing about your work, practice and any wider intellectual concerns.

They are as varied and diverse as the art they support, so the following suggestions are intended as guidelines and observations rather than hard-and-fast rules. Artist statements act as an introduction to your practice as a whole, highlighting common concerns, motivations and processes running throughout. A longer statement may go into more detail about specific works.

A statement should give the reader a better understanding of where your practice and interests come from, influences on you or your work, and support them in interpreting what you do.

You will need an artist statement for most applications for:

· Opportunities

· Residencies

· Awards

· Press releases

· Funding

· Websites

· Approaching galleries and curators.

Writing an artist statement will also help you focus and order your thoughts about your practice.

The length depends on what it’s being used for. It is a good idea to have a basic artists statement that you can adapt, grow or shrink as you need it for different things, to provide a quick starting point for applications.

This could be a paragraph of about 100 – 200 words in length which can then be adapted and added to depending on what its being submitted for. As well providing the appropriate information in an artist’s statement, how this is delivered is important.

The following qualities make for a good artist statement

• Be clear: use as plain English as far as possible unless you are dealing with specific concepts and explain them briefly. Don’t use complex or specialist language unnecessarily.

• Don’t pretend: Don’t make your work out to be something that it’s not. An accurate statement about good work that deals with a relatively simple idea is much better than trying to make something appear clever by dressing it in complex theories.

• Be descriptive: it can be helpful to refer to any physical qualities of your work in reference to the conceptual ones. Explain the decisions that you made about how the work took shape and why you made them.

• Focus: Stick to your subject, which is your practice. The purpose of the artist statement is to talk in a focused way about your practice, not wider philosophical questions or concepts.

• Be objective: making grand claims when describing your work will do you no favours. Try to be objective or at least use objective language when describing your own work.

So, what kind of information would you include in an artist’s statement?

Here are some questions you might like to consider:

• What media do you work with? What interests you about work of this type?

• Why do you work in this media? Is there a relationship between the media and the ideas that you work with?

• What processes are involved in the work and how are they relevant to the ideas you are dealing with?

• What themes, ideas and concerns does your work uniquely consider?

• Are there any outside influences and ideas, perhaps from outside the arts, which have bearing on your work?

• What ties your individual pieces of work together into a practice?

• Are there any particular theories, artists or schools of thought relevant to your work?

• Is there an ‘intention’ behind the work; what do you want the work to achieve?

Things you should not include in an artist statement include:

• Information about your career as an artist

• Exhibition history

• Work history

If required, these topics should be separately included in an additional biography or CV. When writing, include quotes from critics or reviews, and reference any press coverage. Writing them in the third person (Jane’s work is…) is less direct than in the first person (My work is…)