Printmaking & Contemporary Practice
Kate McElligott
CALM & CONFLICT - ‘BROKEN SLEEP’
The work engages with the calming and conflicting struggle of emotional strength and weakness. Representations of mental ‘space’ are motivated by elements extracted from a physical environment. There is a distinct interest in creating an ‘alternative landscape’ through process. These landscapes are intended to signify an internal space which are representations of mental conditions which are expressed in the work as ‘Thoughtscapes’. An unsettling calm occurs either before or immediately after a raging storm, this too occurs in a mental capacity, the work expresses this bizarre calmness and conflict through visual motifs and use of colour. Bright and dark tonal qualities generate a push and pull struggle in the pieces which support of the overall concept. The work is about flipping realities, giving that internal space inside the mind a physical structure. The work is primarily about the relationship between the mental capacity of a person with a condition, such as depression and the influence that physical surroundings have on psychological conditions and the fragments it creates from the whole. Like a switch, mind-sets can alter from calm to conflicting, the work attempts to embody this complex shift in thinking.