Exciting opportunity – Self-portrait

I was recently asked with 5 other artists to take part in a promotional exhibition with the Jersey Arts Centre called Self Portrait.

Myself, Gaby Radiguet, Lisa Macdonald, Alison Richards, Matt Falle and Kevin Pallot will be taking up this exciting opportunity.

The challenge being we will arrive in the Berni Gallery on Sunday morning (20th March 2011) and we create work for the exhibition within the space by the next day (Monday 21st March) when we’ll have a preview at 5.30pm!

I was really happy to be invited to be part of such an exciting project and the opportunity to work amongst other artists in so many different disciplines. It’s both exciting and terrifying, especially as some of my drawings can take up to 40-50 hours. But it presents the challenge of possibly a new way of working. Luckily I believe artists are pretty well trained for this lack of sleep, working through the night, living on adrenaline – as many of us have done the nights leading up to a big exhibition.

The image here is taken by artist Alison Richards on the spur of the moment where all the artists taking part were photographed and merged as one. I’ll keep you up to date and look forward to finding out what 6 artists together in one space get up to in 36 hours.

The piece I worked on was a study form a costume I’d been working on. The dress was an interpretation of Helen Chadwick’s ‘Loop my Loop’ which uses golden hair entwined with pig gut – a classic twist of fairy tale combining beauty and grotesque, inner and outer in an embrace that challenges these distinctions.

In the time given I photographed the dress as well as working on a observational drawing from the dress itself.