I’ve been a bit under the weather this week so I’m falling back on a slightly lazy post!

My degree assignments have been featuring areas to research and they are often asking us to look at an artist or a technique/movement. They’ve been pretty specific but this time we have free rein. Just go out into the world and find an artist to inspire you. Where on earth do you start? Let’s face it you can lose a week of your life simply browsing Pinterest/Instagram.

So, my objectives for this assignment were to try and work on the issues that my tutor has picked up on in all my feedback so far. A theme in her feedback has been that I’m too controlling in my work. I don’t ever just experiment and enjoy “unexpected outcomes”. So I looked for artists that don’t or can’t predict the end result of their work.

Anya Gallaccio creates installations with organic materials. She has used ice, chocolate, flowers, candles, and fauna to create installations and let the process of decaying and transformation become part of the installation. Her art is created, shaped by her, and then just left to do it’s own thing. Out in the world with no control over how it ends up. I love that.

“The works mostly exist for a moment in time, and then, maybe, in memory. Materials are discarded. As such, documentation can in no way describe or replace them. The viewer brings his or her own subjective histories to the work, thereby completing it. In this sense my work is theatrical; the audience is part of the equation.”

~ Anya Gallaccio