FRANCES WOODLEY
Reproductions and Reimaginings: A reflection on an interconnected practice
[CARDIFF]
Post-internet art, that is, art that takes the Internet as its primary source and facilitator, can be extended into forms of interconnected practice when digital reproductions of historical paintings are transformed using a combination of material and digital means. My paper is a reflection on my own interconnected, post-internet, studio-based practice undertaken in the light of Hans-Georg Gadamer's idea of a 'fusion of horizons', Georges Didi-Huberman's writing on 'anachronicty' and Mieke Bal's writing on 'quotation'.
The Internet's temporality is anachronic. It exists in multiple time zones making historical paintings instantly accessible. This feature, along with infinite reproducibility, enables me to construct, juxtapose and merge images from the past using materials and technologies available to me today. My three principal methods are: alternating the analogue and the digital so that one may lead, support or oppose the other; merging the digital and material to produce hybrid material objects; constructing models out of appropriated digitally reproduced motifs or digitally painted motifs.
I appropriate details from digital reproductions of sixteenth-century Netherlandish paintings of flowers and food that symbolise universal themes still relevant to us today. I explore the complexities and consequences of excess (through manipulation, repetition and accumulation), and the transience of life (through virtual metaphors of translucency, fracture and layering). I assemble my motifs on the screen before printing and cutting them out ready for construction into paper models of chimeric hybrids and further manipulation on screen. It is a playful process of 'back and forth' across the 'in-between' of studio and screen, and past and present.
Frances Woodley (b. Münster, Germany) lives and works in Cardiff. She gained a BA 1st Class Hons. at Cardiff College of Art (1975), a Masters in Fine Art (Printmaking) at Manchester Polytechnic (1976) and a PGCE (1978). Later she followed this with a Masters in Art History at the Open University (2009) and a PhD at Aberystwyth University (Nov 2017). Her doctoral research methods included art history, published conversations with artists, curatorial projects and her own studio practice. She was selected for the Rijksmuseum and RKD summer course for curators (2016). Frances taught full time at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and was Head of Visual Arts at University of South Wales (1991-2011). Previously a sculptor in ceramics and a printmaker, with works in public collections in Wales (ArtUK), her current practice focuses on digital painting. She has a studio in Cardiff where she started working on digital images in 2016 and has pursued it as acentral part of her practice since 2018.
Publications include All Coherence Gone (2014), Still Life Ambiguous Practice (2015), Models and Materialities (2016), Flora (2017), Speak to Me: Contemporary Conversations with the Still life Tradition (Doctoral Thesis Nov 2017), Vis-à-vis (2018) as well as various published academic papers, essays, and reviews.
Woodley is currently guest curator for the 56 Group Wales undergoing a conversation project with thirty-six artists that will result in an exhibition entitlted At Cross Purposes (2020-22) and accompanying publication. She has recently completed another curatorial project for 'Contemporary British Painting (CBP) Plausible Objects/Difficult Things (Feb. 2021), a virtual exhibition for which she has selected works, corresponded with artists and written an essay. She is also currently co-curating an exhibition in Spot Korin Gallery, Kyoto entitled Thing Worlds (Feb. 2021).
FRANCES WOODLEY
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Blow Out
​Digital Photomontage 60 x 45 cm