firstsite contemporary art colchester

Jo Chapman

6 – 23 July 2005
Jo Chapman
Artist Space

Using different materials, scales and processes, Jo Chapman will explore the possibilities of drawing, developing new work in response to the Artist Space.

Over the past year Chapman has been making work that is concerned with the context and placement of imagery within architectural space, the nature of the work being site-specific and temporary. She has been making drawings that use simple materials, sometimes ready-made and are worked directly onto the surface of the wall. Although she refers to them as drawings they use mainly stitch, which is worked on to a very fine tissue paper and then pasted to the wall, sometimes combined with pencil or inks.

This way of working allows the drawing to remain fluid, alive and spontaneous; it is the architecture of the space that determines how the drawing grows and the direction it will take. Chapman wants the work to retain the feeling that it is a living thing that could move over the surface of the walls, window and doors not constrained by the edges of canvas or paper.

The work describes a personal and sensory experience of life. She is not interested in the images she uses being symbolic, but more to act as a key into state of mind, the essence of something.

The imagery used is a distillation from various sources of flower and garden drawings, illustrations and photographs. For the artist it embodies a number of interests such as growth, fertility, the transitory, subversion of the decorative, as well as suggestions of loss, mourning and beauty. She is draw to the tradition of gardens as places of contemplation and hopes that her installations provide space for this too.

	Jo Chapman 6 – 23 July 2005 Jo Chapman Artist Space Using different materials, scales and processes, Jo Chapman will explore the possibilities of drawing, developing new work in response to the Artist Space. Over the past year Chapman has been making work that is concerned with the context and placement of imagery within architectural space, the nature of the work being site-specific and temporary. She has been making drawings that use simple materials, sometimes ready-made and are worked directly onto the surface of the wall. Although she refers to them as drawings they use mainly stitch, which is worked on to a very fine tissue paper and then pasted to the wall, sometimes combined with pencil or inks. This way of working allows the drawing to remain fluid, alive and spontaneous; it is the architecture of the space that determines how the drawing grows and the direction it will take. Chapman wants the work to retain the feeling that it is a living thing that could move over the surface of the walls, window and doors not constrained by the edges of canvas or paper. The work describes a personal and sensory experience of life. She is not interested in the images she uses being symbolic, but more to act as a key into state of mind, the essence of something. The imagery used is a distillation from various sources of flower and garden drawings, illustrations and photographs. For the artist it embodies a number of interests such as growth, fertility, the transitory, subversion of the decorative, as well as suggestions of loss, mourning and beauty. She is draw to the tradition of gardens as places of contemplation and hopes that her installations provide space for this too.