BigShinyThing

We dutifully went along to see the art and design graduate shows around Brick Lane this year. A standout work was this installation by Natalie Simpson for her BA Hons Fine Art degree which puts a personal slant on urban decay. We’ll let Natalie explain…

For a number of years I have been preoccupied with urban and decrepit places, which to me always retain a mood. I have also spent a lot of time photographing and filming the anonymous person in these places.

For my end of year show I had decided that I wanted the work to be more intimite (sic) to me, and began constructing people that are missing from my life, those loved and lost. I began referencing photographs that I already had in my possession of these people. Some of these photographs had to be scanned into the computer to construct a positive and negative image that I could then recreate using found materials. The quality of the image was sometimes lost during this process but I found that the diminishing condition of clarity represented perfectly the fragmentation of my memories of them.

It was important to me that the cut out images were then allocated to areas that reminded me of my loved ones, as if I was reconstructing my memories and replacing them where they belong.

To contact Natalie about her work, either email her directly: nataliedolly@yahoo.co.uk, or email us: anne-fay@bigshinything.com.

UPDATE: Natalie has now made the films of her work in situ available on YouTube.